Post
by Janelle » Sun Aug 07, 2005 5:51 pm
My cousin's daughter-in-law was very obese as was all her family. She had bariatric surgery and lost a ton of weight, but was in and out of the hospital for complications for several months afterwards. Among the reasons, chronic diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting. A year later she is eating all the time and is putting on the pounds again. She realizes this has the possibility of undoing the surgery, but she doesn't seem to care. She has three children, the youngest about 2 months old, and all she does is sit around and eat junk food all day. She is always talking about her blood sugar being low and then starts eating sweets. As most of us know this is exactly the wrong thing to do when you are feeling fatigued. I highly suspect she has sleep apnea. She was just diagnosed with Diabetes. She's 25.
Yawn, I highly suspect your husband also has sleep apnea. Has he ever been checked? Does he have the symptoms listed on the Epworth Sleepiness scale?
Exercise and diet might work but if the apnea is not treated, neither one of you will lose the weight. Losing weight might help the apnea but only by reducing the pressure needed. It is the cortisol levels that made you gain the weight, the OSA is what affected your cortisol levels. Apnea also affect your entire immune and metabolic system, causing problems with cholesterol, blood pressure, the heart, the thyroid gland, causing Type 2 Diabetes, loss of libido, fatigue, and just about everything else.
If he snores, and I'm sure he does if he is that overweight, and he snorts or stops breathing in his sleep, then suddenly starts again, he is having an apnea. If he falls asleep at the movies, in front of a TV or while reading, he is sleep deprived, if he gets up during the night to go to the bathroom frequently, he most likely has apneas, because lack of sleep cause the kidneys to work overtime to rid the body of toxins it can't get rid of during normal sleep. The starting and stopping of breathing, stresses the heart muscle and can cause heart attacks and strokes. If a heart attack happens during the night it was probably caused by OSA. If he smokes, the irritation from the smoke and chemicals in the tobacco have probably enlarged his tonsils which can also cause an obstruction to breathing. Does he mouth breath a lot during the day?
If he were my husband I'd get him to a sleep specialist as soon as I could. All the exercise and dieting in the world is not going to be effective if you don't treat the apnea too. BTW the South Beach diet is very good for reducing cholesterol and triglycerides but until you treat the apnea you probably won't lose more than about 20-30 pounds and it is a diet you can live with that is good for you. It will teach you what foods that most people consider diet foods, like carrots and bananas, are really full of sugar. And you don't have to buy all the foods they tell you that are so expensive. You can figure out substitutes that are much more to most people's food budgets.
I mentioned Xyrem in another thread you started. I've also found that taking this and getting the more restorative sleep that it has drastically affected my appetite. I am eating much smaller portions and I'm feeling very satisfied, not hungry. I even have a donut or desert frequently and still lose weight.
