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Re: Are we born with sleep apnea?

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Posted by BC on September 14, 2010 at 04:30:43:

In Reply to: Re: Are we born with sleep apnea? posted by insomniac6622 on September 13, 2010 at 08:52:01:

I heard one doctor comment that she's never seen someone go to a sleep center who wasn't diagnosed with a sleep disorder, and another doctor checked and found it to be true.

I think that's not entirely a fair test. People wouldn't go to a sleep center unless they had a strong reason to suspect something is wrong, so a sleep center's results wouldn't be the same as for the general population. Still, I gather that it's normal even for healthy people to have some sleep apneas, and so if someone is complaining of sleep difficulties, it only seems natural to try CPAP as a possible solution. So there may be some tendency to overdiagnose sleep apnea.

Having said that, I've really been helped by my CPAP machine.

I think at least some people are born with a predisposition. I've read that people with Marfan's syndrome tend to have a high rate of sleep apnea, and they tend to be tall and thin. A conjecture is that their airways are more collapsible. Some of the rest of us who are tall and thin (ectomorphs) might also tend to be more "stretchy" and collapsible, even without having Marfan's.

I think the rate of sleep apnea might also be higher now than earlier for a couple of reasons. First, people now are more likely to be overweight, which is a risk factor. Second, we probably tend to be in poorer physical condition. I've read that the exercise provided by playing a didgederoo can help with sleep apnea; maybe more generally a lack of exercise is a risk factor.

I doubt that people often die of sleep apnea. Instead it's a risk factor for other problems, such as heart disease. So before people were aware of apnea (or even now), they would have attributed death (or health problems) to heart disease. So sleep apnea could have been affected people for a long time without getting any attention. Certainly people have snored for a long time, though apnea is not the only reason for snoring.

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