Poll Re: Apnea and Your Weight

And even wt alone doesn't tell how long you've had it, the distribution, whether you work out and how much of it is fat vs muscle, if you're diabetic, etc.

Captain_Midnight wrote: As an aside, I've thought it would be interesting if folks posted their current weight along w their avatar. (This would be resisted by many, hereabouts, so I withdraw the suggestion.)

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But many of us have been on cpap for many years. I have been on it for 6 years. I have gained weight due to other circumstances. I know when my OSA kicked in - 27 years ago when I was pregnant of my last kid. After giving birth I weighed 110 lbs but I still snored badly and gasped but all the doctor did was give me antihistamines. Post menopause I gained a bit. By the time I actually got my cpap machine I had put on more weight. I dropped some but gained a lot while doing caregiving due to not being able to do much in the way of exercise plus emotional eating. So current avatars and weight have little to do with OSA in many cases.

Due to widely held misconceptions, many, if not most,
cases of apnea are not diagnosed until the patient becomes overweight.
Doctors just don't think "apnea" unless the patient is fat.

BlackSpinner wrote:

Enchanter wrote:

Julie wrote:You could win the Tour de France and not get rid of your apnea - it doesn't work that way and I think you know it.

Only a small fraction of people with OSA are thin. Some are, but most can get rid of OSA if they were in exceptionally good shape.

Your peer reviewed study that shows this please. Because the weight surgery study showed that 49% of people kept on having OSA after weight loss. Some got worse.

Tumomilehto et al. is probably the most cited study, where they studied the affects of weight loss intervention:


http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/92/4/688.full#T3



You can see the parallel reduction between weight and AHI in the graph above.

The noticable study limitations however:
-small cohort
- only one severity group(mild sleep apnea)
- They didn't include clinically important diagnostic tools(but i'm assuming those patients who were objectively cured, stopped getting symptoms).

88% of those in the intervention group were cured of their sleep apnea. Only 55% maintained their OSA free status after a 2 year follow up however(due to weight gain).

tuomilehto wrote:Nonetheless, that study showed that weight-reduction programs do have an important role even for patients with more severe OSA. It has been commonly claimed that a lifestyle change may not be sufficient when treating patients with OSA; however, 3 recent randomized studies have shown that the more aggressive treatment of obesity in OSA patients is well-founded (12, 13, 26). In the present study, it was noted that the larger the change in body weight, the greater the improvement in OSA. Furthermore, the data from the 3-, 12-, and 24-mo sleep measurements were consistent in strongly favoring the weight-reduction group. It has been suggested that sleep disturbance co-aggregates with other components of the metabolic syndrome and could be its second most important determinant, after obesity (27). Therefore, it is notable that in the present study, in conjunction with the improvement in OSA, weight reduction was also found to result in improvements in other obesity-related risk factors for cardiovascular diseases.

So at the very least, those, who can improve their sleep apnea or cure it completely via weight-loss, there is a possibility of lessening if not normalizing their sleep apnea. Now an interesting study would be to compare those who do not experience a benefit of weight loss and those who do, and find out what the anatomical differences for the diffrent groups are.

So there is defintely a benefit in a subgroup of OSA sufferers. Even if weight loss, doesn't result in complete cessation of apneas. You're still infinitely better, health-wise within a normal/healthy weight than being overweight.

So atleast for those who do have weight to lose. Roll the dice, you've got nothing to lose by embarking on a weight loss regimen. Of course one should treat sleep apnoea, in the meanwhile, to reduce the adverse affects. I think treatment of OSA should be combined with weight loss in overweight OSA patients.

BlackSpinner wrote:
But many of us have been on cpap for many years. I have been on it for 6 years. I have gained weight due to other circumstances. I know when my OSA kicked in - 27 years ago when I was pregnant of my last kid. After giving birth I weighed 110 lbs but I still snored badly and gasped but all the doctor did was give me antihistamines. Post menopause I gained a bit. By the time I actually got my cpap machine I had put on more weight. I dropped some but gained a lot while doing caregiving due to not being able to do much in the way of exercise plus emotional eating. So current avatars and weight have little to do with OSA in many cases.

We agree, and we have a somewhat similar story (at least in the early years of undiagnosed OSA).

Most folks tend to have an interest in circumstances similar to their own, and for me, I'm quite interested in folks who have OSA and are of normal weight (or were of normal weight when symptoms began). I do suspect that there might be some differences in the approach to xpap therapy between obese patients and those of normal weight with throat or breathing structure issues.

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Did you miss the thread title? The subject is the relationship between weight and OSA. Not whether thin people with OSA don't exist. I didn't even leave out that possibility. Re-Read my post. I clearly listed 11 conditions and factors that can lead to sleep apnea. But I also discussed weight as a related issue.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I started ignoring this thread after so many defensive reactions, good to come back and see some nice discussion going on now. Knowing the Internet all too well I made a point of explicitly stating in my first post:

I know that anyone can have apnea and that it is not caused by being overweight, but there is a correlation.

Yet still had to get several lectures. Heck, I even learned that it's "rude to ask"...evidently anonymously on a forum where people go by fake names. If this is how people react to being asked a simple completely non-judgmental question on a forum, no wonder doctors have such a hard time with people getting offended when they ask certain questions or discuss certain subjects. I laughed when I read your first well stated post, only to see you also get the response of:

"So quit blaming ALL sleep apnea on being fat!"

What post did they even read?! Certainly not the same one I did, frankly I think you used too many large words .

Heart Jumping wrote: Yet still had to get several lectures. Heck, I even learned that it's "rude to ask"...evidently anonymously on a forum where people go by fake names. If this is how people react to being asked a simple completely non-judgmental question on a forum, no wonder doctors have such a hard time with people getting offended when they ask certain questions or discuss certain subjects. I laughed when I read your first well stated post, only to see you also get the response of:
.

We are not all hiding behind odd screen names or fake names. I use my business name as my username, and I use the same username on several different websites. I may not post with my real name obvious here, but it would not be difficult for people to look it up.

I still disagree with your whole premise. There is a correlation, but not the one you think. Even the mattress commercial I saw last night states that poor sleep leads to high blood pressure and weight gain.

We are trying to get old school doctors to wake up and see that the updated information is that sleep apnea causes weight gain, not the other way around. We have too many doctors ignoring people with sleep apnea because they assume only fat people have it. We have new people who were diagnosed, who put off treatment or quit easily, because they assume they must not have it since they are not "typical" according to old school doctors. We are trying to re-educate people, not stick with old beliefs that have been proven wrong.

zoocrewphoto wrote:I still disagree with your whole premise. There is a correlation, but not the one you think.

I stopped wasting my time reading past the sentence above because like several other posters you evidently start projecting what you think someones views are based on your own false assumptions. Please do tell me what my "premise is" and how it's "not the one I think". I'm dying to know what you think it is since I've never stated it.

Heart Jumping wrote:

zoocrewphoto wrote:I still disagree with your whole premise. There is a correlation, but not the one you think.

I stopped wasting my time reading past the sentence above because like several other posters you evidently react to something emotionally and start projecting what you think someones views are based on false assumptions. Please do tell me what my "premise is" and how it's "not the one I think". I'm dying to know what you think it is since I've never stated it.

It was pretty obvious from the first post that you believe that fat causes sleep apnea. Why else would you try to get a bunch of people with sleep apnea to state they are overweight, yet not care about the fact that many were not fat before sleep apnea? You only care that they are fat now as that is somehow proof to you. Also, you have never chosen to agree with us or clarify, only argue, so clearly you do not agree with us.

This is not emotional at all. The facts have changed as the scientists have learned much more about the cause and effect. When people spout the old "facts", we try to educate them with the new facts. Even if we don't convince you, at least we won't be encouraging misinformation to newbies who join and read this thread.

zoocrewphoto wrote:It was pretty obvious from the first post that you believe that fat causes sleep apnea.

Once again it's not worth reading past this sentence. At no point did I state anything close to that and in fact went out of my way to state that I was not saying that.

Heart Jumping wrote:

zoocrewphoto wrote:It was pretty obvious from the first post that you believe that fat causes sleep apnea.

Once again it's not worth reading past this sentence. At no point did I state anything close to that and in fact went out of my way to state that I was not saying that.

well, if you can't be bothered to read what someone says when they disagree with you, then perhaps nobody else should read past the first sentence when you write your argumentative and dismissive posts.

palerider wrote:
well, if you can't be bothered to read what someone says when they disagree with you, then perhaps nobody else should read past the first sentence when you write your argumentative and dismissive posts.

One more example of poor critical thinking skills, suggesting that it's wrong to be dismissive of ridiculous statements.

Him engaging in mind reading: It's obvious what you think even though you said the opposite.
Me: Sorry, there is no point taking you seriously or continuing this when I did not say that and in fact made it clear I was not saying that.
You: How horrible of you to be dismissive and argumentative towards his mind reading.

Heart Jumping wrote:

zoocrewphoto wrote:I still disagree with your whole premise. There is a correlation, but not the one you think.

I stopped wasting my time reading past the sentence above because like several other posters you evidently start projecting what you think someones views are based on your own false assumptions. Please do tell me what my "premise is" and how it's "not the one I think". I'm dying to know what you think it is since I've never stated it.

So it is ok for you to ignore what others say? I guess I can stop reading beyond YOUR first sentence and just assume you are wrong in flogging your dead horse?

Yes weight has something to do with OSA but not what you believe it to be.

Heart Jumping wrote:Once again it's not worth reading past this sentence.

Heart Jumping wrote:One more example of poor critical thinking skills

So you initiate a poll, but then you start explaining how everyone taking the poll is stupid? Brings into question your decision to take a poll of stupid people, doesn't it?

We need to spread the word that many thin people, young people, and even females can have OSA.
Most of us know better, but too many DOCTORS are failing to diagnose sufferers because of the old Dickensian stereotype.
The number of excess pounds is useless except maybe to guess how long a person has gone UNTREATED.