Starting today, a new Apple Watch feature to help identify signs of moderate to severe sleep apnoea is available in Australia. Sleep apnoea is a potentially serious condition where breathing stops repeatedly during sleep.\u00a0The condition, which is estimated to impact more than 1\u00a0million Australians, goes undiagnosed in most cases. If left untreated, sleep apnoea can have important consequences on one\u2019s health.1\n<\/p>\n
\nTo detect sleep apnoea, Apple Watch uses the accelerometer to monitor small movements at the wrist that are associated with interruptions in normal respiratory patterns, measured by a new Apple Watch metric called Breathing Disturbances. While some of these disturbances are normal, they are important to track as they can be used to help understand restfulness of sleep and, when occurring frequently over multiple nights, may be associated with sleep apnoea. Users can view their nightly Breathing Disturbances in the Health app on iPhone and iPad, where they are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over a one-month, six-month or one-year period.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cObstructive sleep apnoea is a common and serious sleep disorder, potentially impacting a million Australians. As it often goes undiagnosed, awareness and early detection of sleep apnoea are a welcome and significant step toward healthier sleep and improved lives,\u201d says Dr Moira Junge, Sleep Health Foundation\u2019s CEO. \u201cGood sleep is a pillar of health and wellbeing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nEvery 30 days, breathing disturbance data is analysed and will notify the user if it shows consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnoea so they can speak to their doctor about next steps, including potential diagnosis and treatment. The notification will include the time period when potential sleep apnoea occurred and educational materials on the importance of seeking treatment, along with a PDF providing three months of breathing disturbance data, notification details and additional information to reference during a conversation with a healthcare provider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starting today, a new Apple Watch feature to help identify signs of moderate to severe sleep apnoea is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[64,63,213,105],"class_list":["post-5074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-gadgets","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}