When Pounds Go, Sleep Apnea May Improve
MONDAY, Sept. 28 (HealthDay News) -- People with sleep apnea who are also obese may triple the chances of eliminating their sleep problems by losing weight, a new study suggests.
Losing about 10 percent of their body weight was enough to bring on total or near-total remission, said Gary Foster, head of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University in Philadelphia, and lead author of the study.
"It's been clear that obesity increases the risk of sleep apnea but less clear that if obese people or people with type 2 diabetes lost weight, it would result in significant improvements in their sleep apnea -- and it did," said Foster.
People who are overweight or obese are much more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which a person's breathing stops or becomes very shallow, sometimes several hundred times a night and sometimes for as long as a minute, according to the American Sleep Apnea Association.
"The soft palate in the back of mouth falls down and blocks the airway," said Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of bariatric surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
Add A New Comment
Add A New Comment1 Comments
This article only tells half the story and may not help those who are NOT obese but have undiagnosed apnea. Obesity is not the only precursor to apnea - the condition may also be "inherited". For these people, no amount of weight loss, proper diet and exercise will totally alleviate the condition. Doctors often do not diagnose apnea in non-obese patients who suffer from chronic fatigue or constant sleepiness, due to the common belief that apnea and obesity go hand in hand. What is not widely known is that for these patients low HDL levels may be prime indicators of the presence of apnea. If their apnea is not treated they run the risk of hardened arteries and the associated health problems.
For obese patients whose HDL levels are normal and who have not "inherited" apnea, weight loss does seem to reduce if not eliminate apnea. Hopefully the article will stimulate weight loss among these folks. As for the rest of us (I am a non-obese apnea sufferer) we can only hope that physicians begin to recognize the symptoms they have long missed.