A new study of sleep apnea (interruption of breathing during sleep that can occur up to a hundred times a night) from the University of California shows that women with this condition sometimes look quite healthy, but this does not reflect the reality. It's just that their symptoms are not so obvious, writes Medical News Today.

When a person stops breathing, the oxygen concentration drops, which affects the cells of the body.. It turned out that, especially in female patients, the work of the autonomic system, which controls blood pressure, heart rate, sweating and other basic functions, is disrupted..

Dr. Paul Macy and colleagues assembled a group of 94 men and women. 37 have only recently been diagnosed with apnea and have not yet been treated. 57 people acted as a control group. Volunteers were asked to take multiple tests. First you had to exhale strongly, keeping your mouth closed..

Then it was required to squeeze the object as tightly as possible with one hand.. And at the final stage, the participants' right leg was placed in ice water for a minute.. People with apnea had less heartbeat amplitude, greater delay in fluctuations, and slower changes in heartbeat..

In women, these factors were more pronounced.. This means they were more susceptible to developing heart disease and potentially worse at coping with daily activities.. Experts want to test if autonomic responses can be improved with standard continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy.

aspekty. net.