Sleep Dynamic Therapy

Archive for the ‘SDB’ Category

In this Washington Post article covering recent research on longevity in patients undergoing weight loss surgery, the emphasis seems to favor bariatric procedures. That is, it appears that those who undergo weight loss surgery and lose weight increase their lifespan. I’ve not read the research articles yet, but the question raised would be why would these patients live longer. Obesity is a risk for many diseases, but the one least likely to get a mention would be obstructive sleep apnea. I’d bet the research articles mention SDB as one explanation for why patients might live longer, even though the Post didn’t make a comment on it. However, I doubt the research conducted pre and post weight loss sleep tests to find out what happened to the severity of SDB in these cases. That information might prove quite illuminating.

Research continues to mount showing the benefits of CPAP use in decreasing depression symptoms. What’s even more exciting is that the article appears in the well respected Psychosomatic Medicine journal.

Exciting research out of Brazil shows much more precise evidence that sleep breathing problems cause or contribute to atherosclerosis. As has been said for a long time in the sleep medicine community, “untreated sleep apnea is like smoking a pack of cigarettes per day.”

There have been several claims over the past few years that the positioning of the tongue at rest predicts some degree of risk for sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). The tip or front of the tongue is supposed to rest against the roof of the mouth, elevated about a half inch to an inch above the back of the front teeth, on or just above the little ridges you can feel there. When the tongue rests in the bottom of the mouth (flat position), that is, the tip is closer to the back of the lower teeth, it is said that risk increases for SDB. If you try the two positions right now, you’ll notice it’s easier to breathe through your nose when the tongue is in the elevated position. Several small research studies over the years have suggested that if you can strengthen the muscles in the oral airway including the lips, it will promote improvement of the tongue position and may reduce SDB severity. Now, there is an actual device that lets you strengthen your lip muscles and claims by doing so to reduce SDB severity. The question that goes unanswered on their website is how to buy one if you in the USA.

In this recent letter to the editor in the Annals of Clinical Psychiatry, we respond to Dr. Rosenberg’s critique, which outlines some of the weaknesses in medications for the treatment of sleep maintenance insomnia (middle of the night awakenings). As we continue to find in our research and clinical work, most of these patients suffer awakenings due to sleep-disordered breathing. Therefore, testing these patients with overnight sleep studies in the sleep lab often yields valuable insights into the patient’s underlying sleep fragmentation and may lead to dramatic treatment gains, if the insomniac chooses to treat the sleep breathing condition.