I have sleep apnea, and my issues are a bit different. I don't have issues with sleeping at night - its the QUALITY of sleep I get. I can sleep for 10-12 hrs at a cycle now, and often do.
Back when I could only afford to sleep for 7-8 hrs, I would go to sleep and then wake up at the proper hours, and not wake up for a second in between. But those 7-8 hrs were like 3-4 hrs to my body's system, and I would struggle staying awake at work, especially in the afternoon hours. I would cut down on my lunches, and basically just snack, because any decent-sized meal at lunch would have me super droozy in the afternoon hours at work.
I have deviated septum issues with my nose - and it is native. I snored when I was a child, and due to concerns over this by my parents, I had my tonsils taken out because it was thought that they might have been swollen - possibly inflamed and infected. They were taken and were found to be perfectly fine, and I continued to snore afterwards, and did so all my life.
I had asleep study done at my local hospital that showed I had nearly 300 "events" during the night I was hooked up. This was back when sleep studies were different than they are today - I had little wires taped all over my body while I slept. A single "event" is a moment where I am disturbed out of my deep sleep period, which is the period of sleep where the body and heart truly rest and heal. Out of 7-8 hours of sleep, a person may only have 3-4 hrs of deep sleep, so I was experiencing "events" of disturbance more often than every minute I was in deep sleep.
I got a CPAP, and it was one where they force air in through your nose, keeping your nose channels open and therefore your mouth channel shut. The idea is that as you age, your body's conditioning worsens, and you gain body-fat content. The tissues in your neck and rear mouth area sag and flop down over each other as you sleep, causing your breathing channels to become restricted, which also causes the snoring sounds. The sounds but mostly the air restrictions are what causes the "events" - its like someone constantly shaking your shoulders while you're asleep, not exactly waking you up to full consciousness, but disturbing you JUST ENOUGH to get you out of your deep sleep, then when you fall back into it, they shake you again out of it.
Poor sleep cycles - where you get little deep sleep periods over time - years, decades - places extra strain on your heart, which is a muscle that never fully rests. Symptoms can be heart enlargement due to this poor rest, and heart failures.
My CPAP was not able to work for me, due to my deviated septum. No matter what type of funnel I used over my nose, or what setting of air being forced in that I used, when I fell off to sleep, I couldn't get in enough air through my nose to suit my body, and I would inevitably (and unconsciously) open my mouth to start breathing in though it. But a person CANNOT breath through BOTH their nose AND mouth at the same time, so when this happened, I started choking like I was drowning, and would tear off the mask even before I was quite awake. This ended up disturbing my sleep more than my snoring did.
I would require corrective surgery to fully resolve the issue. But it is also true that maintaining proper weight, getting good nutrition, getting excercize every day - going for walks at your local gym or along your neighborhood streets for at least 30 minutes per day - and keeping your weight down will also help as much as CPAP machines will unless for extreme circumstances.
Back when this site was GamecockCentral, back around 2005 or so, and I was a paying member, there was a weight-loss group that was going on, and I participated in that, as part of my efforts to get into better weight and condition, and to battle my sleep apnea. Perhaps it would be a good idea for posters here to start a thread and get engaged in something like that again, if only there were enough members here who were serious about community-minded projects, and not just the typical tired political monkey feces-throwing competitions....
