Snoring has been associated with endless health problems, such as reduced performance due to fatigue that causes unrefreshing sleep; besides, snoring is related to neurological, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal diseases. Now, according to a study published in the scientific journal Sleep Breath, diabetes and snoring is a dangerous factor for the evolution of type 2 diabetes. Because they caused by pauses in breathing due to the relaxation of the muscles that narrow the airways. This makes it challenging to enter oxygen to the lungs, thereby disrupting the metabolic chain of glucose.
Its high prevalence is a severe public health problem and could explain some of the causes of mobility and associated DM2 mortality. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) not usually diagnosed, and therefore treated, in many obese patients with type 2 diabetes.
People with OSA
The fact that many obese people with type 2 diabetes
have sleep apnea and do not know it is problematic because of the dangerous clinical consequences. One of the most visible signs is snoring. People with OSA have breathing pauses as they sleep through contraction of the upper throat muscles, closing the airway and preventing oxygen from reaching the lungs. Symptoms include severe snoring, shortness of breath and intervals in the respiratory rhythm, which produce frequent awakenings that alter sleep quality and cause daytime sleepiness. Factors that increase the risk of developing OSA are obesity, having a long neck or tongue, having narrow airways, nasal obstruction, recent weight gain and the shape of the palate or jaw.
The study included 306 obese patients with type 2 diabetes who provided personal information about sleep (snoring and daytime sleepiness) and polysomnography, recording variables such as changes in brain waves, eye movements, muscle tone and breathing patterns during sleep. According to the authors, the most critical finding is the very high prevalence of undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea (86.6%) in obese patients with type 2 diabetes.
Also, the average apnea-hypopnea rate, that is, the link between the number of episodes of hypopneas and apnea per hour of sleep, which is undoubtedly high (20.5), is equally alarming.” 33.4% of the 306 patients had mild obstructive apnea (apnea-hypopnea index: 5-14.9), 30.5% had moderate obstructive apnea (apnea-hypopnea index: 15-29.9), and 22, 6% had severe obstructive apnea (apnea-hypopnea index: 30 or higher). Having a waist circumference higher than normal and a high body mass index (BMI) significantly associated with the onset of OSA, especially with severe apnea.
Therefore, the authors conclude, physicians of obese patients with type 2 diabetes should take into account the occurrence of this sleep disorder, even when there are no symptoms and especially in those patients with a waist size and a very high BMI high. The high prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea in obese patients with type 2 diabetes is a severe public health problem and opens the door for some of the causes of mobility and mortality associated with type 2 diabetes to attributed to obstructive apnea of undiagnosed sleep.