Sleep apnea can impact your quality of life, both wake, and sleeping. There is a multitude of dangerous side effects while sleeping as a result of sleep apnea. But did you know that sleep apnea health issues can affect everyday tasks while you’re awake? Getting a poor night’s rest will leave you feeling more than just groggy and tired the next day. It can actually make certain tasks much harder than those tasks normally would be. From memory to mood and everything in between, sleep apnea can dramatically impact how you feel and how well you complete even the most simple tasks. Check out these four everyday tasks that become much harder when you suffer from sleep apnea.

Procedural Memory

Aside from long and short-term memory disruptions, sleep apnea can impact your procedural memory. But what exactly is the procedural memory? This is a type of long-term memory that controls the recall, execution of motor-related tasks, and the acquisition of memories. Essentially, this type of memory is what makes some things seem effortless; like driving, typing, eating, etc. Anything that you can recall or do without having to think about it consciously. It is technically considered a type of implicit memory. Procedural memory is what will negatively impact these four everyday tasks.

Driving

Have you ever been driving to and from work and wondered how you even got there? Microsleeps can occur when you are not getting enough sleep during the night. In fact, those who suffer from sleep apnea are more likely to get into a car accident than those who do not suffer from sleep apnea. These dangerous car accidents occur because the person behind the wheel is more likely to doze off. Additionally, procedural memory is impacted. This type of memory helps you steer the vehicle, know how much brake pressure to apply, and when to go. When the procedural memory is impacted it can increase your risk of accidents—even in seemingly safe instances like parallel parking or drive through a parking lot at a low speed.

Typing

For those people who have to sit behind a desk and type all, it’s not as mindless of a task as you might think. Typing is another task that is highly dependent on procedural memory. Sleep apnea health issues can make it more difficult to learn typed number sequences. This means that even if you are a speed typist you may have difficulty typing easy tasks or tasks you frequently do. If you are noticing more typos it might be time to look into getting tested for sleep apnea. There’s nothing worse than sending out an email to multiple receivers to later learn about a crucial typo that you made.

Speaking

Most people know not to speak to someone who is tired because they’re likely grumpy and insufferable. However, at some point, no matter how tired you might feel, you are going to have to speak. Sleep apnea can negatively impact your speech abilities. Speaking is a fine motor skill and one that’s most measurably affected by sleep apnea. Extreme fatigue caused by poor sleep can impact your ability to pronounce certain words, make it more difficult for you to understand others, and it makes it especially difficult to speak or hear on the phone.

Using your Smart Phone

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t use a smartphone. If you are one of those people then this is a task you don’t have to worry about (though you should still be concerned about sleep apnea). Smartphone usage requires procedural memory for pinching, tapping, swiping, tapping, and dragging. These fine motor responses are relatively automatic, however, if you are struggling with any of these tasks that were once easy to do in the past, it might be because of your poor sleep.

We know how difficult life can be when you or a loved one is suffering from sleep apnea. Sleep apnea impact people from all walks of life, body types, and lifestyles. Sleep apnea study equipment can help dramatically change the quality of life with a simple sleep test.

VirtuOx is the leader in home sleep tests and pulse oximetry.