Adults
Sleep Disordered Breathing causes your sleep cycle to reset multiple times during the night. This not only affects how you feel when you wake up, but has also been linked to a number of life threatening conditions such as:
Asthma, Allergies & Congestion
Nasal Breathing, the preferred method of breathing, warms, filters, and the humidifies the air, thus decreasing the amount of irritants that enter the body. These irritants can lead to increased issues of asthma and allergies. When mouth breathing occurs, there is an increase in the size of the adenoids and tonsils, further decreasing the functional airspace, necessitating the need to mouth breathe. Mouth breathing can cause improper tongue posture leading to an unbalanced muscular system within the oral cavity. This unbalanced system can cause a deformation of the jaws and lead to malocclusion.
Mood Disorders
People who have sleep apnea and other sleep disordered breathing conditions are at higher risk for mood disorders, especially bipolar disorder, and severe depression.
Endocrine Problems
The endocrine system has a complex response to sleep. The secretion of some hormones, such as growth hormones, prolactin, and luteinizing hormone, increases during sleep. The secretion of other hormones, such as thyroid stimulating hormone and cortisol, is inhibited during sleep.
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Considerable research has linked endocrine dysfunction and sleep dysfunction:
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Adults who report getting 5 or fewer hours of sleep a night were 2.5 times more likely to have diabetes.
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People who slept 6 hours/night were 1.7 times more likely to have diabetes.
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If a person’s sleep cycle is altered by their inability to breathe properly, it can wreak havoc on many systems in the body.
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