According to a new study, losing weight and improving your lifestyle could reduce or eliminate the symptoms of sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is a syndrome “associated with nocturnal snoring and daytime sleepiness, a consequence of very disturbed, jerky and poor quality sleep”, explains the Health Insurance website. It would affect about 4% of the French population. According to a recent study published in JAMAthe fact of losing weight and improving one’s lifestyle would reduce the symptoms, or even make them disappear.
The solution to say goodbye to sleep apnea
As part of this study, the researchers came to ask the following question: “An interdisciplinary intervention focused on weight loss and lifestyle combined with usual care (treatment with continuous positive airway pressure, or CPAP) is- it effective in treating moderate to severe sleep apnea syndrome in people suffering from overweight or obesity? “.
For this, they carried out a randomized clinical trial with 89 Spanish men suffering from moderate to severe sleep apnea and being overweight or obese. For eight weeks, some underwent clinical treatment and others came change their lifestyle in addition to traditional treatments. In the details, the latter made sure to get enough sleep; perform physical activity via aerobics; follow a diet intended to make them lose weight; and stop smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol.
Lifestyle habits that are much more beneficial to health
The results thus show that the new lifestyle habits adopted enabled 45% of the participants to stop taking treatments for sleep apnea; 62% after 6 months. In conclusion of this work, the researchers explain: “This study made it possible to obtain clinically significant and lasting improvements in the severity and comorbidities of sleep apnea, as well as in the quality of life of the patients. Our approach can therefore be seen as a central strategy to address the far-reaching impact of this increasingly common respiratory disorder.”