Can sleep apnea actually kill you? Now, the sleep apnea organization covered
this issue and talked about Carrie Fisher's death. Their perspective was
- sleep apnea can kill you; and I think they've got a valid point. You might
think about that and say well you know, there were drugs involved and that's what
killed her and people were trying to hide that fact. Well, there were a lot of
facts. There were also a lot of sub positions around Carrie Fisher's death
and my point here is not really so much what Carrie Fisher died from. My point is -
Can and does sleep apnea kill people? and can it kill you if you have it? The - I
think, the answer is yes if you - but we'll get to some of the the rationale behind
that a little bit later. A couple of things about Carrie Fisher's death - she
was on a flight, she did sleep, she had some sleep disordered breathing sessions -
what is sleep disordered breathing? and why do you hear that term sometimes
instead of obstructive - obstructive sleep apnea? Another question related to all
this is - Can skinny people get sleep apnea? I had a viewer mention my comment
about - I have mild - mild to moderate sleep apnea and I'm obviously thin. The answer
is yes, of course you can. Is it worse and does obesity increase the risk?
Absolutely it does. But there's no question - Yes, then - then skinny people can
get sleep apnea. Back to the question of obstructive sleep apnea versus sleep
disordered breathing. There are other things besides airway obstruction that
can cause sleep disordered breathing. For example - drugs, alcohol is a very
common cause of sleep disordered breathing.
Another one is congestive heart failure. There was actually a
good New England Journal article on sleep disordered breathing and
congestive heart failure. I'm not going to cover that today and we'll cover that
in a later video. So, what's the justification that you could say "Maybe
it is possible to die from sleep apnea." I think, again, if you go to the sleepapnea.org,
it's a - it's a very good justification under the - this section: Is
it possible to die from sleep apnea? Their point is - Well, do you die
from AIDS itself or do you die from the infections which happen in your body?
AIDs has knocked out your body's ability to fight those infections and more
relative to viewers of this channel, how about diabetes and insulin
resistance? The reality is insulin resistance
probably kills more of us than anything else
because it creates that inflammatory process which creates cardiovascular
disease and that's what kills people. Well, again, back to the same question - is
it the - is it the insulin resistance, or the inflammation, or the cardiac
event itself? and it's a good point - they make a good point that obstructive sleep
apnea is clearly associated with increased risk for cardiovascular
disease; and, again, I think I will cover that a little bit later in terms of several
other videos that talk about the cycle of sleep disorder, breathing, and the
impact on inflammatory processes. Sleep disorder breathing, obstructive sleep
apnea are both very much related to increased cardiac death, diabetes, insulin
resistance, again, drug use and in - with drug use, it's in both ways.
Drug use can increase it. Like I mentioned, the most common one associated
where the drug causes this is alcohol, coccaine and other drugs, mental health drugs
can can impact this as well. Now, it goes the other direction where having sleep
apnea often causes problems with mental health. Mental health problems such as
depression and then - so, again, you go in the other way where this is called - where
obstructive sleep apnea or sleep disordered breathing is causing need to
take drugs. So, again, there's a lot of comorbidities ("Co-" meaning together, and
"morbidity" meaning illnesses) a lot of these illnesses are very much related to
each other. Now, in that New England Journal article that I'm going to cover
a little bit later, you'll see that there's a lot of evidence that CPAP may
not be as helpful as we think. Yhat just came out a couple of years ago. Now,
there's also a lot of people that would say "It really does help" - again, this is a
deep issue. If you've made it this far, thank you again for your interest,