Excellent post -- useful for everyone.

CodeBlueBlogMD

I too suffer from sleep apnea. I use a CPAP now, but I still occasionally have problems where I wake up with my heart racing and gasping for breath.

I wish that such famous persons with Sleep Apnea would come out and discuss their condition openly in hopes of advancing awareness and treatment prospects for everyone. There are so many celebrity spokespersons for things like Parkinsons, MS, and so forth, but who can you name as a Sleep Apnea spokesperson of any fame?

Please.... someone famous... take a chance and get out there and raise awareness. I don't know if sleep apnea contributed to Reggie White's death, but regardless, it is a serious condition that too often goes undiagnosed and can lead to hypertension, depression, and many other issues.

I was used to suffer from snoring as well as apnea. I had laser surgery done by a well known doctor in Philadelphia (Dr. Mansoor Madani). My life has changed and I breath better, sleep better and don't snore anymore. He has a great website (www.snorenet.com) it is certainly worth visiting

I'm a polytech in NC. If you stay on your cpap faithfully, there is nothing to fear.
Once tested(well), the pressure should stint your airway to the point of obstruction being an impossibility.(unless you gain alot of weight)

I have sleep apnea. "Hosehead" is what we call ourselves, since most of us use CPAP or APAP (xPAP means any of the different machines...)

A great resource website to find others like yourself is:

http://www.talkaboutsleep.org/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi

We support one another as finding a sleep doctor who knows about the machines, masks and compliance issues we face can be a monumental struggle.

See you there!

The data on the association of obstructive sleep apnea and coronary artery disease is far more robust than you believe. The studies you cite are quite old by now, the summary from the site "uptodate" apparently does not give much weight to some of the important studies that have come along in the last five years.

I am not a scientist, but a sleep apnea sufferer, and one of my good friends, Peretz Lavie from the Technion in Israel, has long been recognized as one of the leading researchers. I would suggest that you look at his March, 2005, article in the European Respiratory Journal, which addresses between all-causes mortality and sleep apnea, particularly among younger (<50 yrs) OSA sufferers. Most significantly, Dr. Lavie has an article in the current (May, 2005) journal, Sleep, on the association between OSA and endothelial dysfunction. The introduction to the article cites the multiplicity of strong studies illuminating the established association between OSA and cardiovascular disease, including hypertension. I believe the evidence will continue to build.

I suggest reading Lavie's book, Restless Nights, published by Yale Univ. Press (2004). It is a good book for OSA sufferers and physicians, including especially primary care physicians and cardiologists, who have not really paid sufficient attention to this syndrome.

I was recently diagnosed w/ sleep apnea, waking up an average of 8.5 times per hour at night. I'm 31 yrs old have also been sufferring from "depression" over eight years ago - now I'm wondering if this would have been the case if I would have asked about sleep apnea sooner. Too bad there's not more out there about sleep apnea to make people more aware of how serious it is.

Hosehead! I like that. The 90-degree angled plastic pipe where the hose connects reminds me of an elephant trunk. If you open your mouth, with the air being forced out you can sound like Darth Vader, or a heavy breathing phone stalker!

Although approx 3 yrs old I was saddened to hear of the death of this otherwise fit young man 'Reggie White'. It is only now, years later that I find myself connected to this story through my own grief at the sudden death of my beloved brother Danny who had only just turned 46. Famous only to his friends and family, but an exceptionally talented artist and huge intellect and loved dearly by all who knew him. Danny loved and embraced life which makes his death so much harder to bear. However what is even harder is that the postmortem revealed nothing, in fact confirmed that Dan was an extremely fit and healthy man. His blood was also clear, and although we have the autopsy report tomorrow, signs are that cause will be attributed to 'Sudden adult death syndrome'. My remaining brother Jeff has done alot of his own research on the internet into sleep apnea and is convinced that this was most likely the cause. The main connection is that Dan had become increasingly sleepy/tired in the months leading to his death. An example which occurred not long before his death was of falling asleep on a rigid kitchen chair whilst the pan he was cooking a curry in caught alight and was only noticed by Dan's lodger who obviously smelled burning. On the Saturday night Dan had been out with a group of friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. A friend suggested that he had seemed unusually drunk at the end of the night which for a man who could normally handle his drink seemed strange. The following day Dan complained of his head really hurting but also of feeling really tired. By the end of the night apart from the serious headache a feeling of extreme tiredness whereby all he wanted to do was sleep had taken over. Dan texted his boss the following morning (Monday) and told him that he wouldn't be in as he felt 'seriously ill'. However in addition to the rest of the text his boss dismissed this as just a figure of speech to mean that he was really not well, ie flu etc. as opposed to a cold or similar. We certainly know that as Dan's lodger was at home that day Danny would have had ample opportunity to raise the alarm if he was concerned enough. As it turned out, Dan had probably gone back to sleep after the early morning text, woken about mid morning and made himself a light snack, half drunk some tea, and then returned to bed after taking a lemsip (2 empty sachets were found on his bedside table). At approximately 5.50pm his ex partner and soul mate Collette let herself in on her way back from work and found Danny dead in his bed. As a family we are consumed with trying to find out what happened to Danny a beloved and sorely missed son, brother and friend to many. Prior to the post mortem we were convinced something linked to the brain or heart would be the cause and were absolutely gobsmacked when nothing showed up. When the blood tests also revealed nothing we were in total disbelief. Were Dan's symptons, ie severe headache just coincidental. We know that the extreme tiredness would fit a pattern in sleep apnea if that's even what Dan had as he hadn't been tested or diagnosed with it in life. For all those sufferers I wouldn't want this story to put the fear of God in you, however as one writer quite rightly stated, why isn't there more awareness of this disorder. If this is what ended my brother's life as it most probably did Reggie White's than it is an absolute tragedy. You simply do not expect an otherwise fit and healthy person to simply fall asleep and die. I would appreciate any responses that may help us as a family to grasp a better understanding of this disorder and if this was possibly the cause of death in my brother. Many thanks.