Intermittent hypoxia, or sleep apnea, can cause mental and cardiovascular impairment. Treatment includes sleeping in positions that prevent airway blockage and avoiding alcohol and sleeping medication. Intermittent hypoxic training can improve overall health and athletic performance, and may benefit those with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Intermittent hypoxia, often more commonly referred to as sleep apnea, is a condition in which the human body is temporarily deprived of an adequate supply of oxygen to the blood. The causes of hypoxia vary and can be present in both children and adults. Additionally, some athletes and mountain climbers deliberately use the experience of oxygen deprivation at high altitudes to enhance their performance as they approach sea level, which is known as intermittent hypoxic training (IHT). When intermittent hypoxia is an uncontrolled and prolonged condition, it is known to lead to impairment in mental functioning and behavior, such as decreased academic performance in children and cause cardiovascular effects in adults, including increased blood pressure and possible changes in your normal heart rate.
The characteristic pattern of intermittent hypoxia when it occurs as part of a sleep disorder is known to usually involve a few seconds to a maximum of a few hours of activity in which oxygen delivery is reduced during sleep. During this event, periods of normal breathing and oxygen delivery known as normoxia also occur. While an increase in the normal blood pressure level is observed in most cases of sleep apnea, the heart rate itself does not change as it does in cases of more prolonged chronic hypoxia. The signs of hypoxia may therefore be difficult for individuals who sleep alone to perceive, because most of these individuals have no awareness of the intermittent hypoxic event upon waking.
Management of hypoxia when it occurs during sleep involves conditioning patients to sleep on their side or in other positions where the tongue is less likely to block the airway during sleep. Discouraging the use of alcohol and sleeping medications is also part of treatment, as they have a tendency to over-relax the throat muscles. More intense types of behavior therapy may be needed in severe cases, and other options are also possible such as throat surgery or the use of a mouthpiece that keeps the airways open during sleep, known as an Oral Appliance Therapy device ( OAT). final solutions to the problem.
Intermittent hypoxic training has been studied by Russian researchers ever since its benefits were first discovered. Spending time at high altitudes before returning to life near sea level has been shown to improve the overall health of ordinary people and can be of significant benefit in the treatment of several types of chronic diseases. India has also documented lower incidence rates of illness in populations who spent time at altitudes between 12,113 and 18,169 feet (3,692 to 5,538 meters) than in populations at lower levels, studying the experiences of more than 130,000 Indian army soldiers. Bacterial infections, cases of diabetes and psychiatric illness, among other conditions, were all considerably lower in the group as they lived at a higher altitude.
Further research by the nations of Japan, the United States, Australia, and Germany on the effects of intermittent hypoxia in the 1990s led to its incorporation into athletic training programs. This included using the Australian swim team process for the 2000 Olympics. Such conditioning is believed to directly improve the body’s natural efficiency at using oxygen. One medical condition for which intermittent hypoxia is as closely related to oxygen use as that of athletic performance is chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). IHT has been shown to significantly improve the oxygen efficiency of CFS sufferers after they have acclimatised their bodies to concentration levels of 11% oxygen, where the overall effect of IHT is to reduce the oxygen requirement. body oxygen by about 20% on average.
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