As one of the most common sleep-related breathing disorders, OSA will cause you to repeatedly stop and start breathing during your sleep, which leads to poor sleep quality and low oxygen levels. Oxygen saturation of 95%-100% is normal for healthy adults and kids. However, OSA can drive the oxygen level to 80% or even less, which is dangerous because any level below 95% means your organs, tissues, and cells aren't getting the oxygen they need to function properly.

OSA may affect up to 30% of adults and is more common in men than women. And many experts expect obesity to be one of the causes of OSA as obesity rates rise.

Snoring, panting or choking during sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness are the main symptoms of OSA. If left untreated, OSA can lead to serious health problems, including cardiovascular problems, such as high blood pressure and stroke. A range of treatment options can effectively address obstructive sleep apnea and reduce its symptoms.

By delivering oxygenated air into your airways through a mask and tube, Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine is used to treat sleep apnea. But it is a little difficult to adjust the CPAP machine.

The automatic positive airway pressure (APAP) machine is similar to the CPAP machine, but it is far advanced because it is able to respond to changing pressure needs by constantly measuring how much resistance is present in your breathing.

Hypertension is referred to as a "silent killer", which has no obvious symptoms but will put you at a risk for cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction and stroke. There are already studies showing that compared with daytime hypertension, arterial blood pressure levels during sleep are higher. Hypertension is classified as essential hypertension and secondary hypertension.

Essential/Primary hypertension

Essential high blood pressure by far is the most common hypertension. It has no clear identifiable causes but is liked to genetics, obesity, lack of exercise and poor diet.

Secondary hypertension

Secondary high blood pressure is a type of hypertension caused by another medical condition that will affect the kidneys, arteries, heart or endocrine system.

One of the common causes of secondary high blood pressure is sleep disorders. And the most dangerous type of sleep disorder in this regard is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

OSA is often combined with hypertension and is an important cause of secondary hypertension. Except for age, obesity, and smoking, OSA is a risk factor for hypertension. 50% to 92% of patients with OSA have hypertension, and 30% to 50% of patients with hypertension have OSA.

Is OSA a risk factor for hypertension?

Yes. OSA can cause recurrent episodes of hypoxemia, hypercapnia, sleep disruption, and sympathetic nervous system activation, all of which are thought to be associated with hypertension.

In addition, OSA has long been known to cause oxidative stress, endothelial dysfunction, metabolic disorders, sympathetic activation, and systemic inflammation in patients with intermittent hypoxia. All of these factors or some of them may also contribute to the development of atherosclerosis, and hypertension in patients who already have certain risk factors, usually like obesity.

Treating obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can also help treat hypertension.

Identifications of individuals at risk for obstructive sleep apnea-related hypertension:

Patients with high blood pressure should be alerted to the presence of sleep apnea if they have the following conditions:

(1) Obesity.

(2) Craniofacial abnormalities.

(3) Snoring during sleep, excessive daytime sleepiness, headache and dry mouth in the morning.

(4) Resistant hypertension or masked hypertension, morning hypertension, or non-dipping hypertension or anti-dipper blood pressure rhythm. (Individuals who experience a less than 10% reduction in nighttime BP are described as having a non-dipping BP pattern.)

(5) Recurrent nocturnal episodes of uncontrollable angina pectoris.

(6) Cardiac arrhythmias that are difficult to restore at night.

(7) Intractable congestive heart failure.

(8) Refractory diabetes and insulin resistance.

(9) Unexplained pulmonary hypertension.

(10) Unexplained nocturnal awakening or nocturnal seizures.