How Can Sleep Apnea Affect Your Relationships?
June 13, 2023Humans are social creatures that thrive when they have strong, happy relationships with other people. Your connections with your friends and family are worth protecting! Unfortunately, sleep apnea can make that challenging. How exactly can sleep apnea affect your relationships, and what can you do to fight back against it? This blog post explains.
Sleep Apnea Causes Chronic Tiredness
Sleep apnea is a disorder that causes repeated pauses in breathing throughout the night. These pauses, known as apneas, interrupt the sleep cycle and can prevent you from spending enough time in the deeper stages of rest. Therefore, you may always feel exhausted despite spending 7 – 8 hours in bed every night.
Tiredness can take a heavy toll on your relationships. You may barely have enough energy to get through your workday, let alone to spend quality time with your friends, spouse, and children. You could easily miss out on some of life’s most precious moments.
It is also worth noting that a lack of high-quality sleep causes some people to be irritable. You might do and say hurtful things that you do not really mean — simply because a disorder is robbing you of the rest you need to function at your best.
Sleep Apnea and Your Love Life
In addition to affecting your emotional bonds with others, sleep apnea could also have consequences for your physical relationship with your partner. In fact, one analysis of multiple research studies found that the incidence of erectile dysfunction in men with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is between 40% and 80%.
Sleep apnea can also affect women’s sexual health. Research indicates that women with insomnia and sleep apnea are significantly more likely to suffer from issues like female sexual arousal disorder, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and female orgasmic disorder than those without a sleep disorder.
What You Can Do?
If you believe that sleep apnea is affecting your relationships, talk to your doctor or a dentist who offers sleep apnea treatment. They can help you arrange for testing that will reveal for sure whether you have a sleep disorder and how severe your condition is. From there, you can consider your treatment options.
Many people find that a simple, custom-made oral appliance from a dentist is the most convenient way to address their OSA.
If you are diligent about complying with treatment, you should soon begin to enjoy higher-quality sleep. Hopefully, you will feel well enough to enjoy healthy, strong, and happy relationships with all the important people in your life.
Meet the Practice
Dr. Kenneth Mogell is double board-certified in dental sleep medicine. For more than a decade, he has been helping patients find relief from obstructive sleep apnea via oral appliance therapy. To find out how he and our team may be able to help you enjoy a healthier, happier life, reach out to any of our locations or call our Boca Raton office at 561-353-5252.