APAP Therapy: 6 Cognitive Benefits It Gives

APAP therapy, or auto-adjusting positive airway therapy, is a type of therapy that utilises a special machine to help treat a sleep condition called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Sleep apnea occurs when fatty tissue obstructs the trachea, depriving the organs and tissues of sufficient oxygen. This condition typically manifests as shallow and stunted breathing during sleep. 

With no treatment, this can cause the development and worsening of long-term health issues.As harmful and debilitating as sleep apnea is, it’s not infallible. There are a wide range of treatment devices that can help patients sleep more soundly. 

These devices come in the form of airway pressure devices, with CPAP machines being the most famous and APAP machines following close thereafter. That said, APAP machines are often considered to be the more sophisticated version of the two, largely because of its automatically-adjusting characteristics.

As people with sleep apnea exhibit different symptoms and severity of the condition, so too while they need tailor-fit treatment plans. And unlike a CPAP machine that offers continuous airway pressure through a mask, the APAP machine self-adjusts to set the ideal pressure of airflow in sleeping individuals. This added perk helps patients achieve more restful sleep and ultimately achieve better cognitive function. 

Let’s look into six benefits of APAP therapy on sufferers of this condition.

1. It Helps Improve Long-Term Memory

APAP therapy helps patients achieve more restful sleep. This is because it virtually eliminates the halted breathing process, allowing patients to enter deeper stages of sleep more consistently.

It’s during the later periods of quality sleep (stage 2) when our brain consolidates and chooses to retain information for the long haul. 

If you lack sleep over the course of a certain night, it’s highly likely that the things you’ve done over the day will only be remembered in the short-term, if at all.

But during your deepest stage of sleep, the REM (rapid eye movement) stage, some moments of your short-term memory get incorporated with your long-term memories. This helps strengthen cognitive links in your brain, allowing you to learn things better and more reliably.

Without enough sleep, this process is impaired. It’s why you often feel groggy and confused when you wake up the day after a bad night’s rest.

2. It Helps Improve Productivity

While some people are avid procrastinators and can pull off a good final essay during an all-nighter, nothing beats the resulting consistency of working after a state of restful sleep.

When you lack sleep, you tend to become less focused and more easily distracted. You may doze off and space out more often, which serves no purpose other than killing the time necessary to achieve your goals.

Furthermore, when you lack enough sleep, your brain takes in information at a much slower rate than it would when you’re fully rested. On top of that, you’re more likely to make crucial errors that can send your productivity down a swirling vortex.

From losing out on a promotion at work to missing out on scholastic awards, lost productivity can have many severe repercussions. If sleep apnea is the cause of your woes, then sleeping with an APAP mask can be just the thing you need to solve your sleep-related issues.

3. It Enhances Emotional Clarity

Had an awful and stressful day? Is a big lifestyle change on the verge of your decision, and you need to put on your rational cap? Or are you just about to do something impulsive?

If so, there’s one solution to help you and your overstimulated brain out: getting adequate rest. 

Getting enough sleep is a good way to essentially reset the build-up of emotions that you’ve accumulated over the day. It helps you clear your thoughts and act on things without being impulsive or emotional.

This is because during the REM stage of sleep, your brain processes information and produces key hormones to help keep your mind stable the following days. 

Adults need at least 7 hours of sleep to get the emotional benefits of uninterrupted sleep—and for people with sleep apnea, APAP therapy is a great way to achieve that. 

4. It Boosts Your Mood

Let’s face it: we’ve all lacked sleep and found ourselves incredibly grumpy and agitated the next day at one point. Sometimes to the point where caffeine can’t even fix it!

If you find yourself constantly getting grouchy in the morning, then it might be sleep apnea causing you to lose out on sleep. In such cases, it might be best to get a prescription from a reputable doctor for a sleeping aid like a sleep mask from CPAP Direct to sleep better.

When you get an adequate amount of restful sleep, you won’t be as easily agitated by the sound of your ringtone alarm going off in the morning. This is because sleeping restores the proper balance of hormones in your body, which helps in stabilising your emotions and mood.

Conversely, if you lack sleep, your body will have elevated cortisol levels, which can make you more anxious, stressed, and moody the next day. The rest of your body will still feel fatigued too, making it doubly hard to get up in the morning and perform at your best level.

5. It Lowers The Risk of Dementia

Sleep apnea affects men and women of all ages, but in many cases, it’s elderly individuals who are at most at risk of developing this condition.

Sleep apnea often overlaps with other chronic health conditions, like obesity, high blood pressure, and atherosclerosis. 

And due to the lack of rich oxygen flow to the blood and body, it can also cause or heighten the risk of neurodegenerative conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Sleep behaviour (and to a further extent, sleep treatment) tends to exhibit differently in people with dementia when compared to people without dementia, so it’s important to talk with a doctor to evaluate your condition in a more informed light.

That said, sleeping enough is proven to reduce the build-up of a protein known as beta amyloid. This protein can interfere with the ability for the brain to store memories and cause issues like dementia down the line.

As such, it’s important to clear it out of the brain—and getting at least 7 hours of sleep is one surefire way to counteract that exact problem.

6. It Helps You Analyse Things Faster

Have to take in a whole host of information in a short span of time? Have to digest this information and analyse the best course of action given these data points?

If a lot is hanging on the line with your decision, then you’ll need to ensure that you’re well-rested before making any calls.

Getting enough sleep helps you make smarter and more agile decisions. When you’re learning something new, it can help you concentrate and store a large set of new information faster and more reliably. It also helps you retrieve said information more quickly. 

This learning and retrieval process typically requires a lot of brainpower as millions of neurons get fired when trying to remember and retrieve specific information. And, believe it or not, this process also occurs during sleep to help us remember these memories beyond the short-term.

With APAP therapy, you can keep your mind rested during sleep, allowing you to better retain and recall crucial information you use in your daily life.