Sleep Dynamic Therapy

Archive for the ‘Prostate’ Category

On this prostate quiz at www.healthcentral.com, question #7 asks about visits to the bathroom at night (nocturia). The assumption that pervades the medical community and the mainstream media is that this finding must signal prostate problems. Rarely do we find a story describing how nocturia was eliminated when the patient was evaluated and treated for sleep-disordered breathing. Yet, if you examine the science behind this incredibly common symptom, you’ll learn that sleep breathing causes an unnatural increase of blood flow to the right atrium of the heart, which then responds to relieve this “false fluid overload state” by secreting ANP, a natural diuretic in the body that signals the kidneys to make more urine. Even though nocturia is much more likely to be caused by sleep breathing problems, we still get outdated quizzes published on the web that continue to mislead patients to imagine that prostatism is the only explanation for visiting the bathroom at night. Those who use Positive Airway Pressure (PAP) therapy to treat sleep apnea have a much different and successful story to tell, and you can guess the happy ending: fewer or no trips to the bathroom, once sleep breathing problems are corrected.