General Discussion on any topic relating to CPAP and/or Sleep Apnea.
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roster
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by roster » Sat May 23, 2009 11:08 am
jimbutsu wrote: ......but I think they're much more a shared complication of a condition than they are causative of one another.
Jim,
You will have trouble convincing me that sleep apnea did not cause my acid reflux. At the peak, my BMI was just under 25.
When you are having a long apnea, your thoracic diaphragm muscles and external intercostal muscles begin to flex violently in an attempt to breathe. These muscles are in ideal positions to force stomach contents up into the esophagus.
However, I also believe that acid reflux is present in people who have never had sleep apnea.
Good luck with the healing,
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jimbutsu
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by jimbutsu » Sat May 23, 2009 11:17 am
I'm not contesting that it's possible to have a causative relationship - just saying that there's bound to be a lot of "false positives" in the population they're studying. In other words, a correlation between apnea and GERD could very well exist in a vacuum, but it doesn't sound like there was any accounting for weight in the population studied. I'd go so far as to say I think my GERD was made worse by apnea, but I did have one before the other, and a spike in weight that caused or exacerbated both. I know people with GERD and no OSA, and I know people with OSA and no GERD.
BUT-- I've also never spoken to a doctor about any of this stuff who hasn't said that even 20-30 pounds of weight gain (or loss) couldn't contribute significantly to both reflux and snoring/apnea.
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BlackSpinner
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by BlackSpinner » Sat May 23, 2009 11:29 am
I am not sure when my apnea started - I started snoring badly when I was pregnant with my youngest who is now 20. I went to the doctor several times about it then but all they said was to try antihistamines. So probably the OSA started way back then but didn't become noticeable to me (by making me dysfunctional at work) until a year ago. When it started, after the suddenly loss of many pounds in 4 hours, I was 110 lbs for the next few years. For me weight gain was definitely caused by the combination of GERD & OSA.
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roster
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by roster » Sat May 23, 2009 11:42 am
jimbutsu wrote: ........I've also never spoken to a doctor about any of this stuff who hasn't said that even 20-30 pounds of weight gain (or loss) couldn't contribute significantly to both reflux and snoring/apnea.
It's a circle and I am not sure where the starting point is. Sleep apnea can cause weight gain and weight gain can cause or worsen sleep apnea which causes more weight gain and so on.
