There are two different types of sleep apnea. First, let's start with what is Sleep Apnea? Sleep apnea is when somebody is sleeping at night and they're not breathing. That's it, that's what sleep apnea is. There are two types of sleep apnea. There's Obstructive Sleep Apnea which is by far the most common and then there's Central Sleep Apnea which is not very common.
Obstructive Sleep Apne means that your brain is telling your lungs to breathe. Your lungs try to breathe and they can't get air in. What is happening is the back of the throat is shutting down. So if somebody's got obstructive sleep apnea they've got a throat issue 100% of the time. That's the main one to know about.
Central Sleep Apnea means that your brain forgets to tell your lungs to breathe in the first place. So that is not a throat problem, that's a brain problem. It's a brain problem or a wiring problem. For instance, somebody who is dependent on various medications might have central sleep apnea. If you have other conditions going on with your body, you might have central sleep apnea. Most people who have central sleep apnea also have obstructive sleep apnea. At the end of the day, the component that can be best treated is the obstructive component and that's what we do.
If somebody has obstructive sleep apnea, like I said, that's a throat issue 100% of the time and there are various ways of going about fixing that. I'll cover that in a different topic or a different segment, but that's it.
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