An Oprah threat to your health and the health of your children? Have you been misled?

Find out at www.Oprahcide.com or www.DeathByOprah.com

See FTC complaints about Oprah and her diet experts at www.JailForOprah.com

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Breathing Exercises May Relieve Sleep Apnea Symptoms

Weight loss does it for sure, no "may" about it - when the sleep apnea is due to overweight/obesity.

Sleep apnea is a fatso's disease, mostly.
"Exercising muscles in the upper airway may help improve the symptoms of moderate obstructive sleep apnea, a randomized trial showed."
Good luck with those breathing exercises.

If getting them to "exercise" was so easy, they would not have sleep apnea to begin with.

3 comments:

Roger V. said...

Re: "Weight loss does it for sure, no "may" about it. Sleep apnea is a fatso's disease, mostly."

This is just so wrong and disturbing. In the three years since I was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea, I have met dozens of "skinny" adults with obstructive sleep apnea. I have also met dozens of adults who have lost large amounts of weight and still have obstructive sleep apnea.

When I was diagnosed my BMI was 25. In the three years since diagnosis, I have lost weight through better diet and a strenous exercise program. My BMI is now 21 and my sleep apnea is still at the severe level.

Everyone should take the time to get fit. It is even more important to people with sleep apnea because you have something working against your health every time you sleep.

So if you have sleep apnea, get fit and lose weight, but also get good therapy for your sleep apnea.

A few people do report curing their sleep apnea by reducing weight, but they are the exception and you should not count on it.

I sleep with CPAP.

Michael Applebaum, MD, JD, FCLM said...

Hello, Roger V, and welcome to Fitness Watch.

You are correct to point out that my comment that "weight loss does it for sure..." was a touch cavalier.

Thank you.

Weight loss will do it for sure when the sleep apnea is due to overweight/obesity.

I should have qualified my statement more thoroughly.

Sleep apnea is mostly a fat person's disease though not exclusively.

I appreciate your comment and thanks, again.

Roger V. said...

Michael A.,

Thank you for the welcome and the opportunity to comment.

I will make some more comments about sleep apnea but there is a caveat that not enough research has been done on this devasting and highly prevalent condition. So any argument we have here is subject to future research confirmation or rejection. But still a good bit of science has been published in the last five years about sleep apnea and also I am a patient with heavy experience speaking with other patients. This has lead me to some conclusions that I think are reasonable.

You commented, "Weight loss will do it for sure when the sleep apnea is due to overweight/obesity. ..... Sleep apnea is mostly a fat person's disease though not exclusively." Sleep apnea has a strong correlation with obesity. There are also some good hypotheses about obesity being causative of apnea. And then there is research that shows apnea causes weight gain. I personally think it is a vicious circle. That is, we gain a little weight just because we eat too much. The weight causes a mild case of apnea to develop. The apnea causes more weight gain and the additional weight gain causes the apnea to worsen. Quite quickly the vicious circle has produced an obese person with severe obstructive sleep apnea.

There are also some people who just have a narrow airway. This includes plenty of children of all sizes.

In your blog on the drug that treats diabetes via the brain, you comment, "The Catch-22 is that fat people must have little to no brain to regulate since they got themselves fat and diabetic."

There is also research being published recently that shows sleep apnea causes type 2 diabetes. Apnea is destroying the normal sleep architecture and disrupting the normal hormone production. This seems to be causing insulin resistance.

So clearly I would make an argument that obese and diabetic people did not necessarily develop those conditions because they are lazy and overeat. The primary cause may be further back in the chain and that cause is often a narrow airway that predisposes one to obstructive sleep apnea.

For most of my life I accepted that there were groups of people who are lazy and other groups who are high energy. From what I learned in the last three years, I have recharacterized those groups. The first group I now believe has sleep disordered breathing and the second group has a wide open airway during all sleep stages. High energy people is the norm.

Everyone should be regularly screened for sleep disordered breathing!