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Re: Long term CPAP make you addicted?

Posted by SGS on November 27, 2002 at 12:13:10:

In Reply to: Re: Long term CPAP make you addicted? posted by johnnewmexico on November 27, 2002 at 08:23:47:

Bearing in mind this is not a medical opinion and all the usual disclaimers do apply.

It seems that OSA is caused by (in various strengths in different people).
1. Airway Abnormalities
2. Excess weight especially in the upper torso area
3. Some sort of failure to coordinate upper airway muscles
all three of these seem to affect one another as well.

Losing weight for people who are overweight is almost always a good idea and not just for apnoea either. The Body Mass Index gives a very rough idea of obesity by putting your weight in kilograms divided by your Height in meters squared. Yours would be about 29. Obese level is usually taken as being 30 unless you belong to certain ethnic groups with high muscle loads.

I'm inclined to doubt that losing weight will eradicate OSA when you have severe OSA and you're not obese. But this is just a guess based an aggregate scientific studies though, they only help so much in predicting individual cases. Losing weight, based on the Peppard paper, should reduce the severity of your apnoea. My medical supervisor claims anecdotal success eradicating apnoea with surgically assisted weight loss but these have been in people with BMI>40.

The harm that apnoea does to your body seems to be in what is called a dose response manner (based on the Sleep Heart Health Study findings). The worse your apnoea, the worse the effects (unfortunately the strength of the relationship between outcomes that normal people are interested in and the overnight stats that Sleep personnel collect is not strong). Having said that it appears that sucessful use of CPAP reduces this risk close to baseline for somebody identical to you who doesn't have OSA.

CPAP works but CPAP is annoying for some unfortunately. Weight loss will help but it's not as effective as CPAP. But it is still a good idea.

I hope some of the info I'm trying to summarise helps.

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