Millions of people in Canada have sleep apnea. The problem is not all of them realize it

Krista Biddiscombe never thought she lived with sleep apnea. 

Biddiscombe, 58, spent more than a decade unable to sleep, consulting with family doctors across two provinces who misdiagnosed her symptoms as perimenopause. Working in a high-stress policy role for the federal government, she was prescribed sleeping pills and muscle relaxants that improved her sleep, but they didn't cure her condition.

Finally, in 2023, after Biddiscombe relocated to Alberta, she consulted with a doctor who suggested that she might have sleep apnea. 

She now uses a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device to sleep, and says sleep is "a whole other world."

"When I fall asleep, I stay asleep," she said. 

While there are millions of Canadians with the same condition, disrupting sleep and increasing the risk of other health problems, many don't know it, doctors say. Sleep apnea is treatable, but the cost and access can vary a lot across Canada.

There are two main kinds of sleep apnea: obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea.

Obstructive sleep apnea is the most common. People living with the condition experience a collapse of their upper airway during sleep, which leads to "recurrent interruptions in breathing," according Dr. Sachin Pendharkar, a sleep and respiratory physician-scientist.

He described it as a "mechanical problem."

"What is normally a nice open airway, like a pipe that we can breathe through, starts to narrow progressively as those muscles relax," Pendharkar told The Dose host Dr. Brian Goldman. 

Central sleep apnea, on the other hand, is a "signal problem," in which the brain fails to accurately send breathing signals while people are asleep, Pendharkar said.

Sleep apnea tends to affect men more than women, but roughly 5.4 million Canadians living with the condition. According to Pendharkar, who is also medical director of the Foothills Medical Centre Sleep Centre in Calgary, an additional 80 per cent of people living with sleep apnea are undiagnosed

People living with sleep apnea often report normal levels of sleep and are usually able to stay asleep throughout the night. 

But they wake up feeling as though they haven't rested at all.