A study suggests that sleep apnea could make you forget some of your activities you did during the day.
Sleep apnea is a type of sleep disorder characterised by pauses in breathing or instances of shallow or infrequent breathing during sleep.
Everydayhealth.com reports that a small study conducted by study leader Dr. Andrew Varga, a clinical instructor of medicine in the division of pulmonary at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City revealed that tests on 18 people with severe sleep apnea showed that this ability called spatial memory was impaired when sleep apnea disrupted rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, even when other stages of sleep weren’t affected.
“We’ve shown for the first time that sleep apnea, an increasingly common medical condition, might negatively impact formation of certain memories, even when the apnea is limited to REM sleep”
“Our findings suggest memory loss might be an additional symptom for clinicians to screen for in their patients with sleep apnea,” he said.
People with sleep apnea experience periods of disrupted breathing during the night.
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