Diabetes And Sleep Apnea Have Connection

More than half of type 2 diabetics have some sort of sleeping problem, according to some new studies and about 40 percent of people with sleep obstructive sleep apnea, (this is the problem where breathing disruptions interfere with your sleep) also have type 2 diabetes.

To understand sleep apenea, you should know it is more common in obesity and people with diabetes.

What happens is that the upper airway collapses as your throat muscles relax during normal sleep, particularly the deep sleep part called REM. (this is where you straighten out what happened today) Lying down, there is a tendency for this to happen due to gravity.

This blockage, due to excess tissue closing down the trachea. The person tries to breathe, but can't due to the obstruction.

Your throat becomes like a one way valve, letting you exhale, but can't inhale. Your blood oxygen level falls and the blood pressure rises and the heart races to compensate.

At some point in order to survive you wake up momentarily. Breathe normal again for a bit and you fall back to sleep all over again, doing this all night totally unaware that anything abnormal has happened. Often waking up almost as tired as when you went to bed.

A person with this apnea rarely gets a proper nights sleep, is constantly tired and keeps saying, this getting "old" is a real bummer.

Editors Note:

Your editor had this diagnosed about 7 years before being diagnosed with diabetes. Reading this morning people can have diabetes as long as 12 years and not be diagnosed. This CPAP machine changed my life. I thought I was just getting old.....and wore out...was not the case at all....was just not getting enough REM sleep.(stands for deep sleep where Rapid Eye Movement is involved) Snoring is over, everyone can sleep again, and it fixed headaches and other problems. A humidifier is necessary, and Medicare buys you a whole new outfit every so often. A friend got one and never adjusted to its use and finally had an operation that seemed to fix it.

The associated sleep study is not pleasant experience but worth it and necessary to obtain one thru normal channels.

Ask me on the phone and I can probably legally tell you how i got my first one (cheap) thru abnormal channels, no sleep study.

The trick here is "how much air pressure is necessary?"