For Rick Williams, it was bad enough that his wife could no longer sleep in the same room with him because of his snoring. Even worse was the fact he frequently stopped breathing for up to two minutes at a time.
Then, as his oxygen ran out, he would partly wake, take a snort of air and slip back into shallow sleep."I was literally gasping for life," said Williams, a 53-year-old Toronto school teacher.
His troubles did not end when he got out of bed in the morning. His fragmented sleep left him exhausted. He often dozed off in front of his students and he lacked the energy for strenuous activity.
Fearing that he would either suffocate in his sleep or die of a heart attack, Williams turned to one of the new sleep disorder clinics that have been set up at Canadian hospitals in recent years. After a battery of tests, Williams learned he suffered from sleep apnea - a condition in which the throat shuts during sleep, making it impossible to breathe.
Williams' sleeping difficulties were linked to the fact he is overweight. Like other people, he lost muscle tone when he fell asleep, but his weight complicated his breathing. The fat on his neck pressed on his throat, sealing the narrow air passage and only by waking briefly, hundreds of times a night, could he restore the muscle tone to his throat and gulp for air.
Fortunately for Williams and other sufferers of sleep apnea, medical researchers have recently found a way to treat the frightening condition. A small portable pump is used to provide a stream of air to a mask worn over the nose.