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In Remembrance
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: about 45 minutes to anywhere!
Posts: 3,086
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In Remembrance
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: about 45 minutes to anywhere!
Posts: 3,086
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Study: To sleep better, perchance to live longer ~
Study: To sleep better, perchance to live longer
(AP) -- Shakespeare once called sleep the "balm of hurt minds." Bodies, too, apparently. People with the severe form of apnea, which interferes with sleep, are several times more likely to die from any cause than are folks without the disorder, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Sleep.
The findings in the 18-year study confirm smaller studies that have indicated an increased risk of death for people with apnea, also known as sleep-disordered breathing.
"This is not a condition that kills you acutely. It is a condition that erodes your health over time," Dr. Michael J. Twery, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, said in a telephone interview.
People with such disorders "have been sleep deprived for perhaps very long periods of time, they are struggling to sleep. If this is happening night after night, week after week, on top of all our other schedules, this is a dangerous recipe," said Twery, whose center is part of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
The institute estimates that 12 million to 18 million people in the U.S. have moderate to severe apnea. The condition is not always detected because the sufferer is asleep when the problem occurs and it cannot be diagnosed during a routine office visit with a doctor. Researchers tested the patients for sleep-disordered breathing in the laboratory and then followed them over several years.
For people with apnea, their upper airway becomes narrowed or blocked periodically during sleep. That keeps air from reaching the lungs. In some cases, breathing stops for seconds to a minute or so; the pauses in breathing disrupt sleep and prevent adequate amounts of oxygen from entering the bloodstream.
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On the Net:
Sleep: http://www.journalsleep.org
NIH: http://www.nih.gov
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with much love,
lou_lou
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by
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, on Flickr
pd documentary - part 2 and 3
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Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in your life you will have been all of these.
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