Can loss of weight cure sleep apnea

I was about 28 lbs overweight and am now following a food plan which means I am likely to be at my recommended weight in a couple of weeks. How likely is this to "cure" my sleep apnea? What is the easiest way of finding out if my sleep apnea is "cured"?

Even though I have been wearing a mask for over five years, it still bothers me and I would love to be able to trash it and still remain healthy/

Got any ideas?

John

Hi John. I see this was being discussed several weeks ago. You must be getting close to your goal. Congratulations on that. As was said, the only way to know for sure is another sleep study. Short of that, you could lower the pressure on your machine and see if that results in an increase in events. If so, you're not cured. If there are no events at a low pressure, it doesn't prove your sleep apnea is gone, but I would take that as another study might be worthwhile. If your AHI is low enough, there may be some things you can try to see if you can get by without cpap, like a neck support collar and side sleeping. But the only way to know for sure is a study, either at home or in the lab.

If you suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, and it's mild, then there's a chance that losing weight will reduce your symptoms, perhaps to the point where you no longer need pap therapy.

If you have central apneas, or hypopneas, weight loss will probably have little impact.

If your sleep apnea is moderate or severe, it's unlikely that weight loss of 28lb is going to resolve all obstructive apneas for you, but it should improve your symptoms and is still worthwhile.

I was hoping to find research on weight loss to give you a better answer to "How likely is this to "cure" my sleep apnea?" but nothing pops up, and one article indicates:

Surprisingly, there have been few formal studies of how effectively weight loss leads to lesser, lighter snoring and diminished incidents of apnea and hypopnea during sleep. Despite this, anecdotally practitioners report striking improvements in both OSA and snoring among patients who lose weight.

Source: http://sleepapnea.org/treat/treatment-options.html

Note that there are other treatment options you might pursue depending on the severity of your sleep apnea which could allow you to stop using the PAP. A few advancements made in just the last few years may apply to your needs, so it's worth investigating and discussing alternative therapies with your physician.

Also, it may be time to try a number of other mask types and models, you might be able to resolve the issues with your current mask if you do a diligent search through today's models.

Skinny people have sleep apnea as well so no answer to that question can be definitive.

There is a 50/50 chance if you are obese that when you lose weight you might get off it.

I am not sure whether 28 lbs would make much difference.

Good job on the weight loss!
Even if your apnea is not cured, it could improve,
and your health in general will benefit.
I second the notion that you may need to keep looking for a better mask.
Most of the old ones just SUCK.

JohnMudie wrote:How likely is this to "cure" my sleep apnea?

Only time and some investigation will tell.

Thinking of this in reverse... how much weight would a thin man without OSA have to put on before he developed OSA?

I suspect it's a lot - which means unless you're really heavy, losing weight isn't going to be a cure. My doctor said unless you have a 17" neck, weight loss won't have enough of an effect to go CPAP-less.

Sound familiar?

viewtopic/t110520/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1 ... 5#p1049115

Nine years and you still haven't embraced/accepted this therapy yet, John?


Den

.

I lost 87 lbs over a year and a half. My AutoPap pressures went down maybe at most a point. They are still roughly the same after that massive weight loss than they were before the weight loss. And thats using a premium, top of the line, Resmed S9 AutoPaps...actually I own two of them and both give approximately the same 95th percentile and same AHIs.

My answer? No, probably not.

Technically, I could have lost another ten pounds. Technically I was still in the mild overweight category. But another ten pounds was all I could lose and I dont believe that would have made a difference. But who knows, maybe if I had lost that last ten pounds, BOOM my APAP would have stopped going up while I was asleep. I guess I could lose that last ten pounds and find out.

The weight loss sleep apnea link is overhyped...its probably being pushed hard by the health insurance industry behind the scenes to unwitting doctors (including sleep medicine doctors) and patients, to try to save the health insurance industry money. The health insurance tries to blame every illness they can think on obesity and being overweight. Its been that way since the early to mid nineties, when managed care health insurance became en vogue and the norm instead of the exception. Before the early to mid nineties, the health insurance industry mostly left medicine up to the doctors and medical research, not so anymore. Health insurance is practicing medicine on you now, although most dont realize it. And you probably wont get this message.

Not everyone comes to embrace the hose.
A few weirdos groove on the mild bondage.
Pretending to be a space traveler, firefighter, diver, etc. can get old.
It would be nice to one day sleep in the buff--neck up, so to speak.

Congrats on your weight loss, but unless you starve yourself to death, and die from it, untreated sleep apnea will still be trying to kill you, inch by inch.

De-Nile is deep, keep paddling!

And I who was only a few pounds over weight when I started have put on at least 30 lbs over the last few years and there have been NO CHANGE in my required pressure.

BlackSpinner wrote:And I who was only a few pounds over weight when I started have put on at least 30 lbs over the last few years and there have been NO CHANGE in my required pressure.

In the over 10 years since I started XPAP, my weight has went up over 130 lbs, my pressure remained the same 14.5 cm..... Jim

I would like to say that weight loss when obese or even overweight is ALWAYS a good thing and should not be discounted. There are several diseases that ARE directly made more difficult to treat when obese, chief among those are diabetes and joint/low back pains. My blood pressure DID go down dramatically, to the orthostatic hypotension severity (low blood pressure problems).

But there are several chronic conditions I think are generally, I say generally, the obese connection is overhyped. High cholesterol is one, I think thats heavily genetic. And the other is obstructive sleep apnea, I think many doctors very badly want to believe in the direct connection they have been taught in their dogmatic profession of medicine. But I have not seen that connection and dont believe that obesity/sleep apnea connection nearly as much as I used to.

That being said, I do believe some apnea cases can be cured by massive, permanent weight loss. Just not all or not most cases of apnea and I think its a shot in the dark, doctors cant predict WHO will cure themselves by weight loss and who wont.

I do know losing weight will lower my pressures a little bit, for me thats all Ive noticed.

And I am speaking from experience firsthand.