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Sleep Apnea and Obesity: the Overstated Connection

Sleep Apnea and Obesity have become synonymous in the public's awareness, so much so that when the term Sleep Apnea is mentioned, the term obesity is reflexively, and often improperly, tacked on. Case in point: yesterday's USA Today article. The story (which can be found at http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-01-24-obesity-sleep-apnea_N.htm?csp=usat.me) is about new scientific research showing that liver disease, insulin resistance and a less-than-active lifestyle are all independently associated with Sleep Apnea, irrespective of a person's weight. Wonderful piece by the author. It's the editors who came up with the "More Sleep Apnea, Obesity Links" headline who screwed up. By sloppily tacking on that headline, which doesn't even work with the content of the story, the reader is fooled into thinking that it's just another story about how Sleep Apnea and Obesity are one and the same. And the reader comments show what happens then: "How about not eating so much," one reader posted; "Wide loads," another reader sneered. Bottom line: Sleep Apnea is dismissed as something within our control, if only we would learn how to control our appetites and not be fat and lazy.

So as someone who's 6 feet tall and 175 lbs, what do I do? Not much if I'm only listening to what's being put out there by the mainstream media. After all, according to them, a trim person like me can't get Sleep Apnea.

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Comment by Rock Conner RRT on January 25, 2009 at 8:08pm
I like to point out my outlier reference, a mother of three triathlete who might have once broken 100 lbs. when pregnant, & with an AHI in the 80s. She's the exception. Most folks I see with OSA are, like me, overweight. It's about individual physiology, but if one is withing sniffing distance of ideal body weight & has documented OSA, it ain't from obesity.

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