October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

This blog began with me reading stories from women (many in their 30s and 40s) who suffered from serious heart attacks.  As I read through the entire post, I knew it was pertininet to share the findings with Alaska Sleep Clinic's blog readers. We know that younger women can have heart attacks, and it’s acknowledged that doctors are not good at picking up heart attack symptoms in younger women.

Women need more sleep than men. No, really; no matter how you spin it, research shows that men and women are biologically designed to need different amounts of sleep.

Current research shows that women need an average of twenty to thirty minutes more of sleep each night than men. And while women need more sleep, research also shows that most women aren’t getting the rest they need.

Sleep is essential to a woman’s well being. Understanding why they need more sleep and why many women are missing out one needed rest is paramount.

When we think about the typical sleep apnea patient, we often picture a heavyset man over forty years old with a thick neck and an earth-rattling snore. And while this image often does fit the profile of a sleep apnea patient, it by no means represents a complete picture of the demographic of sleep apnea sufferers.

Contrary to popular belief, sleep apnea patients come in all shapes, sizes, races, genders, and can even have symptoms atypical of those common for sleep apnea. For instance, not all sleep apnea sufferers snore, many are not obese or even overweight, and not all of them are male.

Here we discuss the prevalence of sleep apnea in women and why they are often an under-diagnosed and under-served population suffering from this sleep disorder.