Wellness Articles
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Date:May 26, 2014
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This week’s Healthy Content is an excerptfrom Apple, Alberta Health Services’ health and wellness magazine. Credit to Apple magazine is appreciated. For more information on Apple please visit:
Extra weight can lead to being extra tired
Most people knowthat carrying extra weight can lead to diabetes or aching joints. Fewer know it can also lead to sleep apnea, a disorder in which you stop breathing up to hundreds of times every night while sleeping.
“When you hear about obesity, people talk about diabetes and hypertension and joints and what it’s doing to your knees and your hips, but nobody ever says ‘sleep apnea,’” says John Remmers. He’s one of the world’s leading researchers in sleep apnea and was the first to show it’s caused by an anatomical narrowing of the pharynx. His Remmers Sleep Recorder is the first portable tool for diagnosing the condition.
“The life-threatening disease that these people are subject to is not problems with their hips, not diabetes—it’s sleep apnea,” he says. Almost all Canadian adults who have obstructive sleep apnea—nearly 90 per cent—are overweight or obese.
An Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions researcher, a professor at the University of Calgary and the chief medical officer of Zephyr Sleep Technologies, Remmers has worked in Alberta for decades.
MyHealthAlberta.com lists the main symptoms of sleep apnea in adults as not feeling rested after a night’s sleep, feeling sleepy during the day and waking up with a headache.
Your bedmate may notice that when you sleep you stop breathing; snore often and loudly; gasp and choke; and toss and turn.
Sleep apnea can lead to many problems linked to poor sleep, including unhealthy eating habits the next day because the body craves sugar, which can lead to more weight gain.
“Sleep apnea can also cause depression. If you’re depressed, you might eat more and lack energy, so you’re not going to be as active or move around as much,” he says.
While it’s a serious condition and needs to be addressed, treating sleep apnea doesn’t necessarily help people lose weight. “It doesn’t work that way,” says Remmers. “Most of the time they don’t lose weight.”
Instead, he suggests treating the two health conditions separately, beginning with the sleep apnea. “You get people feeling good, improving their quality of life, while keeping their oxygen normal during sleep. Always start there and then later start to talk about weight loss.”
— reprinted from Apple magazine