Go to Sleep! to fight heart disease - Part2

Sleep expert, Dr. Imran Shaikh of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, pulls back the covers on how sleep affects your heart health.

(*Unfortunately, there is the sound of a creaky chair and some other background noise in this episode; sorry about that!  I like to imagine it as a purring cat :-)  

 

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Dr. Sagar: That's a good description of how we can figure out our sleep is in need of help. Let's shift gears and talk about treatment. Obviously the treatment depends on what the cause is, but if the person has other medical conditions too, for example, Cardiovascular disease. Does that treatment then change?

Dr. Shaikh: Yeah. So definitely it will play a factor in, into what the actual treatment would be.

. You would definitely have the same options, but I just might push one option more than the other. When it comes to treatment, it is I do tend to really try and get good feedback from the patient as well, just to overview what the treatments are , for sleep apnea.

There are a couple things that you can just do on your own. And that's what I always start with is one is working on the weight. We know weight is directly linked to sleep apnea, so getting your weight down the best you can, and it's not easy, it's not gonna happen overnight, but it's a lifestyle change.

You wanna change your lifestyle to work on ways to control your weight. And then position, we know that sleeping on your back is notoriously worse for sleep apnea. So we recommend actually sleeping off your back, , for sleep apnea purposes alone. And if you find that you are on your back more than doing things to either try and get your head, your bed elevated, if you have an adjustable bed or like a wedge pillow or can find some way to get it elevated one way or another, or finding ways to just stay off your back, sometimes they have these devices that you can use that basically are like our bump on the back, that it's a belt that you wear so that if you roll over onto your back, then you naturally will roll back over.

Dr. Sagar: uncomfortable.

Dr. Shaikh: Yeah. You just make

yourself uncomfortable. weights and positional therapy, those are the two most important things that are really recommended for. That's for everybody, and things you can stop right away. And I tell you just that's things to just focus on right away. Then in terms of actual treatments, you're looking at