Overweight people exposed to greater risk of sleep disordered breathing
Washington: The consequences of being overweight are not unknown. However a new study has revealed that being overweight not only increases the risk of sleep-disordered-breathing, but it also has greater consequences.
Excess weight increases the severity of oxygen desaturation in the blood of individuals with sleep disordered breathing.
“We knew that excess body weight is strongly related to more frequent breathing events—apneas and hypopneas—in persons with SDB,” said lead author Paul E. Peppard, Ph.D., assistant professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“This means that if, for example, a six-foot tall, 160-pound 45-year-old man (BMI= 22), had an apnea that produced a six-percent reduction in oxygen saturation, then a man with the same characteristics who weighed 235 pounds (BMI=32) would be expected to have a 6.6 percent reduction in blood oxygen saturation during a similar event,” said Dr. Peppard.
“This increased risk of more severe oxygen desaturation is not just associated with clinical obesity—any increase in weight above a BMI of approximately 25 appears to increase the risk and severity of SDB,” he added.
Category: Health
