I stop breathing

Health reporter Helena Vesty was granted special access to see a procedure just being brought to the UK - as Manchester hospitals are among the first in the country to carry out the operation that could change thousands cf lives

- Helena Vesty

YING on an operating table, Dr Waseem Gill's heartbeat soundtracks a clean, white room with a clinical metronome.

Two incisions are made into his neck and chest, and two surgeons begin searching through cords and strands, like vines in a thick jungle.

Inside Dr Gill's body, a tiny box is being wired into the nerves. It might seem drastic, but the alternative can kill.

A month later, Dr Gill’s anaesthesia has long worn off, and he sits in a different room of Trafford General Hospital.

"For the first time in your life, your tongue is going to move without you telling it to,’ an expert in the technology tells him.

At the push of a button, Dr Gill’s tongue does in fact shoot forward, sticking out just beyond his lips. And his natural instincts had nothing to do with it.

Dr Gill suffers with sleep apnoea - one of the world’s most prevalent, and destructive, sleep disorders.

Sleep apnoea stops sufferers from breathing as their tongue or soft palate relaxes, narrowing or even blocking their airway. It causes symptoms all-too-familiar to many of us - snoring, waking up a lot in the night, waking with a dry mouth or headache, suddenly jerking in your sleep.

And there’s plenty of symptoms that affect waking life - getting up feeling as unrefreshed as when you went to bed, sleepiness in the daytime, irritability, and increased likelihood of suffering accidents. It can increase the long-term risk of a stroke and heart disease.

People with OSA are advised not to drive in case they crash as a result of being sleep-deprived, and are also more likely to have an accident while operating equipment.

Yet, there is relatively little research about the true scale of the problem.

One study published in the British Medical Journal says the most common form of the condition, called obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), affects an estimated 1.5 million adults - but 85 per cent of those are undiagnosed, and go untreated.