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Breathing Lessons for Sleep Apnea Sufferers

Proper breathing is fundamental to good health and vitality. It’s also the most basic physiologic function that we must do to survive. Improper breathing can lead to illness, disease, and ultimately, death. Ancient Hindu cultures recognized this basic principle and developed very sophisticated breathing techniques that we now realize are scientifically sound when it comes to promoting optimal health, energy and life balance. These breathing concepts have spread across various continents to different cultures, but the basic fundamental principles remain the same.

What Most Holistic Doctors Already Know

Breathing means spirit in many languages (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit), but not in English. In Latin, the word for breath and the word for soul are the masculine and feminine roots of the same root. In Greek, the two words are the same.

Breathing is a natural physiologic function which continues, regardless of whether or not you notice it. It’s controlled by two parts of the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is the classic fight-or-flight half that’s needed if you’re in a fight or running from a tiger. The parasympathetic nervous system is the relaxation half, promoting sleep, digestion and reproduction.

Inhalation is activated by the sympathetic nervous system and exhalation is activated by the parasympathetic part. When you slow down your breathing, your heart rate slows down. If you take a little longer exhaling relative to inhaling, then you’re spending more time activating your parasympathetic nervous system. This is the physiologic reason why breathing techniques such as the relaxing breath is literally relaxing. These same concepts also apply to singing, humming or whistling. Notice that when you sing, you’re spending up to 10 to 20 times longer exhaling relative to inhaling. By activating your vagus (parasympathetic) nerve, this is why you feel good when you sing.

What Some Doctors Don’t Know

We all take it for granted that the physical air passageways that we breathe through is more than sufficient as conduits for air to travel into and out of our lungs. However, our upper air passageways are dynamically changing all the time, depending on your head position, weather status, allergies, emotions, moods, stress levels and even what you just had for lunch. Your nose is exquisitely sensitive to pressure or humidity changes, swelling or shrinking your internal nasal turbinates to significant degrees. Air passing through the nasal cavity is being filtered, humidified, and warmed before passing into the lungs. Any temporary or permanent blockage to proper breathing in this area can prevent optimal airflow into the lungs.

In addition, the nose and sinus cavities make a gas called nitric oxide, which has two important beneficial properties. The first property is that nitric oxide is antimicrobial, both in the nose as well as in the lungs. This gas, when inhaled even in small amounts into the lungs, can increase oxygen absorption up to 20%. Not breathing through your nose for whatever reason has potentially detrimental effects on your health.

What Most Doctors Don’t Know

Everyone in the Western, alternative and complementary fields of healing naturally assume that we are able to breathe properly at night. We now know that there are certain medical conditions such as sleep apnea where you have complete obstruction and repeated bouts of oxygen deprivation. Most practitioners still think that this typically occurs in some people who are overweight, snore, and have big necks. But now we know that even young, thin women who don’t snore can have significant obstructive sleep apnea. Even more, many people who don’t officially meet the criteria for obstructive sleep apnea still can have significant breathing pauses but wake up too quickly to be classified as an apnea. These are the patients that are commonly diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia.

However, the bigger issue is that by definition, all modern humans are susceptible to breathing problems at night for the following reason: Due to jaw narrowing and dental crowding from a radical change in our diets, our tongues take up relatively too much space, and as a result, we’re more susceptible to obstructing the airway when sleeping on our backs (supine) and in deep sleep due to muscle relaxation. In his classic nutritional text, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston Price documented these physical changes. Our ability to talk also positioned our voice boxes below the tongue, which can aggravate this process.

Many modern humans can’t sleep on our backs anymore since the tongue and voice box falls back the most in the back position. As a result, we compensate by sleeping only on our sides or stomachs. The problem is that it’s not good enough. A simple cold or an allergy attack, or with even 5 to 10 pounds of weight gain, can cause more frequent obstructions occur, leading to less efficient sleep.

Less efficient sleep leads to a physiologic stress response that can cause or aggravate a number of various medical conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, cold hands, digestive problems, high blood pressure, etc. What I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm is that all modern humans are on a continuum, where the one extreme end is called obstructive sleep apnea. The rest of us are lower down, but we creep up during various life stages, such as puberty, pregnancy, and menopause. A simple cold, by causing nasal congestion in a young, healthy woman, can cause her to toss and turn at night, due to repeated tongue collapse. Once the cold improves, sleep improves as well.

What We All Must Know

Breathing should never be taken for granted. We must do everything to make sure that proper breathing occurs not only during the day, but also at night. Many younger, thinner patients who complain of being tired all the time will also be found to have hypothyroidism, anemia, cold hands and feet, low blood pressure, anxiety, depression, or other various disorders. Later in life, as they slowly gain weight, they move up the continuum, and eventually will go into obstructive sleep apnea.

Almost invariably, one or both parents will snore and have known or unknown cardiovascular disease. If you see a high-arched hard palate, an extra small mouth or a recessed jaw, or scalloping on the side of the tongue, ask about sleep position, fatigue issues, and sleep. You’ll be surprised how often all these features come together to explain your chronic fatigue and various health problems.

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To hear Dr. Park’s interview with master Yoga teacher and Feldenkrais expert on the proper principles of breathing for better health and better sleep, click here.

Which Comes First, Sleep Apnea or Stress?

Sleep apnea is a major cause of physiologic stress. External stress of any kind (especially the holiday season) only aggravates the internal, physiologic stress that I describe in people who don’t sleep well.

To help you better manage your stress this holiday season, I’ve invited Dr. Niloo Dardashti, an integrative psychologist and holistic healer for this month’s expert interview, and I hope you’ll dial in and join us.

During this free information-packed hour, you’ll learn:

- What’s the interaction between stress, sleep problems and heart disease?

- What are some techniques for quieting "inner chatter" when stress has its’ hold on us?

- How can I stop unwanted thoughts?

- Which comes first – the chicken or the egg – does lack of sleep cause stress, or does stress cause lack of sleep?

- How can stress be handled returning to work after holidays or vacations?

- What are Dr. Dardashti’s thoughts on ADHD, Adderall and stimulants, especially for someone who has both anxiety and sleep apnea?

- How can I quit smoking if I’m very stressed and exhausted?

- What’s the best way of controlling work related stress?

- How can one reduce stress during a very stressful situation, such as being stuck in a large crowd, for example?

- How can I deal with being short on cash?

Tuesday, December 15th, at 8PM Eastern.

Register here to receive the call-in details.

Breast Cancer and the Sleep Apnea–Alcohol Link

I’ve been accused in the past of of trying to link everything to sleep apnea. While not everything is caused by sleep apnea (taxes, the weather, etc.), I can make a good argument that not breathing properly during the day and while sleeping can directly or indirectly affect every aspect of our state of health and well-being. Obstructive sleep apnea is only a small fraction of what I describe in my sleep-breathing continuum. Due to the way we define sleep apnea, you can have major sleep-breathing problems and not have any sleep apnea. 

 

Along these lines, here’s something interesting to think about: Can a sleep-breathing problem cause or aggravate breast cancer?

 

Drinking alcohol was found to increase a woman’s risk of not only developing breast cancer, but also increase the risk of developing recurrence in breast cancer survivors. In a recent study from Kaiser Permanente, women who drank 3-4 glasses of wine per week were 34% more likely to develop a recurrence compared with women who drank little to no alcohol.

 

The researchers speculated that alcohol can increase levels of estrogen, which increases metabolism. However, they didn’t have a clear explanation for these findings. What’s more relevant to this discussion is the fact that post-menopausal women and overweight women who drank were at higher risk for recurrence.

 

Like many other studies, researchers never commit themselves to state that one thing causes another—they can only state statistical likelihood of an association, but not causation. 

 

Similar finding are being reported with prostate cancer—that heavy alcohol consumption and being overweight increases your risk of recurrence.

 

Here’s my interpretation of these findings: Alcohol is a strong muscle relaxant that’s usually taken with dinner or later in the evening. Muscle relaxation during deep sleep causes more frequent obstructions in your breathing, which can cause or aggravate existing sleep apnea. The resulting activation of the sympathetic nervous system leads to a relative hypoxic environment in preferential body parts and organs, such as the gastrointestinal system, the reproductive system, the skin, and the hands and feet. 

 

Since the breast is a combination skin and reproductive structure, it’s more susceptible to various levels of hypoxia. Physiologic stress that develops in sleep apnea constricts blood vessels that feed blood into the breasts. This is also why many women with breast cancer also have cold hands and feet.

 

As I’ve described in my book, Sleep, Interrupted, hypoxia creates chemical mediators that tell the body to send more blood. One particular substance is vascular endothelial growth factor, or VGEF, which promotes new vessel formation and more aggressive tissue growth and regeneration.

 

Menopause is stage in life in a woman’s life where progesterone slowly diminishes, leading to more and more frequent obstructions and arousals (since progesterone promote tongue muscle tone). Furthermore, inefficient sleep can promote weight gain. Weight gain narrows the throat, leading to more frequent obstructions. Women’s rate of cardiovascular disease also increases significantly after menopause, along with a significant increase in obstructive sleep apnea. We know that sleep apnea can cause heart disease, but so far, these conditions are treated separately. It’s not surprising that breast cancer is treated independently, rather than looking at the bigger picture. 

 

Granted, this is an unorthodox explanation for breast cancer, but as Einstein once said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we we created them." In other words, we must think outside the box.

 

What I’m proposing doesn’t contradict traditional explanations for breast cancer. Rather, it’s a different perspective that can only complement existing treatment options.

 

What you do think about this explanation? Please enter your responses in the box below.

How Sleep Apnea Can Cause Anxiety And Panic Attacks

As we approach the most stressful time of the year, the one thing that we all forget to do is to remember to breathe. Literally. Tension and stress causes a nervous system reaction that causes you to take short, shallow breaths, leading to carbon dioxide (CO₂) retention. Interestingly, a recent study showed that increased levels of carbon dioxide has been shown to affect areas in the brain that triggers fear and panic attacks.

 

This makes sense since if you’re chronically oxygen deprived from not breathing at night due to sleep apnea, you’re going to build up carbon dioxide, which can increase the acidity levels in the amygdala, which is the area of the brain that processes fear and behavior. 

 

This biochemical reaction, along with generalized nervous system over-responsiveness that comes along with inefficient sleep, is a good reason for you to feel over-stressed, over-anxious, and on edge. I’ve also described a situation where your tongue suddenly collapses and obstructs your breathing, and you’ll wake up violently, in a state of panic, in a cold sweat, and with your heart racing. This happens much more commonly than you think.

 

This study makes me wonder what all the carbonated beverages are doing to us as a society.

 

What’s you’re take on this? Do you find yourself taking short, shallow breaths or even hold your breath when you’re stressed? Please enter your comments in the box below.

Why Sleep Apnea Increases During the Holidays

It’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I have to admit, I’m not feeling too well today. I had my usual two servings of turkey Thursday evening. For some strange reason, I had three pieces my other sister-in-law’s coconut cake, and as usual, this Thanksgiving dinner was much later than my usual dinner time. The next morning, I slept in a little later, but still didn’t feel as refreshed as I normally would. Later that day, I spent the day with my two older boys, Jonas and Devin at the Intrepid Museum. For some odd reason, I was craving toffee that Devin had brought, I was was eating one every 30 minutes. This morning, I was feeling even more tired than normal, and during lunch, I was craving soda or some other sugary drink, which I normally don’t drink.

I finally realized that eating sugar, and over-eating later than normal on Thanksgiving lessened my sleep efficiency that night, which raised my craving for sugar the following day. This just goes to show how powerful even mild sleep deprivation can cause a rise in sugar cravings, which if chronic, can lead to unhealthy eating habits, ultimately leading to weight gain. Stress (emotional, physical or mental), is also known to increase cravings for sugary, fatty, or "comfort" foods. And weight gain is known to worsen sleep apnea. (To listen to an interview I did with Peter Lappin on how you can Beat the Sugar Habit Before It Beats You, click here.)

The holiday season is known to be the most stressful time of the year, with all the over-eating due to holiday parties and late night dinners. This is why the rate of heart attacks is also the highest during this time of the year. Knowing what I’ve described, we should all take appropriate measures to eat more sensibly (and earlier), drink alcohol in moderation (and earlier during the evening), and do everything that’s reasonably possible to reduce your stress levels. Find out how you can do this by joining me on December 15th, when I interview Dr. Niloo Dardashti, an integrative psychologist and holistic healer on 10 simple ways to reduce stress.

I’m sure if we had a collective sleep apnea meter that measures the total amount of sleep apnea in this country, it will most likely be at its’ peak level during the next month.

How are you going to address this issue, if any, this holiday season? Please enter your response in the comments box below.

 

 

Swine Flu Hullabaloo

Have You Checked Your GABA Levels Lately?

GABA is a neurotransmitter that shows up once in a while that’s linked to a number of various medical and psychiatric disorders. One of the more recent studies was published in the 11/08 issue of Sleep (a summary can be seen here). Chronic insomniacs were found to have 30% less GABA activity in their brains. This finding could be misinterpreted to imply that because of low GABA levels, people can have insomnia. Let me explain.

GABA is one of numerous neurotransmitters in the brain that sends messages from one part of the brain to another. High GABA levels are associated with a calming, relaxing effect, whereas low levels are associated with anxiety and stress. Conventional wisdom says that if this is true, let’s increase GABA levels with supplements. The same can be said for various other neurotransmitters, hormones or vitamins that we use as supplements. In many cases, replacing what’s missing can certainly help, but you’re still not addressing what’s actually causing the lowering of these substances. 

If you look in the research literature (and on the internet), you’ll see many studies linking stress and low GABA levels. Another study showed that practicing yoga increases GABA. This is why any method or discipline that is calming or relaxing can raise your GABA levels. So it’s not a lack of GABA that gives you insomnia, per se, but there’s something else that is causing insomnia and low GABA levels.

This is a problem that we see with almost every area of modern medicine, where we’re great at finding associations, but not very good at solving the root of the problem. 

The common thread with all these studies goes back to stress. Yes, we have many different types of stress in our lives that can lead to insomnia (financial, work, family, poor diets, toxins, etc.), but what I’m suggesting is the possibility that due to our unique upper airway anatomy, all of us are somewhat susceptible to physiologic stress due to an inability to breathe properly at night. External stresses (psychologic, emotional and physical) can also aggravate this internal, physiologic stress.

The extreme end of this spectrum that I describe is called obstructive sleep apnea. But even if you’re "normal," having a narrowed upper airway anatomy can predispose you to microbstructions and arousals, leading to a physiologic state of hyperarousal. These people won’t officially meet the criteria for sleep apnea. Many of these people will also not be able to sleep on their backs, since that’s when the tongue falls back the most, due to gravity.

If you measure neurotransmitter levels in these patients, of course they’ll have abnormalities. This is why chronic insomnia is linked later in life to so many other medical conditions such as depression, diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Notice that these are all complications of obstructive sleep apnea. 

This is not to say that we should stop everything we do to treat insomnia. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a great way to calm the mind and develop good sleep habits. It’s even been found to work better than sleeping pills. My only concern is what happens to these people many decades later, even if their insomnia is initially cured.

Can The Recession Make You Fat?

There’s been a lot of press recently about how the current economic situation is causing people to lose sleep. According to a recent National Sleep Foundation poll, 16% of Americans report losing sleep at least a few days in the past month due to the current financial situation. Another 15% are worried about the economy, and 10% are anxious about losing their jobs.

Lack of sleep for any reason and stress go hand in hand. One aggravates the other. Physiologic stress that develops as a result of inefficient sleep causes hormonal changes that can cause you to gain weight. Any external stresses such as psychological, emotional, or physical stress can also aggravate internal physiological stress.

When cortisol is increased due to stress, your appetite is increased for fatty and sugary foods, or "comfort" foods. This sets off a hormonal chain reaction where as you gain more weight, the fat cells in your throat can narrow slightly, aggravating any underlying breathing problems that I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm. This perpetuates more sleep disruption and the vicious cycle continues.

Have you gained any weight recently since the recession began?

Can Smoking Be Good For You?

Despite all the really bad known consequences of smoking, there’s one aspect of the act of smoking that may actually be beneficial. It’s been shown that it takes about 1-2 minutes for nicotine to go through the bloodstream and reach your brain which gives you that "relaxed" feeling. But what most smokers will tell you is that they feel better after the first 1-2 deep inhalations. Plus, since nicotine is a stimulant, how can it make you feel more relaxed?

 

I sometimes joke with my patients that in the typical workplace, the only people that get regular breaks are the smokers. Modern society has gotten rid of all the natural,  built-in breaks. So smokers, by going out of their stressful environments every few hours, are taking grown-up time-outs. Not only are they taking these "breaks," as they puff in the cigarette smoke, they are actually performing deep breathing exercises. They’ve associated the good feeling that they get with the physical act of smoking, which also happens to make you take some slow deep breaths. This is the concept that George Wissing describes in his fascinating book, Quit Struggle Free. 

 

By no means am I recommending that everyone who’s stressed go out and start smoking. But by using these concepts, you can get the same benefits of smoking without inhaling the toxic chemicals from cigarets. There are various resources for learning deep-breathing exercises, or take a yoga class.

How to Destress During Stressful Times

As a first time author who has worked for a year and a half to get my book published, I feel a combination of  excitement and pure terror now that the book is out and available to the public. On the one hand, I’m excited to be able to share my revelations about health and wellness to as many people on this planet as possible. But at the same  time, I’m scared to death that the book will flop and that  no one would have been helped by my message.    

Still, I’m sure that my stress is nothing compared to the  stress that many of you probably feel when you come see me.  I see many patients coming in these days thinking the  worst case scenario—thinking that their chronic throat pain is a sign of throat cancer, or that their ear pain is the  beginnings of a brain tumor. It’s not surprising during  hard economic times, that the stress and uncertainty about our financial future manifests physically as one type of illness or another. However, there is one intrinsic stressor that I see all the time that many people overlook. And without addressing this one problem first, it’s virtually impossible to eliminate all the other stress in our lives no matter what the circumstance.      

Why Stress?   

As I state in my book, Sleep, Interrupted, all modern  humans are susceptible to various degrees to breathing  stoppages due to our tongues falling back and occluding our  upper airways. This problem is thought to be due to our  unique ability to talk. In humans, the voice box sits below  the tongue, whereas in human infants and other animals, the  voice box sits behind the tongue. You could even say that  the overdevelopment of complex speech and language may be  detrimental to breathing and swallowing. This is evidenced  by the fact that only humans regularly choke on food and  die.   

Up until recently, this airway "problem" was not really a  problem for those who were relatively young and healthy.  Unless you were an obese, middle aged male who snored like  a freight train, sleep breathing problems like obstructive  sleep apnea or OSA, would not have been an issue.   

However, in the last 10 to 20 years a lot has changed. Not  only are we living longer, thanks to advancements in  science, but we’re also getting heavier, less active and  working longer hours thanks to technological innovations  like the internet and the mobile phone. Add to that, our  poor diets and frenetic lifestyles, and what we have is a serious problem for anyone who needs to sleep and breathe. Ironically, during this last century we seemed to have devolved in an effort to evolve.     

That Was Then, This Is Now   

In my book, Sleep Interrupted, I reference a dentist named Weston Price who traveled the world in the first half of  the 1900s and discovered that indigenous, isolated cultures that ate completely off the land (or mountains or the oceans) had wide jaws and perfectly aligned teeth. But once  their children began to eat Western diets,namely more  processed foods with highly refined sugars, their jaws became more narrow and dental crowding became rampant.    

Similarly, another dentist, Dr. Brian Palmer, noticed that  there has been an exponential increase of malocclussions,  or dental crowding and jaw malformation in children over  the last 10-20 years. He proposes that bottle-feeding may  have attributed to this process and that we’re seeing more  and more sleep breathing problems like obstructive sleep  apnea as a result. Dr. David Page, another dentist who specializes in  Functional Jaw Orthopedics, suggests in his book, Your  Jaws, Your Life, that this type of jaw degeneration can have detrimental consequences to our health and longevity. He states that due to our:    "Diet, infant feeding practices…most people today have jaws about 1/4 inch too small to fit all the wisdom teeth into place. Sadly, small jaws and airways can bring about premature death."   

All of these findings support what I continue to see in my  medical practice as well—especially in those patients suffering from chronic ear, nose and throat problems along with unexplained fatigue, anxiety and an assortment of  digestive problems. What I see is a preponderance of jaw narrowing along with airway narrowing. It appears that both of these traits go hand in hand.    

What’s more significant however, is that I’m seeing this in  patients who are young, thin, and relatively healthy—three  physical characteristics that would have precluded them in earlier generations from being diagnosed with a sleep  breathing problem, like OSA. Yet now there seems to be a preponderance of this airway narrowing across all ages and  genders and along with it a host of sleep breathing problems. Many of them profess to feeling sick and tired  all the time no matter how long they sleep. Consequently, they’re more stressed than ever before.     

More Reasons to Stress    When you have any type of airway narrowing you’re bound to  have some major physiological stressors compounding your  health problems.   

Because of your smaller jaw size, airway narrowing is a  given and this means a higher likelihood of airway  obstruction especially as you lay back and go to sleep (and  your muscles become completely relaxed). This means that  you’ll also wake up multiple times during the night as you  cycle from deep sleep to light sleep since your narrow  airways tend to close off or obstruct completely as you  drift off to sleep.    

In OSA patients, these airway obstructions are called  "apneas" or loss of breath and this can happen 35 to a 100  times a night in some extreme cases, and these obstructions  oftentimes last as long as 10 seconds at a time. You can  imagine what kind of toll this would have on your body over  many years. It’s not surprising that a majority of OSA  patients also suffer from diabetes, heart disease, clinical  depression, anxiety, and obesity, not to mention that  they’re at higher risk for strokes and even Alzheimer’s.   

But there are many more patients who are not diagnosed with  OSA that still suffer from these similar effects. These are  the patients I most often see in my practice suffering from  a milder form of OSA called Upper Airway Resistance  Syndrome or UARS.   

Similar to OSA patients, UARS patients also wake up  multiple times while sleeping because they stop breathing.  Although these episodes are brief and not really noticed by  these patients, these breathing cessations can still be  significant happening 5 to 25 times an hour and lasting  anywhere from 1 to 9 seconds each time they stop breathing.   

It’s true that every once in a while, patients suffering  from UARS will obstruct completely and wake up gasping for  air, with their heart beating and in a cold sweat. Yet,  these episodes are dismissed as "panic attacks" and not  really explored for symptoms of a sleep breathing problem.   

Instead, multiple arousals like this eventually leads to a  chronic state of stress and sympathetic nervous system  overactivity (fight or flight response). This is a  physiologic form of stress. Various neurologic, hormonal  and biochemical changes cam occur, leading to certain  predictable events like: high blood pressure, cold hands  and feet, chronic nasal congestion or a runny nose, chronic  gastrointestinal problems, bladder problems, weight gain,  and many others. Typically these patients also exhibit many  of the symptoms and signs of a "routine" ear, nose and  throat problem, like chronic sinusitis, frequent ear  infections, and even nasal allergies.   

In this situation, any kind of external stress, whether  emotional, physical, or psychological can aggravate the  internal vicious cycle. Your entire nervous system is en  garde all the time, with your nervous system becoming  hypersensitive due to all the arousals and poor sleep  quality. Your emotions and all your senses are heightened.  Now place yourself in a stressful environment and you can  just imagine what will happen next.   

Add to this all the constant stimulation and information  overload that only adds to this perceived stress. If you  take it as a fact that we can’t sleep as efficiently as we  used to, then no wonder why so many of us are so on edge  these days. It doesn’t take much insight to figure out that  we need to first address these internal stressors before we  can effectively address the daily stress in our lives.     

Reassess Your Stress Level   

Timothy Ferris, in his New York Times best-seller, The 4  Hour Work-Week, tells this great story (loosely  paraphrased): An extremely successful but stressed-out  American CEO travels on vacation to a remote port village  in Mexico. While walking by the town docks, he notices a  local fisherman who brings in a boatload of fish, almost to  the point of capsizing. He notices that he catches the same  enormous amount of fish day after day. He approaches the  fisherman and offers to systematize the fisherman’s unique  techniques so that he can make multiple times the money in  profits. The fisherman asks what he can do with all the  money. “You and your family can eat anything you want, as  much as you want,” said the CEO. “But I have more than I  need to eat. I give the remaining fish to my neighbors,”  replied the fisherman. The CEO then responded, “then you  can build a larger house.” “Then what?” asked the  fisherman. “Then you can move to America and open up a fish  processing center with 200 employees and make a fortune!”  said the CEO. “Then what?” replied the fisherman. “After  you make all that money you can have the luxury of taking  time off any time you want and have your own private house  on the beach in a remote town and spend as much time as you  want with your family.” said the CEO. With a big smile, the  fisherman said, “But Señor, I’m doing that already.”   

Sometimes, especially during our most stressful moments, we  need to reassess what we’ve lost to gain better perspective  on what we have already. By becoming more aware and taking  action to regain control of our health you’ll gain momentum  to tackle any stress that comes your way. 

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If you suspect that you may have a sleep breathing problem  like OSA or UARS, take the following quiz on line here.

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