is "Sleep Apnea" a dirty word?

Why in the reports about Reggie White's death is his likely cause of death reported as "a respiratory illness that affects his sleep" Why can't they just report it as "Sleep Apnea"?

Is our illness such a strange and unknown thing that the newscasters can't even use the name?

If this is the case there needs to be a lot of work done to make people aware of what it is and what it's called. Seems to be an obvious thing but I guess not.

I suspect that reporters don't think most people know what sleep apnea is.

In today's news, a disease called sarcoidosis (which most often affects the lungs) is being mentioned in connection with Reggie White's death. Sounds like perhaps he had both - sleep apnea and sarcoidosis.

ABC news report Dec 27

Goodness, from my brief search on the term Sarcoidosis it seems a rather confusing condition, but there seems agreement on there being no known cause. I'd never heard of such a thing. Bet everyone now asks their doctors, huh?

Judging from other posts to the forum, maybe Reggie White's death and the buzz on sleep apnea, might have created an increased interest in what it's all about. Also, checking just now, it seemed like an unusually large number of guests browsing our site. Coincidence?

Maybe we should flood the network websites with questions about sleep apnea, just to see what they do. Ha!

Linda

I have a friend who, upon having an ultrasound, learned that he had a myriad of spots on his spleen. His doctor wanted to perform an immediate splenectomy, and my friend started getting his affairs in order.

On a hunch, he flew down to a high-end medical clinic in the US, and after having an MRI, was told that he had sarcoidosis - a treatable condition.

Rob

Unless in a very advanced stage, sarcoidosis is a very non-threatening and treatable disease. Sixty percent of cases are resovled without treatment. Ironicaly the effects of advanced sarcoidosis on the heart are similar to the effects untreated sleep apnea on the heart depriving it of oxygen. This can cause the heart to go into arythmia and can result in cardiac arrest. All it takes is one bad apnea to set things in motion.

An occurence like this to a young well know person such as Reggie White serves as a wake-up call to all of us to never go without our treatment as good or bad of inconvienent it may seem at the time. The sleep/nap you decide to go without may be your last.

I asked my DME once why if it's more common than you think that nobody talks about apnea. And if you do tell anyone about it, they act really scared.

She told me that sometimes it get treats like a dirty little secret. It's only when you actually talk about it do you find out just how many have it and how uninformed others are.

Lynne

Well now that someone "famous" has died of sleep apnea perhaps it will get some attention. Of course that will drive up the price of sleep studies and equipment ( supply and demand) or will the price of equipment go down due to the economy of scale. Oh well lets just wait and see how they spin it. In the mean time "hose up" fellow hoseheads.

Although I'm not famous (yet), I also have both sleep apnea and sarcoidosis. Fortunately, my sarcoidosis doesn't seem to be getting worse and hasn't affected my lung function. I could see that a combination of symptomatic sarcoid and sleep apnea could result in extra-low O2 saturation...

For those who don't know, sarcoidosis usually manifests itself as spots on the lungs and/or other organs. These spots (as seen on Xrays, CT, or other imaging) are "necrotic granulomas" that may be an immune system over-reaction, although no real cause has been identified. Although it seems to be most often seen in the lungs and lymph nodes, it can also affect the heart, eyes, and other organs as well as showing up in the skin (on the shins commonly). The affects range from asymptomatic to fatal. I suspect that there have always been a fairly large number of people living with it without symptoms and it is being detected more due to more widespread use of X ray and other diagnostic imaging.

My abnormality was discovered with a CT scan while chasing another problem. The lungs and lymph nodes looked suspicious and the put me under the knife to remove some lymph nodes from which they made the diagnosis... Since I've never been a smoker or around much in the way of hazardous materials, I figured it probably wasn't cancer, but was afraid it might have been....

My lung function tests haven't shown any reduced capability and subsequent imaging hasn't shown any progression (or regression).

How interesting, Seattle. Thanks. If you have to have it, I hope sarcoidosis continues to not cause you problems. From what you described, it does sound like many people probably have it without ever knowing it.

... and if you have it but it is not causing a problem, then no big deal. For the majority of people, it clears up on its own. For me, it hasn't cleared up, but hasn't seemed to do me any harm either.