Sleep Apnea and CPAPs: Not Just for Overweight People (ContributorNetwork)

Studies done on lab mice revealed a link between sleep apnea and the spread of cancer. There's a persistent and dangerous myth circulating that only fat people have Obstructive Sleep Apnea. OSA is a congenital, structural problem in which breathing stops during sleep.

This rumor is a convenient, but illogical fallacy. Wouldn't it be nice to think that sleep apnea would disappear if only sufferers lost a little weight and exercised more? Alas, like all convenient delusions, it's what people tell themselves when they don't want to face facts. It's also dangerous to pooh-pooh OSA. Sleep apnea kills people.

Sleep apnea (from the Greek meaning "without breath") is caused when nasal passages collapse like drinking straws when the air is sucked out of them. When that happens, the body must manually restart breathing. It happens with a loud snort or gasp associated with sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is primarily a hereditary problem. I have sleep apnea. My mother I have always snored heavily. My mother snores heavily as did both of my grandparents. They very likely would test positive for sleep apnea if they had a sleep study done. No one in our family was obese or overweight.

Even as a baby, my family says that I snored and was restless. I have also walked and talked in my sleep and had vivid dreams. I have done this all my life. Up until age 12, I would gently bang my head against my pillow to fall asleep. One of my sons did this as a child too. It was unnerving for anyone who has no experience with it. For Jake and I, it was how we got to sleep. I can't speak definitively, but I believe that we did this in response to sleep apnea.

For people with extreme sleep apnea, the reverse can be true. Having sleep apnea can cause weight gain. How? Sleep apnea is debilitating. During one night, I have several hundred apneas. All those wake-sleep jags are exhausting. A normal person spends 40 percent of their sleep in deep, delta sleep. This is the most restful sleep. My sleep showed that only 1 percent to 2 percent of my sleep was delta sleep.

I suffered from persistent stress-induced depression. I began taking Paxil for to combat anxiety. I fell asleep all the time: talking to people, driving, everywhere. I couldn't go more than about two hours without falling asleep, no matter how long I spent in bed at night. I had no energy. I was in constant muscle and back pain. I got sick very easily.

All my life, I weighed between 110-135 pounds all of my life. A lifetime of not resting and constant pain coupled with the SSRI medication made me put on weight. Dieting was no problem, but exercise left me exhausted. After a walk downtown I would fall asleep as soon as I got home.

Having the sleep study and starting the CPAP (Continuous Positive Air Pressure) breathing machine has revolutionized my life. I've quit the Paxil. I can sleep five or six hours and feel refreshed. I don't need daily naps. I don't fall asleep driving. My energy level is up. I'm losing weight. I'm not depressed anymore. The back pain is more manageable.

I've heard people say that sleep studies will always show that a person has sleep apnea so that they can start people on CPAPs. A CPAP isn't great fun to wear. It's cumbersome. The straps make my eczema flare up. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. Despite having a plastic mask covering my face, air blowing at me and a hose wrapped around my neck, I sleep like a log. If I can sleep that well with all those inconveniences, the CPAP must be doing something right. It's drug-free, low maintenance, and relatively painless. I'm not seeing the problem.

Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben writes from 22 years parenting four children and 25 years teaching K-8, special needs, adult education and home-school. Marilisa has written extensively about parenting and health for the Yahoo! Contributor Network.

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Weight Loss May Help Sleep Apnea Symptoms (HealthDay)

MONDAY, June 6 (HealthDay News) -- Many people who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea could eliminate the condition by losing a significant amount of weight, a new study suggests.

Without realizing it, people with sleep apnea wake up multiple times throughout the night as they struggle to breathe. The condition can cause severe daytime tiredness and other symptoms. In many cases, patients are treated with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), a treatment that uses a machine to keep their airways open during sleep.

According to Dr. Virend Somers, a professor of medicine and cardiovascular diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., there seems to be a connection between sleep apnea and extra pounds. But exactly how they're related is not exactly clear, he said. "Although the majority of patients are obese, not everyone with sleep apnea is obese," said Somers, who was not involved with the new study.

Physicians do know that "as you gain weight, sleep apnea gets worse, and as you lose, it improves," Somers noted. Obesity may affect the airway's ability to stay open during sleep, or extra fat cells could affect the brain's control of the airway, he suggested.

In the new study, published online June 1 in BMJ, researchers led by Kari Johansson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm tracked 63 male sleep apnea patients, aged 30 to 65, who were overweight. Of those, 58 completed a version of the Cambridge Weight Plan, which started with a very low-calorie diet for nine weeks, followed by a year-long program of weight-maintenance counseling. The Cambridge Weight Plan provided partial funding for the study.

After a year, about half of the patients who lost weight and kept it off no longer needed a CPAP machine to keep their airways open during sleep, and sleep apnea went away in 10 percent of them.

Somers noted that it's unlikely that the specific diet approach itself was important. "I'm not aware of any interaction between what you eat and sleep apnea," he said. Instead, it's likely that simply losing weight did the trick, he explained.

More information

For more about sleep apnea, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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