• Home
• About Dr. Park
  • Dr. Park’s Bio
  • My Mission
  • My Practice
  • Testimonials
• Sleep Apnea
• Articles
• Expert Interviews
• Sleep Apnea Blog
• Press Room
• Resources
• Contact Us

Subscribe: Email RSS 

How Many Calories Are In Your Burger?

After my interview with health counselor and nutritional expert, Peter Lappin a few nights ago, I began to look more closely at food labels on grocery products as well as in convenience and fast food stores. I wondered if people eating in fast food restaurants will actually make healthier choices now that they know exactly how many calories are in everything they eat. My opinion is no, that their habits won’t change. The only benefit that will come from this is that the fast food industry (as well as the general food industry) will use this as a disclaimer, similar to all the other legal disclaimers that you see everywhere (like the Surgeon General’s warning about smoking). The next time someone takes legal action against one of the fast food chains, they can argue that the customer was given full disclosure about the ingredients and the number of calories. In a perverse way, these labels and disclaimers may end up somewhat legitimizing people’s poor eating or smoking habits.

What this goes to show is that anytime the government takes action with genuinely good intentions, there always seems to be negative consequences. Helping people with bad eating habits to count more calories won’t make a dent in our obesity epidemic. What needs to be stressed is a holistic model, where the person’s nutritional, exercise, emotional, spiritual, socioeconomic, and family support factors are all accounted for and properly addressed. I’m highly skeptical of anything that touts one thing only, whether it’s counting calories, restricting one food group, eating lots of one mineral, etc. 

What’s your take on this? Do you think these labels in fast food restaurants will change peoples’ eating habits?

New Treatment For Sleep Apnea?

I came across an interesting article on one of my sleep medicine journals (Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine) describing a new device that is designed to treat snoring and obstructive sleep apnea using two small plugs that go into the nose. Essentially, it’s a one way valve that allows air to go in through your nose when you inspire, but builds up a certain amount of resistance when you exhale. The theory behind why it works is a little complicated, even for me, but a simple explanation is as follows: At the end of exhalation, your upper airways are the most relaxed and narrow. So by preventing full exhalation, a slight amount of pressure is built up, keeping the upper airways slightly more open. I looked at the raw numbers and the results were pleasantly surprising. For most people with mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea, there was a significant improvement in the number of obstructions and oxygen lowering. It doesn’t bring the numbers of breathing pauses down to 0, but the numbers were significant. Availability for use in the general public is still unknown, but I’ll keep you posted.  What other innovative or unusual ways of treating obstructive sleep apnea have you seen?

No Magic Bullets

I’ve stated before that the vast majority of conditions that patients come to see me for (over 90%) are directly a result of the person’s diet, lifestyle, and stress factors. A broken nose, a foreign body or an abscess are acute conditions that can be treated quickly, but many symptoms that I see such as nasal congestion, chronic sinus complaints, ear fullness, chronic fatigue, throat pain and hoarseness, are all conditions that are aggravated by, if not caused by the person’s lifestyle choices. For most people, when I point this out, are grateful that they don’t have to use a medication, and are willing to make the changes so they can start to feel better. Many of these patients do improve.

But there is a small minority that are adamant that there must be pill they can take to get rid of their throat pain or cough or sinus pressure. They are typically younger, and refuse to give up their social lives, and continue to stay up late, eating and drinking, especially on the weekends. If this were you, you may argue: others seem to get by just fine—why am I the only one with this problem?

My answer is that your anatomy is different. They are perfectly happy sleeping on their backs, and are able to breathe properly, even during deep sleep, when their throat muscles relax. In your case, because of smaller jaw anatomy, your tongue falls back easier when on your back, and whenever you go into deep sleep, your tongue relaxes during deep sleep, which causes obstruction and a vacuum effect is created, sucking up stomach juices into your throat, This causes more throat inflammation and swelling, aggravating this vicious cycle.

This is why it’s important that if you’re susceptible to this condition, you shouldn’t eat late or drink alcohol close to bedtime. This is one mechanism that explains why you can gain weight if you eat late. Inefficient sleep promotes weight gain. In addition, alcohol relaxes your muscles and only aggravates this problem.

How many of you are willing to make the necessary sacrifices to improve your health?

Q: What’s the best sleep position?

A: Although there are many studies in the psychology fields about personality types and sleep position, you may be surprised by how important sleep position may be for some of you. If you normally like to sleep on your back and are able to sleep well, waking up refreshed in the morning, then continue to do so. If you prefer to sleep on your side or stomach, then keep doing what you’re doing. But if you used to love sleeping on your stomach and now have to sleep on your back due to a neck, shoulder or back injury, then try to do everything possible to go back to your side or stomach again. If your grandmother told you that it’s healthy to sleep on your back, but you love to sleep on your stomach, ignore your grandmother. If your dermatologist tells you to sleep on your back to prevent facial wrinkles, then ignore your dermatologist as well. Sleeping better will be much more to prevent wrinkles and aging than keeping your face off your pillow.

The reason that sleep position is so important is that for many people, due to certain oral cavity features, the tongue falls back somewhat due to gravity. But if your jaw is on the small side, then the tongue falls back even more, and then when you go into deep sleep on your back, due to muscle relaxation, you obstruct and wake up. You can wake up subconsciously to light sleep or completely awake. People with these issues generally compensate well by not sleeping on their backs, but can never get deep refreshing sleep.

 

 

58% of Diabetics Have Obstructive Sleep Apnea

I came across this blog that mentioned that the International Diabetes Federation did a study which showed that 58% of type 2 diabetics have obstructive sleep apnea. Not too surprising, since we’ve known for years that the stress response created by sleep-breathing problems can cause glucose intolerance. This number may be much higher if you take into consideration all diabetics that obstruct 5 to 25 times every hour who wake up after 1-9 seconds each. Since they didn’t reach to 10 second threshold to count as an apnea, their apnea score (AHI) is officially 0. Rest assured, there will be many more of these “links” between obstructive sleep apnea an a myriad of other conditions such as hypertension (many studies already published), stroke (many studies), depression (many published), anxiety (many published), heart disease (many published), headaches (many published), obesity (many published), ADHD (too many to mention), and many other various conditions such as chronic fatigue, IBS, migraines, TMJ, chronic sinusitis, etc. So many associations between all these conditions and obstructive sleep apnea…hmmmmmm….is there a common link?

Knowing about the results of this study, do you think it will sway doctors to at least start screening for obstructive sleep apnea in their diabetic patients?
photo credit: Yogma

« Previous Page

Copyright © 2008 Doctor Steven Y. Park, MD | New York, NY | Integrative Solutions for Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome, and Snoring · Design by Fervent