Do people with sleep apnea need 10+ hours of sleep? Eyes?

Posted by robertwills @robertwills, Dec 1 9:52am

Is it common for people with undiagnosed sleep apnea to sleep much longer than people who don't have sleep apnea, like over 10 or even 12 hours??

Do people with sleep apnea typically have eyes that are not filly open like someone without sleep apnea?

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gloaming | @gloaming | Dec 2 1:37pm

In reply to @robertwills "If there is a situation where you must act does adrenaline override the urge to sleep?" + (show)

Adrenaline is the product from the adrenal glands that spurs the body into fight-or-flight mode. It makes you sweat more easily, makes your liver release more glucose into the blood to help you to use the large muscles for flight or for defense, and it makes your irises dilate so that you can see better (both in dimmer light if needs be but also in higher resolution due to the increased aperture, so finer details at a distance are seen this way). It even causes piloerection, or the standing-up of hairs on your body....so that you might appear to be larger than you really are. A bear doesn't like attacking another bear, if you follow.

The higher heart rate makes more glucose available at any part of the downstream flow from the heart, but it also helps to flush away the byproduct of urgent and sustained metabolism, that being carbon dioxide.

Adrenaline also helps with alertness, improved reflexes, focus, and with increased breathing rate. Think of all your body must do suddenly, urgently, quickly, with great force, to ensure your survival or to minimize damage you'll sustain if you're slower than your predator. As you might surmise, all of these effects serve to make you more potent and energetic, not to make you get sleepy, warm and cozy, and to nod off.

So, yes.

ollie2018 | @ollie2018 | Dec 4 8:28pm

I feel like I am catching up sleep from all those years of having headaches and having to get up at 5 am for work! I feel the best with 10! I try not to ever nap unless I am ill. I’m 63 and retired early during Covid. C- pap since 2007. Totally rely on it to keep me breathing as I have central apnea- and severe obstructive apnea. I am of normal wt. your body tells yow what it needs! Rest rejuvenates the body! Take cate!