If just the thought of losing your breath as you sleep is frightening, you should see what it looks like when it really happens.

This video of a man with sleep apnea was posted on the Web site of the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.

In the video, the man stops breathing for 40 seconds in his sleep. But what’s even more frightening is what you don’t see: He also operates heavy machinery for a living— and his apnea has left him tired at work.

This can’t end well.

And this video shows just one apnea incident — but patients who have the condition can stop breathing dozens and even hundreds of times each night, depriving the heart and brain of essential oxygen.

One new study finds women who battle the condition have a 350 percent higher risk of dying of heart disease — and other studies have found similar risks for men. Along with heart problems, apnea has been linked to dementia, stroke, diabetes and more — with another new study showing how apnea can even boost your risk of sudden deafness by nearly 50 percent.

In the short term, some apnea patients use continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP machines — uncomfortable oxygen masks that come with risks of their own, and that’s if you can even manage to keep them on all night.

In one study, only two out of 35 patients could tolerate them long enough to see a benefit.

But even if you can handle wearing an oxygen mask all night, it’s not a permanent solution.

In many cases, apnea is caused by obesity — so if you’re overweight and your spouse has seen you lose your breath in the night, drop those extra pounds ASAP and chances are you won’t need CPAP.

And if you’ve gotten too big over the years and find yourself not as rested in the morning as you used to be, you might have the condition, too. Other warning signs to watch for: headaches, waking up with a dry mouth or sore throat, frequent nighttime bathroom trips and mood changes.

A night in a sleep clinic can help you figure it out — but in the meantime, lose the weight anyway. Even if it’s not causing sleep apnea — yet — it’s not doing you any favors.

Ever watch someone with sleep apnea? It’s one of the most frightening — and unforgettable — things you’ll ever see.

One minute, the sleeper is snoring away. The next, nothing.

At first, you might be thankful for the quiet — until you realize the reason for that sudden silence: they’re not breathing.

Someone with apnea can go through dozens of breathless bouts per night and never even realize it — but in this case, what you don’t know can not only hurt you… it can kill you, too.

Apnea has been linked to everything from sexual dysfunction and metabolic syndrome to diabetes and heart disease — but now, researchers have confirmed that it’s not too late for people already fighting that nightly battle.

The standard mainstream treatment for apnea is an oxygen mask called CPAP, for continuous positive airway pressure. In a new study, 86 patients with moderate to severe apnea were assigned to either the real CPAP mask or a sham treatment.

After three months, the volunteers took a one-month break… then switched places for another three months.

When they got the real CPAP, the volunteers saw drops in blood pressure and cholesterol levels — including an average dip of nearly 20 points in dangerous triglycerides — as well as better control of their blood sugar levels.

More importantly, they also lost weight — and while most of the patients were battling metabolic syndrome at the start of the study, 13 percent no longer had the condition after the three months of CPAP, according to the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

But does all the credit go to that mask?

The researchers say they’re not sure — and I’m not either, because while CPAP can help get you through the night, the best way to beat apnea isn’t with oxygen — it’s with lifestyle changes.

And it starts with losing some weight — like the patients in this study managed to do. Studies have shown that even modest weight loss can end the apnea as well as slash your risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Lose that weight yourself, and you’ll not only look and feel better than you have in years — you’ll sleep better, too.

Sit, speak, and play dead — dogs can learn plenty of tricks, if you’re willing to take a little time to teach them.

But the best trick of all comes naturally: Pets can chase away asthma and allergies the way a guard dog can scare off burglars — and it doesn’t take a loud bark or a lot of teeth.

In fact, even a lazy old cat has this power — because kids born to mothers who had pets during pregnancy have lower levels of the IgE antibodies linked to allergies and asthma.

Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit tested those antibody levels in 1,187 babies at birth, six months, and two years, and found that the kids who had prenatal pet exposure had up to 33 percent fewer than children from petless homes.

The biggest benefit went to children of European, Asian, or Middle Eastern descent, who got the full 33 percent drop.

For black children, the difference was only 10 percent — but still enough to put them at least a baby step ahead of asthma and allergies, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Babies born vaginally to women with pets also got a bigger boost, with IgE levels 16 percent lower than C-section infants.

In other words, pets don’t always cause allergies and asthma — and they might even prevent them.

But while that means Spot can “stay” in homes with a new baby, there is one threat even the roughest, toughest Rottweiler can’t chase away: mold.

Having this stuff around the house could lead to a childhood of breathing misery.

Researchers examined data on 176 children who were believed to be at high risk for asthma because of a family history of the disease. They also used a test called the environmental relative moldiness index, which measures levels of 36 different types of mold to create an overall “mold burden.”

And that mold brings some burden. Kids from homes with the highest mold burdens were three times more likely to come down with asthma during the seven-year study period than kids with little mold exposure.

The researchers wrote in Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology that parents of kids at risk for asthma should make sure they find and fix water damage and get rid of all the mold — which is pretty good advice for everyone else, too.

Sleep apnea doesn’t need any help scaring anyone: It could be killing you a little bit every single night, and you might not even know you have the condition.

But now, researchers say that in addition to leaving you gasping for air in the night, sleep apnea could also be responsible for serious blood vessel abnormalities — problems that can actually steal blood right from your heart.

The researchers looked at three groups of 36 people: one with moderate to severe sleep apnea with no hypertension, one with hypertension but no apnea, and one set of patients with neither.

They found that both the hypertension patients and the sleep apnea patients had the kinds of blood vessel abnormalities that can interfere with the flow of blood to the heart.

The good news here is that the problem improved among the apnea patients after 26 weeks of sleeping with a continuous
positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine.

The bad news is that the apnea patients in the study were all otherwise healthy — unlike the typical apnea patient, who is usually fighting obesity.

That’s not to say a CPAP device won’t help them — but whether you’re healthy or obese, it’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem. And sleep apnea brings some pretty serious long-term problems: a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, and more.

There’s even plenty of evidence that sleep apnea will dramatically boost your risk of an early death, including a study that found a 40-year-old with the condition has the same death risk as a 57-year-old without it.

It’s like aging 17 years overnight!

One of the biggest problems with apnea is the diagnosis — because, as I mentioned earlier, most people who have the condition don’t even know it. Apnea is known for causing patients to stop breathing in the night, but in most cases, people sleep right through those episodes.

Some of the warning signs include waking up tired even after a full night of sleep, heavy snoring, anxiety, and headaches (especially in the morning).

If you suspect you might have the condition — or if your spouse has witnessed you gasping for air in the night — talk to your doctor about arranging a night in a sleep clinic.

But before you sign up for any treatments, gimmicks, surgery or anything else, try the simplest, safest long-term solution of all: Lose some weight.

Read all about the impact of even modest weight loss on apnea right here.