Posted on 02/27/2024 9:24:59 AM PST by ConservativeMind
A study of people with obstructive sleep apnea suggests that high CPAP pressures may explain why the machines do not lower a patient's risk of heart disease, which is about two to three times higher than average.
Several years ago, studies started to suggest a problem with this hypothesis. In studies designed to understand CPAP's effect on the body, they found that levels of a pro-inflammatory factor, angiopoietin-2, do not decline with CPAP use. High levels of Ang2 have been linked in previous studies to a higher risk of stroke, coronary artery disease, vascular disease, and mortality.
…To Jelic, the pattern of Ang2 and other biomarkers in CPAP users resembled that from patients on high-pressure ventilators, and she hypothesized that high CPAP pressures may explain why the expected drop in heart disease didn't materialize.
Their analysis showed that Ang2 levels remained elevated in CPAP users, confirming Jelic's previous findings in smaller studies, and that high Ang2 levels were associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease 12 months into the study.
The patients with the highest Ang2 levels, the researchers then found, were those using higher CPAP pressures.
A standard CPAP prescription uses pressures ranging from 4 to 20 cm H2O with median pressures varying within that range. In the study, participants with median CPAP pressure between 4 and 7 had fewer cardiovascular events compared to participants using pressures of 8 or higher.
Because CPAP is known to expand the lung, though not as dramatically as ventilators, Jelic thinks that stretched endothelial cells in the lung release extra Ang2.
Currently, most physicians adjust CPAP pressures to eliminate all obstructive episodes during sleep. But Jelic says that lower pressures may reduce Ang2 and produce the same sleep and fatigue improvements, even if some obstructive episodes break through.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
The pressure change would seem an easy thing to try with your doctor’s help.
I did not realize CPAP kept or made the heart disease risk so high.
Why Doesn’t CPAP Reduce Heart Disease?
Because it’s too busy giving people lung infections..............
Lung infections come from improperly cleaned or maintained CPAP machine and failure to change out the water in the humidifier.
I clean and maintain mine regularly (change the water, use distilled water, clean everything, etc) and have not had a single lung infection. Starting Vitamin D four years ago helped a lot, too.
My dad passed from congestive heart failure. Snored like a freight train and stopped breathing at night. At least the CPAP has lowered that risk dramatically. 30 years ago it was “Do we need CPAP?”, now they are just getting it adjusted and tweaked to work better. My VA watcher for my CPAP stuff has my AHIs set at 5 per night and my pressures run 8-10. My mask fits very good with no leaks and I have become accustomed to sleeping in MOPP lvl 2.
I have a CPAP, and I lowered the maximum pressure to 10 from 20. I may reduce it even further because I don’t like how it expands my lung capacity to the degree where I feel I’m gasping for breath when I don’t use it during the day.
...and almost dieing 3 years ago and loosing 40 pounds really helped my apnea.
Presuming the supplementing you’ve been doing has ensured you will have good bioavailable Vitamin D flowing through your veins if and when your immune system needs it, how’d you fare during the recent COVID-19 unpleasantness?
Did you avoid the worst symptoms even if infected with COVID-19?
Most home CPAP/BIPAP people on these machines don't clean them regularly,,,
One of the reasons is Obesity....and they are not able to clean their machines..properly.
FWIW
I know...................
80%+ of the people I know who use or have used a cpap could simply lose a substantial amount of weight and not need it at all
Here’s a somewhat windy answer...
My wife and I both did the Moderna two-shot sequence, the one booster each, then we both said “Never again” to that crap.
We are in northern latitudes 100 miles south of the Canadian border. We both take Vit D; I take a higher dose than my wife.. I also started the regimen recommended by many docs starting in April 2020 consisting of Quercetin, Zinc, Vit D, Vit C, NAC, and Melatonin at night. I’ve kept that regimen up almost four years now.
We rarely masked up (only when essential to get into a bank or grocery store).
We both avoided COVID until last July when we both got it on an Alaskan cruise out of Seattle. Everybody always says those boats are giant petri dishes and they were right. Our daughter and son-in-law (neither vaxxed) both got it. Daughter and SIL (mid 30s) both got a lot more sick than my wife and I.
So here are our family results from our little sample of four who were all on the cruise together:
1. Female, mid 30s, unvaxxed, no supplements. Got it July 2023, got pretty sick, and took quite a while to recover. She started getting pretty sick while ON the cruise and it ruined the second half of the cruise for her.
2. Male (SIL), mid 30s, unvaxed, no supplements. Got it July 2023, got pretty sick, and took a long time to recover.
3. Female (wife), early 70s, vaxxed & boosted. Got it July 2023. Symptoms started showing after cruise was over. Mild cold. Got over it in ten days. Did NOT take Paxlovid. No lingering problems.
4. Male (me), early 70s, vaxxed & boosted. Got it July 2023. Symptoms started showing after cruise was over. Mild cold. Got over it in ten days. Took Paxlovid on Day 5 (about too late). No lingering problems. I DID lose my sense of smell and taste (my first indication I got it), but that is back to normal.
All four of us work out quite a bit with the kids in their 30s doing more than us old-timers. My wife plays a lot of pickleball and walks a lot. I mainly hike and walk.
What to make of all that? Lots of variables there. It didn’t kill any of us, so that’s good. Nobody got severe disease, so that’s good. MAYBE the supplements and vax worked, but there’s the confounding age difference.
I used to get one or two nasty lung infections per year pre-COVID often turning into lingering bronchitis. One very good thing for me is the supplements have stopped colds and lung infections.
Sorry for the long answer, but that’s how it all played out. I think the supplements have helped me a lot and I’m keeping them going.
Sleep disorders, MAY 11, 2023, Editors’ notes:
Sleep apnea associated with increased risk for long COVID
by NYU Langone Health
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
Sleep apnea may significantly increase the risk for long COVID in adults, according to a study led by the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER Initiative and supported by NYU Langone Health as home to the effort’s Clinical Science Core (CSC).
As of April 2023, more than 100 million Americans had been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. As of April the U.S. Government’s Household Pulse survey estimated that about 6 percent of U.S. adults are experiencing symptoms associated with long COVID, including brain fog, fatigue, depression, and sleep problems.
Past studies have shown that patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) tend to have more severe illness when initially infected with COVID-19. OSA affects about 1 in 8 adults but is often underdiagnosed.
To better understand links between sleep apnea and long-term COVID symptoms, the research team reviewed data across three RECOVER research networks of patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 between March 2020 and February 2022, according to their health records.
Two networks included adult patients—the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet) with 330,000 patients—and the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) with 1.7 million patients. The third patient cohort in the study analysis included the pediatric-focused network PEDSnet, made up of 102,000 children.
Published in the journal Sleep, this study found that a prior diagnosis of sleep apnea in the PCORnet group came with a 12 percent increase in risk for long-term symptoms months after patients’ initial infections. In the N3C patient group, in which patients had higher levels of other chronic conditions than those in PCORnet, sleep apnea came with a 75 percent increase in risk for long COVID compared to those without sleep apnea.
The observed increases in risk for long COVID in adults with sleep apnea remained significant even when the research team accounted for obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and hospitalization at the time of their initial COVID infection, all known to independently contribute to risk for long COVID.
The researchers hypothesize that the differences in the percentage increases in long COVID risk between the study groups may be further explained by variations in definitions of long COVID, study populations, and in analysis methods of patient records, across the large study. In contrast to the patterns seen in adults, the contribution of sleep apnea to the risk of long COVID disappeared in children when the researchers controlled for other risk factors, including obesity.
“A strength of the work is that the link between sleep apnea and long COVID persisted regardless of how the researchers in our study defined long COVID or gathered data,” says senior study author Lorna Thorpe, Ph.D., MPH, Professor and Director of the Division of Epidemiology at NYU Langone Health.
She is also co-lead of efforts to understand long COVID using electronic health record networks for the RECOVER CSC at NYU Langone. “This study is the first collaboration of this focus and scale to find that adults with sleep apnea are at greater risk for long COVID.”
RECOVER—Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery—is dedicated to understanding why some people develop long-term symptoms following a COVID infection, and how to detect, treat, and prevent long COVID. As the CSC, NYU Langone Health is charged with integrating research activities of clinical sites around the country.
“There’s still so much to uncover about long COVID, but this study will inform clinical care by identifying patients that should be watched more closely,” says corresponding author Hannah Mandel, a senior research scientist for the electronic health record studies arm of the RECOVER CSC at NYU Langone Health. “People with sleep apnea who get infected with COVID should seek early treatment, pay attention to their symptoms, and keep up with their vaccinations to lower the risk of infection in the first place.”
Interestingly, in the N3C study group, long COVID risk was higher among women with sleep apnea compared to men with sleep apnea. Investigators identified an 89% increased likelihood for having long COVID in women, compared to a 59% increased chance for men. The reasons for this are not clear, but women with diagnosed sleep apnea in their medical records may have more severe conditions than men, in part because women with sleep apnea tend to go undiagnosed with OSA for longer.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-apnea-covid.html#google_vignette
I do have one small complication. Her name is Penny. My mini dachshund sometimes sneaks a snuggle and kiss when I'm sleeping.
Sounds like they don’t want to pay for CPAP‘s anymore. Also, they resented them during Covid. When I caught the Chinese flu at the very beginning, right as it was getting talked about, my CPAP got me through. She wants CPAP pressures dropped so low that they don’t prevent sleep apnea completely. I know there are many others, but I am one of the people that had my life changed by a CPAP.
Same here, I lost 60 and was able to come off CPAP completely. It also fixed my blood pressure and GERD (the three often go hand in hand).
I think some people have the CNS apnea which is not related to weight, tho
It doesn’t raise heart attack risk, and it doesn’t keep the risk high. That is one opinion, from one person, and one small study. It’s going against a gigantic body of evidence. And it’s coming from a crappy university Columbia.
Guarantee there’s an agenda here
Actually, there are more than five studies saying this, and only two from Columbia.
It’s real.
bump for later
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