Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that causes you to stop breathing while you sleep. It drastically obstructs your natural sleep cycle. The obstruction is usually caused by the collapse of the tissue in the back of your throat. This causes repeated blockage of your airways and limits oxygen to your lungs. Sleep apnea is usually paired with loud snoring or choking while you try to breathe in your sleep.
Because your sleep cycle is constantly being disrupted, most people with sleep apnea also report extreme fatigue and brain fog during the day.
Ultimately, you must take sleep apnea seriously as it can end up leading to more severe consequences. These include depression, heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Luckily, sleep doctors and researchers have come together to create an effective sleep apnea treatment: the Inspire Sleep Airway Stimulator.
What Is Inspire?
The Inspire Sleep Airway Stimulator is a small device that helps stimulate the airway in your chest. The end goal is to provide more oxygen to your lungs and provide sleep apnea treatment.
The stimulator, or pulse generator, is implanted under the skin of your chest during an outpatient procedure. It comes with a remote control that the patient can use before and after a night of sleep.
The Inspire Sleep device is non-invasive, composed of just the stimulator and remote control — no masks, no wires, or any other obtrusive objects.
How Does It Work
Inspire Sleep is unique to each individual. By monitoring your breathing while you sleep, it’s able to work with your unique & natural breathing patterns.
When sleep apnea occurs, the tissue in the back of your throat collapses and your airway becomes blocked. Many people experience this with snoring or choking. Consequently, they end up waking themselves up by not being able to breathe.
With the Inspire Sleep device, the breathing sensor lead detects any slight airway closure and sends stimulation to the nearby muscles. This causes the airway to open before you can wake.
The system includes a remote control, the breathing sensor, a stimulation lead, and a small generator. All you need to do to make it work is to turn it on before you go to bed and off when you awake.
How Does It Feel?
Due to the stimulation, there is a very mild tingling sensation usually felt by patients. Some patients have also reported a mild contraction of tongue muscles. These sensations are so small that most people don’t notice anything at all. However, for those who do and find it uncomfortable, you may adjust the level of stimulation on the remote control. The process is never painful so if you are experiencing pain in any way, notify your sleep doctor immediately.
During the outpatient surgery for the implanting of the Inspire Sleep System, three small incisions are made throughout the neck and chest. They are extremely small and will be hardly noticeable. Some swelling may occur from the incisions, but with over-the-counter pain medication and some icing, it should go down in a couple of days.
Adjustments to Your Sleep Apnea Treatment
Your sleep doctor or Inspire Sleep therapist should handle any adjustments to the stimulator levels. Your doctor will also likely monitor your progress to assess whether or not you need more or less stimulation. After 11 years, the battery in your chest will eventually run out. This is very common. You can find more frequently asked questions about this system on the Inspire Sleep website.
The Inspire Sleep system is very popular among sleep apnea patients because of its non-intrusiveness and increasing success rate. If you or your partner are suffering from sleep apnea and nothing else you’ve tried seems to work, you may want to consider the Inspire Sleep Device.
Sleep Apnea Treatment NYC
To find out if you’re a good candidate for the system, contact Sleep MD today to schedule a consultation with Dr. Shukla today!
