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Weight loss helps sleep apnoea symptoms

Many people who suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea could help themselves by losing a significant amount of weight.

Weight loss helps sleep apnoea symptoms

Many people who suffer from obstructive sleep apnoea could help themselves by losing a significant amount of weight.

Without realising it, people with sleep apnoea wake up multiple times throughout the night as they struggle to breathe. The condition can cause severe daytime tiredness and other symptoms. In many cases, patients are treated with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), a treatment that uses a machine to keep their airways open during sleep.

There seems to be a connection between sleep apnoea and extra weight but how they're related is not clear. Although the majority of patients are obese, not everyone with sleep apnoea is obese.

Physicians do know that as you gain weight, sleep apnoea gets worse, and it improves as you lose weight. Obesity may affect the airway's ability to stay open during sleep, or extra fat cells could affect the brain's control of the airway.

Researchers tracked 63 male sleep apnoea patients in Stockholm, aged 30 to 65 years, who were overweight. Of those, 58 completed a version of the Cambridge Weight Plan, which started with a very low-calorie diet for nine weeks, followed by a year-long programme of weight-maintenance counselling.

After a year, it was found that about half of the patients who lost weight and kept it off no longer needed a CPAP machine to keep their airways open during sleep, and sleep apnoea went away in 10 percent of them.

This study show that sleep apnoea sufferers who are overweight can help themselves by losing weight.
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