ResApp Health SleepCheck app can determine your sleep apnoea risk
It’s a health condition that affects hundreds of thousands of Aussies, but a new app that works while you sleep can help diagnose this problem.
A new Australian app could potentially save your life by evaluating your risk of complications from sleep apnoea, a common disorder that affects around 5 per cent of all Australians, particularly men.
Sleep apnoea happens when the walls of your throat close while you sleep. This stops you from breathing, and after about 10 seconds to a minute your brain will usually wake you up to prevent you from dying.
Most sufferers immediately fall back to sleep – and might not even know it’s happened.
But in severe cases of sleep apnoea this can happen up to 30 times an hour, breaking up sleep and leading to other annoyances like fatigue, irritability and even impotence.
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People with sleep apnoea are also at an increased risk of car crashes (due to the aforementioned fatigue), as well as high blood pressure that can increase the chance of heart attack or stroke.
Around one in four men over the age of 30 have some degree of sleep apnoea, and men are three times more likely to suffer than women.
Obesity is a leading contributor, as are other lifestyle factors like alcohol consumption, but some causes are less easy to combat such as thyroid issues and even the shape of your face.
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A Deloitte analysis in 2018 commissioned by charity the Sleep Health Foundation found obstructive sleep apnoea cost Australia $21.2 billion a year.
In developing the new app, ResApp Health CEO Tony Keating said: “Many Australians snore, but few know that snoring is a leading indicator of a more serious condition, such as sleep apnoea.”
If you sleep with a partner they’ll usually be able to let you know if you suffer sleep apnoea (and don’t worry, they will).
But if you sleep alone you might have no way of knowing.
The new app aims to solve that problem by listening to you sleep and then using the power of your smartphone to analyse your pattern and determine your risk.
The SleepCheck app is available on the Apple App Store (currently it’s not available on Android) for $7.99.
Using it is easy enough: you don’t need to create an account or sign up for anything, just enter a few bits of info like your age, gender and neck measurements (to help the algorithm determine your risk, so the more accurate the measure the better).
The app also promises that any recordings never leave your device and are deleted after being analysed.
From there you just sit your phone on your bedside table before you go to sleep and turn off the recording when you wake up.
The app then analyses the recording, which takes less than 10 seconds, and let’s you know how at-risk you are, and whether you should go and consult a doctor.
SleepCheck currently boasts a 4.8 star rating out of 5, with only two out of the 71 reviews being negative.
One was because the user’s wife had already told them they were suffering from sleep apnoea, though other men who also refused to listen to their wives to begin with were more complimentary.
“My wife has been on me for years about my sleeping and I just brushed it off,” one five star review begins.
“Well she downloaded this app to show me the issue. Sceptical but I set it up and slept in the spare room for the night. Woke up to read that I was a high risk and it explained what happens to me whilst asleep and that I should see a doctor. I am going to go to my GP this weekend just to make sure all is OK.”
“As I suspected that I had sleep apnoea, I tried using a couple of freebie apps which were useful in determining hours slept and snoring issues but it is SleepCheck that is actually programmed to detect sleep apnoea,” another positive reviewer said.
ResApp Health have been certified for the “respiratory sound analysis software” by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
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