When it comes to the general population, 10 out of every 100 people tend to have sleep apnea, with about 40 to 50% going undiagnosed for most, if not all of their lives.

When it comes to MS sleep apnea is often even more of a problem, since Multiple Sclerosis can set us up for sleep apnea to develop more often than it would for the average person without Multiple Sclerosis.

How do you know you have sleep apnea?

 Sleep apnea is a medical condition that can affect many people when they sleep at night, where they temporarily stop breathing several times to hundreds of time a night, while they are sleeping.

The person with sleep apnea actually wakes themselves us several times a night to start breathing again and this can happen without the person even being aware that this is happening to them each time they lie down to sleep.

Symptoms of MS sleep apnea can include:

* Snoring when you lie down to sleep at night

* Headaches when you wake up in the morning

* Feeling tired all of the time, like you never really feel rested

* Being depressed and feeling down most of the time

* Feeling like you have no energy, no matter how long you actually lie down to sleep at night

* Unexplained weight gain – prolonged sleep apnea can actually make you gain weight quickly, without being able to lose the weight, even if you are careful with eating healthy, and even if you exercise

A sleep study can be done at a sleep clinic or sometimes your doctor can arrange for you to be tested at home to see if you might be having a problem with sleep apnea.

First a screening is done to determine if sleep apnea is present or not.

Then a diagnostic is done to determine what is going on with your particular case of sleep apnea.

The diagnostic testing determines:

* How often you stop sleeping at night

* How much oxygen are you getting when you breathe at night

* Whether you are going through the normal cycles of sleep

* Whether you enter the more restful stage of sleep when you sleep at night

* Whether you have other conditions, like restless leg syndrome, narcolepsy or other type of sleep problem besides sleep apnea.

Resolving the problems with sleep apnea can:

* Help the brain to function better

* Help you to feel rested

* Help you go to sleep more easily

* Prevent waking up several times a night and help you to sleep the whole night through

* Help you lose weight, put on by the extreme insomnia and/or lack of sleep

* Help to get rid of morning headaches and depression

* Help get rid of unexplained nauseousness

Multiple Sclerosis adds another element to sleep apnea, since MS is known for attacking the central nervous system and causing problems with the nerves not functioning as they should.

When it comes to MS sleep apnea, fatigue and insomnia can already be present because of the effects of the Multiple Sclerosis, which can make it more difficult to decide if the person may have sleep apnea, which can be also contributing to the fatigue and insomnia problems.

Unfortunately sleep apnea also has a hereditary element that can often contribute to sleep apnea appearing in those of diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, even if other members of our family are not diagnosed with MS, but do have the presence of sleep apnea.

An example of this would be in the case where your mother or father have the signs of sleep apnea, but they do not have Multiple Sclerosis along with the sleep apnea.

In my case, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 13 years ago, but I was only recently diagnosed with a mild case of sleep apnea.

I didn't think that I had it, but both of my brothers, who do not have Multiple Sclerosis, were diagnosed with sleep apnea a few years ago and it appears that my mother may also have had sleep apnea for years and has gone undiagnosed with it.

Although no one else in my family has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, it appears that sleep apnea runs in my family.

It used to be just 10 to 20 years ago that sleep apnea was not tested for on a regular basis, but more and more people are being tested and diagnosed with sleep apnea in larger numbers, since more sleep study centers are popping up in more areas around the USA.

If you have MS sleep apnea testing can be a very good idea, since this may help your body to recover better from many of the effects of Multiple Sclerosis on your body.

It has been found by MS research that our nervous systems produce many more natural stem cells when we rest while we sleep at night.

The natural stem cells are the repair cells for our nervous systems.

When we get adequate restful sleep at night, this is when our bodies do a lot more of the repair work for our nervous system and other parts of our bodies.

If we go for prolonged periods of time without adequate sleep, this not only weakens our immune systems, but this also prevents our bodies from recovering and repairing themselves at night, which can also prevent our bodies from recovering and repairing after each of the MS attacks on our bodies.

When we get adequate rest at night, this helps our bodies to do a better job at recovering and repairing the damage to our bodies after each MS attack.