Sleep apnea patients are more prone to strokes

It comes as no surprise that getting too little sleep will make you more prone to accidents.

But losing shut-eye due to sleep apnea — a disorder that causes breathing to stop throughout the night — also puts you at increased risk of stroke, recent research indicates.

“The more disordered your breathing, the greater risk you have,” says Dr. William Likosky, director of the stroke program at the Seattle Neuroscience Institute.

A study out of Toronto General Hospital found that people with moderate to severe sleep apnea have more than four times the risk of stroke than those without the condition. The research was published in December 2005 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The findings confirm long-held suspicions among those who study sleep disorders, says John Williams, technician and lab coordinator at the Deaconess Medical Center Sleep Lab in Spokane.

“The problem is most people consider snoring a joke,” Williams says. “Snoring actually is a sign there is something wrong with your breathing.”

It’s unclear just how apnea and stroke are connected. The Toronto study was adjusted to take into account such stroke risk factors as age, body-mass index and smoking.

Likosky speculates that episodes of apnea can lead to spikes in blood pressure when the person begins breathing again. The brain cannot keep up with those blood-pressure jumps, and it might cause damage to the blood vessels.

At the Seattle Neuroscience Institute, Likosky says, all stroke patients are treated as if they’re at-risk for sleep apnea. (Having a stroke also increases the risk of developing apnea because the part of the brain that regulates breathing may have been affected, he says.)

This new research provides even greater incentive for people who suspect they have apnea to seek treatment, Williams says.

There’s new hope for apnea sufferers as well, he says.

A fairly new surgical treatment, called the Pillar Procedure, has proven effective in treating apnea, he says. During the in-office procedure, plastic is injected in the roof of the mouth to stiffen the back of the palate.

And there also have been advancements in the commonly used CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) treatment, Williams says, so that it is not so uncomfortable for the patient.

If you have any signs of sleep apnea, it’s important to get checked out.

“If the person you sleep with says you snore a lot and you don’t breathe regularly, that’s one significant tip,” Likosky says. “If you’re half asleep all day, that’s a significant tip.”