Sleep and Sleep Apnea

I have talked about my sleep issues before (In The Beginning - Sleep Apnea) and I wanted to give a follow up.  Sleep Apnea (SA) is a major disorder affecting tens of thousands in the US alone, with the potential to kill in more ways than one.  What is the major cause of this epidemic?  Well guess what, obesity.  Perhaps this is why you see just about every person on the Biggest Loser using a C-PAP machine at night... There are tons of studies and most can be found through this resource sleepapnea.org - Research but one that really struck home with me was Cardiovascular consequences of obese and nonobese obstructive sleep apnea.  Essentially the risk of Cardiovascular Consequences (i.e. heart attack) in increased greatly with the addition of SA. 

 

Now there is definitely a corollary between being obese and having SA but not always.  What they do know is an obese person is extremely more likely to have SA than an average weight person.  Also some research shows that SA can cause additional weight gain, just like not getting enough sleep in general can do, the question now is what comes first?  The weight or the SA?  Here's a good one talking about just that: Abdominal fat and sleep apnea: the chicken or the egg?

 

On a side note we actually knew someone who died as a result of SA without ever being diagnosed or treated... Very sad and he was only in his late 30's and had young children.  His wife woke up next to a dead husband...

Now that I have the preliminaries out of the way and you realise how serious this can be I want to give a status update on myself.  At around the 45 lbs mark I tried an experiment, I went a few nights without my C-PAP to see how I slept and behold the Lord said it was AWESOME.  I hadn't had a sound nights sleep like that in years. While the C-PAP will get me through a night it was always annoying and caused me to wake up several times a night, but I always felt better the next day.  Now, I haven't used my machine is a couple of months and I am going strong.  Once I hit my 100 goal I am going to have my sleep study re-done just to make sure I am okay, but I can tell you from the way I feel, I have one more monkey off my back.

 

PLEASE, PLEASE if you think you or someone you love may have this disorder take a quick online test to see how you rank, Do you think you have sleep apnea? or talk to your doctor (do BOTH!).  I don't want to see others suffer like I did...