Weight Loss and Sleep Apnea

By Abraham Katz, DDS

As fantastic as this idea sounds, there is increasing medical research that links sleep and weight.

Many hormones are affected by sleep. These hormones control your appetite, feeling of hunger and fullness. When you don't get enough sleep, your appetite is stimulated.

In a combined study using about 1,000 volunteers between Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin, those who slept less than eight hours a night had higher levels of body fat.

Enter the problem of obstructive sleep apnea. People with OSA can stop breathing from 30 seconds up to a minute, as many as a 100 times a night while sleeping.

The tongue and soft tissues in the back of the throat tend to collapse first causing snoring and then briefly closing off air passage causing disruption in sleep. So even though you may go to bed early, and you may think you're getting a good nights rest, the repetitive disruption in breathing prevents you from getting good deep sleep. You wake up headachy and stay tired all day.

Although the weight-sleep connection is not yet fully understood and has not been fully explored, Michael Breus, PhD, a faculty member of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine, has observed “once a person is not tired, they don't need to rely on sweet foods and high carbohydrate snacks to keep them awake. That automatically translates into eating fewer calories.”

Over 40 million Americans have a sleep disorder and most don't even know it. Dentists are in the unique position of being able to treat mild to moderate cases of sleep apnea with oral appliances after diagnosis by a sleep specialist and can provide an oral appliance to those individuals who cannot tolerate or prefer not to use a CPAP.

The most fundamental approach to sleep apnea is changes in life style, such as weight loss and better sleep habits. Treating sleep apnea might not only help you lose weight, stop snoring, and help you go through your day refreshed instead of tired, but it may very well save your life.