Journal of the American Medical Association
April 2000

In the study, Johns Hopkins researchers collected data from more than 6,000 middle-aged men and women with sleep apnea or sleep related breathing disorders where snoring is a major symptom. They found that those with more severe cases had a higher risk of having high blood pressure.

Sleep Apnea is common and approximately 12 million Americans have sleep apnea, a breathing disorder with interruptions of breathing during sleep which can last from 5 to 50 breathing pauses per hour, each lasting a minimum of 10 seconds but can last up to a couple minutes. Snoring prevalence in sleep apnea cases occurs about 60 percent of the time. The most common treatment is CPAP, continuous positive airway pressure, a procedure in which a sleeping patient wears a face mask that pushes air through the nasal passages and acts as a splint to keep the airway open. Sleep apnea leads to a person experiencing fragmented sleep resulting in not having fully restful sleep causing memory loss, irritability, and extreme fatigue in some sufferers.

“The mechanisms underlying the association between sleep-disordered breathing and hypertension are not entirely clear” the study concluded. However, it did say, they may include oxygen loss to the blood which results in an increased contraction of blood vessels and in general more work and activity by the a person's sympathetic nervous system.

This is great news. It has always been thought that there was a relationship between Apnea and hypertension in the sleep community, however it was never officially recognized by the rest of the medical community. This has been evident on Sleepnet.com's Sleep Apnea Forums for years. So we are making huge strides with studies like these to help inform not only physicians but also the greater public about the dangers of sleep disorders.

Sandman