Nearly one in five adults suffer from excessive daytime sleepiness. Sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, are often the undiscovered cause. Finding and treating these disorders cannot only improve sleep, but it can also address a host of health problems associated with poor sleep quality.

Family Health Care of Siouxland is committed to helping patients get a better night’s sleep and to stay healthier with its state-of-the-art Sleep Center. Located on Steamboat Drive in Dakota Dunes, the Sleep Center is the only sleep lab in the Siouxland area accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Our Sleep Center has the advanced technology to conduct and interpret a wide range of sleep studies. While patients sleep in comfortable hotel-like rooms, the Center’s certified sleep technicians take measurements to determine how much and how well each patient sleeps. Many physiological functions like eye movements, brain waves, heart rate and rhythm, muscle function, air flow through the nose and mouth, respiratory effort and oxygen levels are monitored.

Our Sleep Center is an outpatient facility. As a result, patients who have sleep studies here are not billed a facility fee, as they would be if they had a sleep study completed at a hospital inpatient facility.

For sleep studies, make Family Health Care of Siouxland’s Sleep Center your first choice.

If you’re having difficulty sleeping at night, or if you feel excessively tired during the day, talk with your doctor about whether or not a sleep study is right for you. If you’re provider thinks it is a good idea, ask him or her to schedule it at Family Health Care of Siouxland’s Sleep Center. To refer a patient to our Sleep Center, call 1-800-888-1426.

Sleep Apnea

The most common type of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea, which occurs when the muscles in the back of the throat that supports the soft palate, uvula, tonsils and tongue relax too much to allow normal breathing. The airway narrows or closes making breathing inadequate for 10 to 20 seconds and potentially lowering oxygen in the blood. The brain senses this inability to breathe and briefly rouses the sleeper so that the airway reopens.

Signs and Symptoms of Sleep Apnea:

Who is at Risk?

Anyone can develop obstructive sleep apnea.

However, certain factors increase your risk:

• Excess weight
• Neck circumference
• High blood pressure
• A narrowed airway, either because of genetics or because of enlarged tonsils/adenoids
• Chronic nasal congestion
• Diabetes
• Being male; men are twice as likely to have sleep apnea
• Being black, Hispanic or a Pacific Islander
• Being older; sleep apnea occurs two to three times more often in adults older than 65
• Menopause; a woman’s risk increases after menopause
• Use of alcohol, sedatives or tranquilizers
• Smoking; smokers are nearly three times more likely to have sleep apnea