Sleep apnea is a serious condition in which a person’s breathing repeatedly stops and starts while he or she is asleep. This condition can lead to other serious and potentially life-threatening issues including depression, memory loss, heart disease, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes, besides others. And the bad news is that this condition is on the rise.

Sleep Apnea is On the Rise

It is estimated that sleep apnea afflicts at least 25 million adults in the US. It not only disrupts sleep but causes many diseases, thus destroying the health of these millions of Americans. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, this health problem has gotten worse over the last two decades. There has been a substantial increment in the rates of obstructive sleep apnea, mainly due to unhealthy habits and obesity. Also, as childhood obesity becomes an ever-growing concern in our country, so does the increasing number of sleep apnea cases in young children. While this condition can greatly alter anyone’s life, it is even more heartbreaking to see a child suffer its consequences. With lack of proper sleep, physical growth is hampered and behavioral problems can arise as well.

According to data published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, more than 26 percent of adults in America between the ages of 30 and 70 years, suffer from sleep apnea. This is a significant problem in the United States. Centers for Disease Control and international organizations are categorizing sleep disorders as those of epidemic proportions. These numbers include a review of the Defense Medical Epidemiological Database which contains records of active duty military personnel. The outlook here is not too good either. Sleep apnea in the military has increased dramatically since 2005. It is more prevalent in senior officers, followed by senior enlisted, and then Army soldiers. This is an especially grave scenario for the military as it interferes with the ability of soldiers to do their jobs effectively.

While this condition is somewhat difficult to detect and can be easily confused with snoring and other less harmful issues, doctors now are becoming better at accurately suspecting it in patients and requesting referrals and testing for it.

Easy Testing Option for Sleep Apnea Patients

Sleep apnea is, fortunately, very treatable. The effective treatment of sleep apnea is a key factor in successfully reducing health care spending and improving chronic disease management. With the availability of home sleep study equipment, it is now much easier to diagnose and get the proper treatment for this condition before it has more adverse effect on patients. At VirtuOx, we offer a few different types of home sleep study devices. These are the best available on the market today and provide easy, comprehensive, and accurate sleep study data that can then be used to easily come up with treatment plans for individual patients.

Our devices include the ApneaLinkAir, WatchPat, and AliceNightOne. For more information and details about these devices, just visit our website. With any one of these devices, you can conduct a sleep study yourself from the comfort of your own home. 24/7 customer support is provided for patients with any questions or concerns that they may have. As a patient, not only do you avoid the hassle of checking into a lab for an overnight sleep study, you also save money, as these devices prove to be less expensive than overnight sleep studies. Data might also be more accurate since you are truly able to replicate a normal night’s sleep in your own bed. Thanks to these products, diagnosing sleep apnea is now much easier than ever before.

While the incidence of sleep apnea is definitely on the rise, there is some good news too. With newer devices for diagnosis, more awareness in the medical community as well as among the general public about this condition, as well as more awareness about the necessity of having a healthy lifestyle, this trend can certainly be reversed. If you suspect that your symptoms might signal sleep apnea, contact your healthcare provider and get diagnosed easily with a sleep study machine by VirtuOx. You can soon be completely treated for sleep apnea.

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