Sleep apnea is a lot more common that you may realize, especially since it often goes undiagnosed.
- 1 in 15 people have moderate to severe OSA (Young et al. JAMA 2004)
- 9% women and 25% men in the middle-aged working population have OSA (Marshall et al. Sleep 2008)
- Sleep apnea is as common as diabetes and asthma.
- Most OSA sufferers remain undiagnosed and untreated.
- 50% of patients with Type II Diabetes have OSA
- 35% of patients with high blood pressure have OSA 6
Why are so many people not getting diagnosed? Sleep apnea symptoms can, such as depression, are often treated without looking for the underlying cause. Since sleep apnea has a number of symptoms that may be illnesses in their own right or overlap with other disorder symptoms, it can fail to be recognized and properly treated.