Risks of sleep apnea - stroke, heart attack, pneumonia, dementia.

This article discusses the risks associated with untreated sleep apnea. My only comment for this article  is that "Sleep hygiene" does NOT treat sleep apnea. - JR

Sleep Apnea: The Real Risks Involved

Subscribe FreeBy Mike Tuttle · March 27, 2014 

"18 million Americans suffer from it. It can lead to both physical and psychological problems. Perhaps you, as many do, have it and aren’t even aware of it.

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that is characterized by snoring and pauses in breathing at night, waking the person momentarily before they fall back asleep. This disruption of sleep can occur several times a night, 5 to 30 times or more in just one hour. A person, both adults and children alike, can suffer from this disorder for years, even decades, before realizing it.

Studies have shown that sleep apnea can lead to problems like irritability, daytime fatigue, depression, hypertension, heart attack, and stroke, but recent studies have shown that the risks are actually more serious than, well, a heart attack. And while obesity can lead to this disorder, the disorder itself can lead to obesity.

The authors of a review posted in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal wrote, “Metabolic health … is largely dependent on behavioral factors such as dietary habits and physical activity. In the past few years, sleep loss as a disorder characterizing the 24-hour lifestyle of modern societies has increasingly been shown to represent an additional behavioral factor adversely affecting metabolic health.”

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“Our findings show that sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for incident pneumonia,” theysaid. “Our results also demonstrated an exposure-response relation in patients with more severe sleep apnea may have a higher risk of pneumonia than patients with sleep apnea of milder severity.”

Heart disease, dementia, diabetes … the negative effects continue to mount up. However, along with the worrisome research comes some hope.

Continuous positive airway pressure devices, or CPAP machines, are currently the most common treatment out there. They consist of a plastic facial mask, which the patient wears at night, connected by a flexible tube to a small bedside machine. Using air pressure, it keeps the patient’s airways open during sleep.

“We know that obstructive sleep apnea is a potential cause of high blood pressure, and we know that CPAP use is associated with reductions in blood pressure in people with hypertension,” sayssleep specialist Vishesh K. Kapur, MD. “And now there is reasonable evidence that this treatment can prevent high blood pressure in patients who don’t already have it.”

Modern CPAP machines also come with a built-in humidifier to help prevent dryness in the throat/nasal passages."

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Electronic media affects children's sleeping patterns

Research shows that children's sleeping patterns can be negatively affected due to the amount of time a child spends with electronic media.

Children's sleep disruption is worse with increased time spent watching TV or playing on the computer, finds research in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health. The greater the e-media use was at the start of the study, the shorter the sleep duration and the later the bedtime was eighteen months later. The academics suggest that where children are struggling to sleep, or are tired, their media habits should be taken into consideration.

The amount of sleep children get has a direct bearing on their performance in school and their mental and physical health. Snap shot studies suggest that the more kids use electronic media the less sleep they get, and that their sleep is more likely to be disturbed. But how much does watching TV or playing on the computer affect sleep patterns as children grow up?

To answer this question researchers from Folkhälsan Research Center, Finland, compared computer use and TV viewing with sleep patterns in 10-11 year olds and then reassessed them eighteen months later. Children with a TV or computer in their bedroom, compared with the frequency of usage, demonstrated a greater delay when going to bed on school days and the weekend which resulted in less sleep. However girls may be catching up at the weekends as they tended to sleep in more as they got older.

When the researchers looked at boys and girls separately they found that there were other gender differences -- boys with a computer or TV in their bedroom went to bed later than the girls and had a larger increase in bed time.

Teija Nuutinen, who led this study commented, "Children need extra sleep as they go through puberty but our study finds that TV and computer use affect the sleep of children. This is especially true during the week and may be impacting their school work as well as their development. Media viewing habits should be considered for kids who are tired and struggling to concentrate, or who have behaviour problems caused by lack of sleep."

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