OT: Sleep - Gut Connection in practice ....

[SleepWrangler]

Been mostly monitoring this forum for a few years after my initial diagnosis and just got on with CPAP therapy. As always, Pugsy was a great inspiration and help. During this time I've also been working through serious but seemingly un-related health issues. In addition to sleep apnea a major cause of my health problems is leaky gut which invariably leads to a noticeable auto-immune response. BTW, the worst symptoms were coincident with helicobacter pylori found in my blood stream. The ebb and flow of health issues has been occurring for decades but becoming more serious and long lasting as I get older.

Wish I had a better source to describe the sleep-gut connection but here is something from the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michae ... 41314.html

In addition to this forum the following are valuable resources.

The autoimmune protocol:
https://www.thepaleomom.com/start-here/ ... e-protocol

You are what you absorb:
https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/ ... you-absorb

As always, the medical resources in my area were next to useless in helping me come up with a diagnosis and treatment plan. The Sleep-Gut connection was something I had to investigate on my own. Diagnosis and treatment protocols from the medical establishment are weak. Until something fails they essentially do nothing ... then they treat the failure and stop looking. Even the branch of medicine has different names depending on geographic location.

Having followed most of the advice in the links provided my general health has improved to a reasonable degree. I doubt symptoms as severe as I've experienced are common but hopefully this contribution provides a nugget of useful information.

[Janknitz]

Not only that but a lot of people who have sleep apnea suffer from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux) or LPR (laryngeal pharyngeal reflux). It may be when the airway is obstructed and the individual is struggling to breathe, it creates a vacuum effect that pulls stomach contents up into the airway. The airway swells, causing increased degree of apnea.

I think it's a 1-2 punch. A lot of us have gut dysbiosis of one type or another. It might by h-Pylori or SIBO (small intestinal bacteria overgrowth that causes gas that presses up against the sphincters in the GI tract so they don't close), it may be lack of sufficient stomach acid (yes, a lack of acid means the sphincters don't get triggered to close, so what acid there is ends up in the wrong place) which can be caused by insulin resistance disrupting other hormones, among other things. Insulin resistance may be caused by poor sleep, sleep apnea. All interrelated.

Nothing is simple!