Undiagnosed and/or untreated obstructive sleep apnea decreases blood flow to the brain, elevates blood pressure within the brain, and eventually harms the brain’s ability to modulate these changes to prevent damage to itself, according to a new study. The findings may help explain why people with undiagnosed and/or untreated sleep apnea are more likely to suffer strokes and to die in their sleep.
Sleep apnea is the most commonly diagnosed condition amongst sleep-related breathing disorders and can lead to debilitating and sometimes fatal consequences for the 18 million Americans who have been diagnosed with the disorder. This study identifies a mechanism behind stroke in these patients.
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Sleeping less than seven-and-a-half hours per day may be associated with future risk of heart disease, according to a report in the November 10, 2008, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, a combination of little sleep and overnight elevated blood pressure appears to be associated with an increased risk of the disease.
“Reflecting changing lifestyles, people are sleeping less in modern societies,” according to background information in the article. Getting adequate sleep is essential to preventing health conditions such as obesity and diabetes as well as several risk factors for cardiovascular disease including sleep-disordered breathing and night-time hypertension (high blood pressure).
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People with even minimally symptomatic obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may be at increased risk for cardiovascular disease because of impaired endothelial function and increased arterial stiffness, according to a study in the November 2008 issue of American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Their findings suggested that minimally symptomatic OSA is a cardiovascular risk factor to a degree not previously known.
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A study published in the December 24 and 31, 2008 issue of JAMA said more sleep is better for your heart and is tied to lower calcification rates in the coronary artery.
Risk factors for coronary artery calcification include heart disease risk factors such as male sex, older age, glucose intolerance, tobacco use, disorders of lipoprotein metabolism and high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, obesity, raised inflammatory markers and a low educational level.
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My life has been a long sleepy saga. I’ve lived a life constantly feeling sleepy. I was sleepy during my wedding. I was sleep during my honeymoon. I was sleepy when my children were born.
I managed to destroy to fulfilling careers without ever really getting to enjoy them because I was always sleepy. So sleepy, in fact, I would fall asleep while holding open houses. Other times I fell asleep while waiting for signals about commodity trades, including some worth from $200 million dollars and up.
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People with even minimally symptomatic obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may be at increased risk for cardiovascular disease because of impaired endothelial function and increased arterial stiffness, according to a study from the Oxford Centre for Respiratory Medicine in the United Kingdom.
“It was previously known that people with OSA severe enough to affect their daytime alertness and manifest in other ways are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but this finding suggests that many more people — some of whom may be completely unaware that they even have OSA — are at risk than previously thought,” said lead author of the study, Malcolm Kohler, M.D.
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Teenagers are notorious for having bad sleep habits. New research suggests that having trouble staying awake the next day might not be the only consequence they face.
This study, the first study to look at the relationship between not getting enough sleep and blood pressure in healthy adolescents, researchers found that healthy teens (ages 13 to 16 years old) who slept less than 6½ hours a night were 2½ times more likely to have elevated blood pressure compared to those who slept longer.
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A study published in the July 1, 2008, issue of the journal Sleep provides visual evidence of the severe structural damage that occurs in numerous regions of the brain in people with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
Results show that obstructive sleep apnea patients have extensive alterations in “white matter,” nerve tissue in the brain containing fibers that are insulated with myelin — a white, fatty sheath. These structural changes appear both in brain regions that have functional importance for characteristics such as mood, memory, and cardiovascular regulation; and in fiber pathways interconnecting these regions.
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