For years, Frank Vollor struggled to get a good night’s sleep.

He was constantly waking up in the middle of the night. During the day, he struggled to stay awake, even while driving.

In 2008, he found the cause. Vollor has sleep apnea, a medical condition where a person either briefly stops breathing or fails to take full breaths while asleep. According to the American Association for Respiratory Care, sleep apnea affects about 18 million Americans. Another estimated 10 million Americans have the condition but have never been diagnosed, according to the association.

“Sleep apnea is being recognized as a more prevalent disease these days,” said Dr. David Halisnki, a pulmonologist in a speech to the Vicksburg Kiwanis Club Tuesday. He practices at Vicksburg Pulmonary Clinic and Restorative Health Center.

Halinski said symptoms include snoring, daytime sleepiness, feeling washed out at the end of the day, depression, and loss of libido. “Sometimes you may wake up gasping for breath or someone else may see you,” Halinski said.

Risk factors for the condition include snoring, being overweight and having a large neck. About 50 percent of sleep apnea sufferers have high blood pressure, according to the association’s statistics.

While there are several remedies for sleep apnea, including surgical procedures and implants, one of the more common solutions is continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP, machine that enables a person to breathe properly as they sleep by providing a steady stream of air to the body.

What the CPAP does, said David Hosemann of Hometown Medical, is use air pressure to open a person’s airway that has been narrowed by relaxed tissue covering the space. The amount of pressure necessary for the job is determined by doctors and technicians during testing for the condition.

“When most people go into what is called REM sleep, the stage where you get your rest, really, you get real, real relaxed and the (soft) tissue kind of goes flaccid in your upper airway,” he said. “The soft tissue in your airway starts flattening out, and that causes a treble, or snore, because that’s the narrowing of the airway. It’s like taking a hose and squeezing it down. That starts the process of sleep disorder breathing.”

It’s when the body is relaxed that the sleep order problems can start, like periods where someone doesn’t breathe for about 10 seconds, or shallow breathing, where the body doesn’t take a normal deep breath as it would if someone was awake.

“This can go on for hours,” Hosemann said. “It’s a vicious cycle, and the byproducts of having that airway occluded (blocked) and not fully opened renders you tired in the morning.” Another critical problem, he added is the effect the condition can have on the cardiovascular system.

That was the condition Vollor faced before he was put on a CPAP machine.

“I was waking up all night long, I mean constantly,” he said. “My body wasn’t getting air, and it was waking me up to breathe. I’d wake up in the morning, I’d be so tired. Like I hadn’t slept; like I’d run a race all night and hadn’t rested.

“During the day, it got worse, because when you don’t get your oxygen at night, even if you’re breathing during the day, your body can’t catch up.”

He would come close to falling asleep at the wheel while driving and was “dragging all day long and not sleeping at night. It affected my ability to concentrate and do anything. You’re tired all day long and not getting rest. I snored. My children would complain they could hear me two rooms away snoring.”

Vallor said his doctor recommended in 2008 that he get a CPAP to help him sleep at night.

“But I didn’t because I was hard-headed,” he said. “I finally went and got one in 2012. I wish I had done it in 2008.”

By the time he got the machine, he said, his condition was worse.

When he went in 2012 for a final sleep test to determine the extent of his condition. The test determined what his problem was and the number of apnea events he was having per hour.

Hosemann said the tests also allow doctors and technicians to determine the right amount of pressure necessary to help keep the airway open.

“They (technicians) said I was having an event 58 to 59 times an hour, so I wasn’t sleeping 60 minutes before I was waking up from some sort of shock. Not that I became completely alert, but there my body was struggling,” Vollor said. “I wasn’t getting any real sleep.”

Vollor said his main objection to the CPAP was wearing a mask, adding that was the reason he kept delaying getting a machine.

Hosemann, a CPAP user, said concerns about using a CPAP are discussed with a patient when they come in to get the machine, including an interview to get the patient’s thoughts on the mask and to answer questions.

“The ones who are hardest to start therapy are the ones who listen to other relatives friends dictating the terms of what they need and how its going to help them,” he said. “What they need to do is come in with an open mind and open heart and take instructions from specialists. The interview is important so they can overcome their fears, objections and what someone else has told them that may not have anything to do with them.

“You want to be successful out of the gate. If you don’t get the proper instruction and help the first week, it gets weaker and weaker whether the patient will be complaint down the road.”

When Vollor decided to get his machine, “I put it on and laid down, and it felt so good to get oxygen. I said, ‘Boy howdy! What have I been missing!’ It felt wonderful, because I didn’t realize how much I had not been breathing.” He said he does not have high blood pressure, but has a heart condition “and it helps that.”

CPAPs, he said, are a godsend to those who need them.

“In the 34, 35 years I’ve been in this business, the two biggest things that have improved health, in my opinion was the glucose monitor that helped diabetic patients measure their blood sugar at home, and the CPAP,” Hosemann said. He said technology allows his to keep track of CPAP machine use and condition, adding insurance companies, which pay for all or part of the machine’s cost, requiring companies like his to monitor the machines to ensure they are being used.

“If it is not being used, the patient will have to return it,” he said.

“It’s better with the machine,” Vollor said. “Energy all day long. I feel better when I wake up in the morning; it’s wonderful. I take it with me wherever I go. I won’t travel without it. Sometimes, I use it to take a nap. It makes me feel better.”