Sleep apnea: "It's like sticking a cork down your throat."

Sleep apnea is the not-so-silent condition that affects as many as one in four Canadians.

It's a double-barreled diagnosis that wreaks havoc with the sleep of sufferers and their long-suffering bed partners.

But it goes far beyond disrupted sleep - it's a danger to your overall health.

"We know that it increases the risk of high blood pressure. It increases the risk of having a stroke and it increases the risk of having heart failure." says Dr. Doug Bradley, a sleep expert at Sleep Research Laboratories at Toronto General Hospital.

People with with sleep apnea have narrow throats. When they fall asleep, their muscles relax and their throat closes.

It's like sticking a cork down your throat," Bradley tells Dr. Brian Goldman on White Coat, Black Art. "You start to asphyxiate… You wake up with a loud snore, and that's what fragments and ruins your sleep.

It can be difficult diagnose, especially if you live alone. "Unless you have a bed partner that says you're snoring and driving them crazy, you don't know you have it,' Bradley says.

There's also another reason getting diagnosed is difficult.

"Eighty-five per cent of people who have sleep apnea are not diagnosed. They do not have access to a sleep laboratory because they are few and far between. They're expensive. And the physicians trained in sleep medicine are quite rare." he says.

But Bradley and his colleagues may have a way around that issue.

They've invented a device called BresoDX, which enables people to bypass sleep labs and get diagnosed in their own bedroom.

"It's very simple to use." Bradley says of the device which measures the subject's breathing.

While he believes BresoDX is as effective as going to a sleep lab for diagnosis, he cautions that it can't diagnose other sleep-related disorders such as narcolepsy or restless-leg syndrome.