Weight / Apnea

Good topic - here is my 0.2 c worth & based on observations & suspicions

1a) For those of us going into their 50s
1b) For those of us gaining weight but in the 40s-50s age group

I am sure that as we pass 40 years & head into the 50s & beyond we go into a general energy decline (I believe this is an accepted medical fact)

I am aware of how into my 40s I began to snore a lot more even though only about 183lbs at the time & thus not overweight. I am also aware that alcohol and coffee seemed to have an increasingly negative impact on my health in a very gradual way. I also began showing GERD symptoms and other typical age/weight related signs.

I believe that as these factors had a greater impact I tended to put on more weight. Into my 50s I hit 210 lbs then this crept up to 224. I also believe I was starting to show patters of irregular (or disordered) breathng in these same periods.

In 1989 a sleep study cleared me of OSA but in 2005 I did another sleep study where I was showing evidence of 40+ AHI but was only weighing 204 lbs at that time.

I am sure that the more weight we put on, the more we are impacted by a lot of things such as our nightly breathing, our general fitness & our tolerance for alcohol - I can't say for sure that the OSA came 1st but am sure it has for some people.

Am also of the belief that the OSA & weight snowball on each other. The more weight we gain, the less we exercise, the wose our OSA gets the more weight we put on etc: etc:

I am due for another sleep study at end feb - I am working hard to get my weight down to a target of 182 lbs & am at approx 190lbs today (from a peak of about 220+ this past year).

If I get to my target 183 & do the study (it is to be a split night study) and they say no OSA, then taking the weight off did it BUT I believe they will show I still have AHIs in the 20+ range no matter what weight I hit. So I am saying I believe my OSA will not be cured by weight loss - but I won't bet money either way (just yet).

DSM

these recipes are for 6 people, Duh we were eating 4 others portions

AHA, so THAT'S what I've been doing wrong!!

Good one Harris.

Cheers

Peter

My hubby has just been diagnosed with sleep apnea, he is 42 years old.

For the last 5 years he has been slowly gaining weight and suffering from
what the doctor thought was gout attacks.

Changing his diet has helped, not so many gout attacks, but he still gets
them every few months.

We did not know what sleep anpea was, so I researched it. What I found out is that people with this problem quite often develop respiratory acidosis.
This condition occurs when the lungs cannot remove all of the carbon dioxide produced by the body. This creates a disruption in the body's acid-base balance. Body fluids become excessively acidic. There are herbal and food products that help attain a more alkaline invironment. I will have to make a visit to the gardening center to see if they have any litmus papers for testing soil alkalinity or acidicty to see what my husband's state is right now.

Also, the body creates fat cells to carry acids away from your vital organs, so that these acids don't accumilate in the vital organs. This probably is
one reason why my husband has been gaining weight..he does not over eat
and it has been very puzzling why he kept putting on the pounds. I am hoping that adding sea greens will help until the machine he will begin using next week may help his sleep apnea.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. When a person loses weight, especially lots of weight, ketones are released into the blood stream. Excessive amounts
are labled Ketoacidosis...excessive acidity of body fluids.

I wish you all good health and success....us too.

Puffy

(Quote)
But, can the reverse be true? That is, can having Sleep Apnea cause weight gain? Has anyone been able to lose weight easier since being on CPAP?



I went to see my sleep doc tuesday and got weighed, surprisingly i lost six pounds since i started cpap therapy on 12/01/06 still eating the same as i was before cpap, i think my metabolism is burning calories better now hope this continues, need to lose a lot more as i picked up thirty pounds in the last five years. My doc said the osa caused the gain now it looks like the cpap is causing the weight loss woooo hooooo !

Dale

creampuff wrote:

My hubby has just been diagnosed with sleep apnea, he is 42 years old.

For the last 5 years he has been slowly gaining weight and suffering from
what the doctor thought was gout attacks.

Changing his diet has helped, not so many gout attacks, but he still gets
them every few months.

We did not know what sleep anpea was, so I researched it. What I found out is that people with this problem quite often develop respiratory acidosis.
This condition occurs when the lungs cannot remove all of the carbon dioxide produced by the body. This creates a disruption in the body's acid-base balance. Body fluids become excessively acidic. There are herbal and food products that help attain a more alkaline invironment. I will have to make a visit to the gardening center to see if they have any litmus papers for testing soil alkalinity or acidicty to see what my husband's state is right now.

Also, the body creates fat cells to carry acids away from your vital organs, so that these acids don't accumilate in the vital organs. This probably is
one reason why my husband has been gaining weight..he does not over eat
and it has been very puzzling why he kept putting on the pounds. I am hoping that adding sea greens will help until the machine he will begin using next week may help his sleep apnea.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. When a person loses weight, especially lots of weight, ketones are released into the blood stream. Excessive amounts
are labled Ketoacidosis...excessive acidity of body fluids.

I wish you all good health and success....us too.

Puffy

Creampuff

An interesting post - I too started getting gout (toes became super sensitive to the touch - would get this pain in them periodically).

Once I got my OSA more or less under control, the gout did just go away. That happened about early to mid of last year.

I have never seen anyone else post comments about excessive residual CO2 causing acidity that promoted gout but it sure fits the conditions I was in.

Very interesting line of though - many thanks

I hope your hubby's weight loss continues.

DSM

I don't have time to look for it now, but somewhere on the web is a recent article by some doctors regarding inflammation and apnea. The short of it is sleep apnea causes a great deal of inflammation and they want to do more work to justify prescribing a gout drug (anti-inflammatory) to all apnea patients (along with cpap). ... and it is a cheap generic drug and the doctors have no backing from the drug companies.

Just while we are chiming in, I lost weight easily after my cpap started working properly. Also found that I don't get terrible munchies (craving for salty carbohydrates) like I did all of those years I was untreated.

Also found that I don't get terrible munchies (craving for salty carbohydrates) like I did all of those years I was untreated.

Same here Rooster