Apnea is a condition in which a person suffers from temporary cessation of their normal breathing. When a person is suffering from this condition they will not experience movement of the muscles that are closely related to respiration and their lungs will also not experience any change in volume of air. Sometimes, gas might also flow between the person s lungs and the external environment. It is also possible to achieve apnea voluntarily which takes place when a person tries to hold their breath or when it is drug induced and it is also experienced when a person is being choked or strangulated.
Traumatic Experiences
Sometimes, this condition occurs on account of certain traumatic experiences and also because of neurological diseases. It also pays to understand the mechanism of apnea. In normal conditions the human body is not able to store a lot of oxygen and when the supply is further cut off as a consequence of an apnea episode there is insufficient oxygen present in the blood which in turn can cause damage to the brain even if this insufficiency of oxygen lasts for as few as just three minutes. If the condition prolongs for a little longer, death is a possible consequence.
A person under normal circumstances cannot voluntarily sustain an apnea attack for more than a minute or two at most. In case the patient is a smoker then their ability to withstand such an attack would be even shorter as the smoker s lungs will not be sufficiently strong to withstand prolonged periods of apnea.
In children the most common type of apnea is a condition known as obstructive apnea. There are in fact three main types that are worth learning more about: obstructive, central and mixed. In the case of obstructive apnea the condition is very often noticed affecting children and the reason for this is that their airways have become obstructed by factors such as enlargement of their tonsils and also because of adenoids.
Central apnea is a condition that occurs when a certain part of your brain that helps in controlling breathing malfunctions and this type of condition affects infants very often. Mixed apnea is of course a mixture of obstructive and central forms of this condition.
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) occurs because there is soft tissue that resides at back of a person s throat and when these tissues are relaxed the condition arises. Among healthy kids that are of pre-school age it has been found that OSA affects between one and three percent. So, the condition is not all that serious among kids.