You are here: Home » cardiovascular system
cardiovascular system
Jul
3
2009
This entry was posted by admin on Friday, July 3, 2009 at 9:02 am (UTC), and is categorically filed in Elderly and Sleep.
Increasingly severe sleep-related breathing disorders in older men appear to be associated with a greater risk of abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias), according to a report in the June 22, 2009, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, different types of breathing problems appear more closely associated with different categories of arrhythmia.
Sleep-disordered breathing is a common condition, according to background information in the article. It causes a number of physiologic events that could be stressful to the cardiovascular system, including inadequate blood oxygen levels at night and activation of the sympathetic nervous system (associated with the body’s fight-or-flight response).
__________
People with even minimally symptomatic obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may be at increased risk for cardiovascular disease because of impaired endothelial function and increased arterial stiffness, according to a study from the Oxford Centre for Respiratory Medicine in the United Kingdom.
“It was previously known that people with OSA severe enough to affect their daytime alertness and manifest in other ways are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, but this finding suggests that many more people — some of whom may be completely unaware that they even have OSA — are at risk than previously thought,” said lead author of the study, Malcolm Kohler, M.D.
__________
About two-thirds of children with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) — snoring or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) — have some degree of cognitive deficit, but the severity of the cognitive deficit has been notoriously difficult to correlate to the severity of the sleep-disordered breathing, suggesting that other important issues may be at play, or that the right factors were simply not being measured.
A study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine opens the door to understanding the complex relationship between sleep, breathing and brain function in a whole new way.
__________
Interesting Apnea Statistics
~~ Apnea in United States ~~
As of May 2, 2009 at 9:47 p.m. (-0500) (ET), the U.S. population
was 306,340,710. Sleep researchers estimate approximately seven percent
of the population suffers from obstructive sleep apnea. Using that
estimate, there are potentially 21,443,850 apneics in the U.S.
~~ Apnea around the world ~~
As of May 2, 2009 at 9:47 p.m. (-0500) (ET), the world population
was 6,777,286,604. Sleep researchers estimate approximately seven percent
of the population suffers from obstructive sleep apnea. Using that
estimate, there are potentially 474,410,062 apneics in the world.
