Do you agree with this.

General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
purple
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Do you agree with this.

Post by purple » Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:14 pm

http://news.yahoo.com/sleep-apnea-linke ... 27338.html

As it says researchers are not sure if CPAP can reduce dementia from patients, and the only treatment is weight loss.

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BlackSpinner
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by BlackSpinner » Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:24 pm

purple wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/sleep-apnea-linke ... 27338.html

As it says researchers are not sure if CPAP can reduce dementia from patients, and the only treatment is weight loss.
Someone posted a newer study that indicated that cpap therapy made a difference.
There is no reason why they couldn't have found people using cpap to add to their study. My biggest question is "Why were these people NOT on cpap for the last 5 years?"

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LSAT
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by LSAT » Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:41 pm

It's amazing that all 298 women were still available at age 87.

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Otter
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by Otter » Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:50 pm

purple wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/sleep-apnea-linke ... 27338.html

As it says researchers are not sure if CPAP can reduce dementia from patients, and the only treatment is weight loss.
Actually, it says the only cure is weight loss. I think that's nearly true. Surgery is a cure for some people, however, it has serious downsides, and I'm told that even when it works, OSA will often come back. Weight loss is not a cure for everyone either. Often enough OSA comes before weight gain, and there are plenty of skinny folk with OSA as well. But weight loss is probably the best thing going as far as cures go. If obesity really is the root of your OSA, then loosing weight will cure you.

Overall, CPAP is a probably a more effective treatment than weight loss or surgery. But it's not a cure. And if you count the 50% who give up, perhaps because they didn't get the support they needed to take charge of their own therapy and make it work, then CPAP doesn't rate that highly as a treatment either.

The researchers don't know that CPAP therapy will reverse dementia because they haven't studied that yet, so that's a fair statement.

I think the scientist the reporter talked to probably spoke much more carefully. The study began with people who were overweight, and was probably focused specifically on OSA as a complication of obesity. But as often happens, the message got boiled down to drivel in the popular press.

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purple
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by purple » Tue Aug 09, 2011 8:57 pm

Fifty percent successful treatment with a CPAP machine is, I suspect, a much higher percentage than those who are successful in losing all the extra weight.

My first sleep doc said Ear Nose and Throat Surgeons sent sleep apnea patients to him, as they did not have a good success rate with any surgery.

pst333
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by pst333 » Tue Aug 09, 2011 9:16 pm

LSAT wrote:It's amazing that all 298 women were still available at age 87.
Actually, according to the full JAMA article, there were 461 initial participants.
Of those, 70 died, 9 were previously terminated from the study, and 7 were excluded for various reasons.

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Otter
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by Otter » Tue Aug 09, 2011 9:26 pm

purple wrote:Fifty percent successful treatment with a CPAP machine is, I suspect, a much higher percentage than those who are successful in losing all the extra weight.
And keeping it off. Yes. As fiddly as the mask is, having a blower force air down your throat is a lot simpler than understanding all the factors contributing to obesity and figuring out how to reverse them permanently without causing bigger health problems.

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Resister
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Re: Do you agree with this.

Post by Resister » Tue Aug 09, 2011 9:29 pm

Interesting the researcher would make such a blanket statement, stating that weight loss is the only "cure."
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