Not too surprising, since both are linked to obstructive sleep apnea. In fact, it’s more likely that untreated obstructive sleep apnea is responsible for PTSD and dementia (and cardiovascular disease). Sleep apnea is known to cause brain damage via various mechanisms, including vascular insufficiency, micro-strokes and diminished brain metabolism, leading to lower brain tissue density and volume in critical areas of the brain. Obstructive sleep apnea also causes generalized over-reactivity of your involuntary nervous system. There are numerous reports of PTSD being cured years later after obstructive sleep apnea is found and treated. Since obstructive sleep apnea is so common, at least look for it before starting medications or psychotherapy. Dr. Barry Krakow is doing some cutting edge research in this area.

Did your symptoms of anxiety or panic attacks go away after treating your sleep apnea?

What this study reports about is a lack in the hours of sleep, but with sleep, quality usually goes hand in hand with quantity. Staying up later usually means that you’re more likely to snack closer to bedtime, or eat a late meal. This causes increased inflammation in the throat and the entire upper breathing passageways, leading to more obstructions and arousals. Eating close to bedtime is one of the most common habits that leads to poor quality sleep. Fortunately, it’s the first and the most obvious thing you can do to improve your child’s sleep quality.

I realize that for some parents, eating earlier and putting their child to bed can be challenging, but if you look at the long-term health implications of continuing this habit, it’s too important to ignore.

How many hours do your children sleep? Please enter your responses in the comments box below.

This general paradigm of Western medicine is that if you can lower your numbers (cholesterol or blood pressure), or prevent buildup of plaques in your blood vessels or brain, then you can supposedly “cure” the disease. But this is the fundamental problem with Western medicine. Every medicine that we use for chronic medical conditions only covers up the end result, rather than treating what’s actually causing the problem: our stress-filled modern lives, poor diet, lack of exercise, and poor breathing at night. Yes, lowering your cholesterol may lower your risk of heart disease by 10%, but at what cost? Side effects such as liver toxicity are routine in various cholesterol medications. In the same way, side effects from the various Alzheimer’s drugs are also very common.

Knowing what we know about the effects of untreated obstructive sleep apnea on the brain, and with the HUGE number of untreated sleep apnea patients, it’s time that sleep apnea researchers and Alzheimer’s researchers begin talking to each other.

Should scientists continue to go figure out ways to block amyloid plaque production, or should they be looking for an alternative explanation, such as obstructive sleep apnea? I’d like to hear your opinion. Please enter your comments in the box blow.

• Which treatments work, and which are hype
• Snoring options vs. obstructive sleep apnea options
• Why the laser procedures are old technology
• And much, much more….

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If the patient is still resistant, I give the following example: If you had high blood pressure or diabetes, you’ll feel fine, right? But if your doctor told you that despite dieting and exercise, your numbers (blood pressure or glucose levels) are still on the high side and medications were recommended, would you consider it?

Do you have obstructive sleep apnea and are completely symptom free? If you’re on some sort of treatment, what motivated you to start treatment? I’d like to know. Please enter your reasons in the text area below.

In an often repeated study on migraines, researchers showed again that having migraines is linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and even death.

These results are not surprising, since obstructive sleep apnea is strongly linked to cardiovascular disease and increased risk of death (46% in people with severe sleep apnea). Poor sleep quality that results leads to hypersensitivity of various nerve endings. If it happens in your sinuses, you’ll feel pain, pressure, headaches, nasal congestion and post-nasal drip. If in your ears, hearing loss, ringing, dizziness, fullness and sensitivity.

Having a migraine is not normal. If you suffer from migraines, it’s you’re body’s way of telling you that something is wrong, that you’re not getting quality deep sleep.

Do you suffer from migraines? If so, do your parents have heart disease or died early from cardiovascular complications? Is like to hear your response in the response box below.

Instead, these symptoms are the beginnings of the most common throat problem sleep apnea sufferers face. And as I explain below, without understanding why this occurs, it can be one of the hardest problems to treat.

Beware of the “Vacuum Effect”

People with obstructive sleep apnea are more prone to breathing problems at night due to partial or total collapse of one or more areas of the entire upper airway, from the nose to the tongue. It’s usually worse when on your back, since the tongue can fall back more in this position. During deep sleep, your muscles naturally relax and you’ll be more susceptible to breathing stoppages.

Pressure sensors placed inside sleep apnea patients reveal that every time an apnea occurs, a tremendous vacuum effect is created inside the chest and throat, which literally suctions up your normal stomach juices into your esophagus and throat. This can happen occasionally, even for normal people, but if you happen to have a late meal or a snack just before bedtime, there will be even more stomach juices lingering in your stomach to come up into the throat. If you happened to drink a nightcap, the situation is even worse since alcohol is a strong muscle relaxant.

What comes up into your throat is not only acid, but also bile, digestive enzymes, and even bacteria. Washings of lung, sinus and ear contents have shown H. pylori, a common stomach bacteria, and pepsin, a major stomach digestive enzyme. So what comes up can cause severe irritation in your throat, provoking the mucous secreting glands of your throat to try to dilute these substances.

Although people generally attribute throat mucous to post-nasal drip, in most cases there’s nothing dripping down the back of the throat. It’s actually coming from your stomach. However, in some cases, since your stomach juices can reach your nose, it can cause nasal congestion and inflammation, which can aggravate tongue and soft palate collapse by creating a vacuum effect downstream. Ultimately, it’s a vicious cycle.

Chronic acid and other irritating substances lingering in your throat can have other detrimental effects. One recent study showed that chronic acid exposure can numb or deaden the protective chemoreceptors in your throat. These are sensors that detect any acid in the throat to prevent aspiration of your stomach contents into your lungs. If these chemoreceptors sense any acid in your throat, a feedback signal is sent to the brain, causing you to wake up so that you can swallow. This is what’s called a reflux arousal.

Treating Reflux For Good

So besides not eating late and avoiding alcohol close to bedtime, what else can you do?

I’m assuming that many of you that are reading this article are already being treated for obstructive sleep apnea, via either CPAP, oral appliances, or even with surgery. The problem is that no matter which option you choose, there will always be some degree of reflux. Taking acid reflux medications can help sometimes, but for the most part, these reflux medications don’t really do anything for reflux. All they do is to lower the acid content content before it comes up into your throat.

Other options include stimulating your stomach via natural remedies or prescription medications to empty your stomach much faster. One fascinating study showed that using a combination of pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) and a pro-motility agent (domperidone) eliminated snoring in most people. Unfortunately, we don’t have the equivalent of domperidone here in the US. Other similar medications are available, but have more serious side effects.

This is why eating early at least 3-4 hours of bedtime is so important whether or not you have obstructive sleep apnea. The same also applies to alcohol. If your nose is stuffy, talk with your doctor to find a way to breathe better through your nose. Make sure you’re sleeping in your preferred or optimal sleep position. Lastly, work with your sleep physician to fully optimize your sleep apnea treatment, no matter which option you choose.

Knowing what we know about the effects of untreated obstructive sleep apnea, you could say that any type of brain injury, whether due to blunt head trauma, or small to large vascular events, cannot be good for memory, breathing, executive function, and motor control. But these are the same areas that are known to be affected when someone has untreated obstructive sleep apnea.

Chronic hypoxia causes inflammation and clotting in small vessels. One study showed that sleep apnea patients have much thicker blood, and that ear-brain reflexes where diminished, but improved after treatment. Hypoxic conditions in mice have been even shown to produce amyloid plaques—the same thing that’s seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

We also know that sleep apnea patients have much higher number of lacunar infarcts than people without, as well as having anywhere from 3-5 times increased risk of stroke. I would think numerous small strokes added together over years could lead to at least some degree of brain dysfunction.

It’s also safe to assume that if you have head trauma, having obstructive sleep apnea can prevent proper healing and regeneration.

Given all this, isn’t it possible that when a certain part of the brain is “injured” due to obstructive sleep apnea, depending on where it occurs, you’ll get various symptoms that correspond to where it’s happening? For example, we know that in sleep apnea patients, brain density, volume and metabolism are significantly diminished in areas that control breathing, respiration and autonomic control. What if you clotted a small vessel that feeds this area? Could it lead to central sleep apnea? What if you damage areas that produce dopamine, or hypocretin? Could this process lead to symptoms that mimic Parkinson’s or even narcolepsy? What if you had fluctuating areas of diminished blood flow that returns to normal? Could this lead to symptoms that are similar to multiple sclerosis?

I realize that much of this may be a stretch, but it never ceases to amaze me how devastating obstructive sleep apnea can be to the brain, no matter how mild it may be.

What do you think about my theory? Is it plausible, or too far fetched of an idea? I’d like to hear your opinions about this.

I've always wondered about this link, since almost every known medical condition is proven to be or possibly associated with obstructive sleep apnea. I was reminded about this connection when I read about golfer Phil Mickelson's psoriatic arthritis. I already commented on the association between sleep apnea and arthritis, and this time, I'm going to show you that psoriasis may be connected as well.

First of all, numerous studies have shown that people with psoriasis have a much higher chance of having cardiovascular disease. There are other reports that psoriasis is associated with an increased incidence of cancer, lymphoma, obesity, metabolic syndrome (also known as "Syndrome X"), autoimmune diseases (Crohn's disease and diabetes, etc.), psychiatric diseases (such as depression and sexual dysfunction), psoriatic arthritis, sleep apnea, personal behavior issues, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  If you have severe psoriasis, the likelihood that you'll have a heart attack is 3 times normal. Your chance of dying overall is almost doubled than if you didn't suffer from this condition. Average life expectancy is about 3 to 5 years shorter for someone with psoriasis.

We also know that obstructive sleep apnea can cause metabolic syndrome, hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, inflammation, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Your risk of dying early increases 45% if you have severe obstructive sleep apnea.

There's even a case report of someone with severe psoriasis who was completely cured after undergoing gastric bypass surgery for obesity.

Here's my take on the connection between obstructive sleep apnea and psoriasis: The chronic stress response and repeated episodes of hypoxia deprives the skin of vital blood flow and nutrients. Sympathetic activity overload preferentially shuts down certain parts of the body that are considered unessential, such as the digestive system, reproductive system, and the skin. In addition, chronic low-grade stress also causes your immune system to overreact and cause inflammation, inducing various self-destroying tendencies that are common with autoimmune conditions.

What do you think about this possible connection? I'd like to hear your opinion.

It's more likely that brain structure changes can predispose women to menstrual cramps. Interestingly, untreated obstructive sleep apnea has been shown to result in lowered brain tissue volume and density in critical areas such as memory, executive function, and autonomic control. So it's not surprising that many women with problem menstrual cramps can't sleep on their backs, and are more tired than normal, since they can't sleep efficiently. Due to smaller jaw structures, the tongue can take up relatively more space in the throat, and can obstruct during deep stages of sleep, especially when muscles begin to relax.