I know I’m over weight at five foot nine and 205 pounds. I also take medication for high blood pressure. The last two times I have seen my doctor he mentioned he thinks I should do a sleep study study to see if I have sleep apnea. As far as I know he is just basing this soley on my weight. I sleep fine and I do not normally feel tired during the day. Would doing a sleep study normal for my circumstances ?
It’s a fad. Insurance will cover the bill. The doctor thinks you are overweight and unhealthy and needs to prove it somehow. You have a very large neck. He has a friend who does sleep studies. Or you have symptoms that would indicate the possibility of sleep apnea and you aren’t aware of them or haven’t stated what they are. Did you ask your doctor?
I did not have much of a chance to ask him this time. My appt was to check results from some blood tests. He spent two or three minutes going over the results, and then as he was walking out of the room he said “avoid salt, get more exercise, and I want to see you again in three months. If your results are not any better I would like to have you checked sleep apnea. Have a good day.”
Also I forgot to add my blood work showed high levels of uric acid, I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the sleep study.
Do you have gout?
Not currently, but I have had gout several times in past few years.
Sleep apnea can make you gain weight and can also cause high blood pressure. Those 2 factors may be why they are looking into it as a possibility.
Also, do you snore or have any other symptoms such as daytime sleepiness or excessive fatigue, or seeming to need more sleep than normal?
If you’ve never complained about not getting a good night’s sleep, and you don’t have issues with feeling exhausted in the morning, then the guess at this point is (drum roll)
MONEY!
This is a major cha-CHING!, and insurance companies cover the tests. It requires an overnight stay at a sleep study center, and, as Acantha mentioned, you have two traits which are popular for folks that have sleep apnea (overweight and HBP), so justifying it to the insurance company is a lot easier.
I hate to sound cynical, but he may be trying to build his own sleep disorder practice or he has a friend who kicks back for referrals. He could be just hyper proactive, but that doesn’t fit into my cynical scenario.
I had a shrink who tried everything but bribery to try and get me to go get a sleep study because she just knew I had sleep apnea. Well gee, Doc, I didn’t go to medical school like you did but I think being seriously depressed and suicidal might have something to do with me not being able to sleep, being exhausted in the daytime, etc.
daHubby’s doctor thought he had SA until I told him there’s no way he could as he talks/mutters/mumbles all night long! Doc got a big laugh out of that, especially when I told him some of the silly stuff he’s said.
And sleep apnea can cause depression. Why get so worked up if someone wants you to try something? I can understand if your insurance won’t pay for it or something, but, otherwise, why not take it? If the Doc is right, you might get better. And if they’re wrong, then you finally can shut them up. Seems like a win-win.
*It’s a fad?
*
It’s a fad, possibly because it can be very dangerous, even fatal.
It’s a fad, in that most insurance will cover it now. Get a sleep study before there are changes and you have to pay $1000 or more yourself.
It’s a fad … ok, I can’t keep this cutesy sentence structure up.
Getting mammograms is a fad, a virtual colonoscopy is a fad, checking for blood in your stool is a fad. That doesn’t mean it’s not necessary. Or smart medical advice.
I had a sleep study. I hadn’t noticed any symptoms, but my wife noticed I was snoring. It was painless, only moderately inconvenient, and might have saved my life.
My wife called me the next morning and asked how it went. I proudly announced, “Your husband can hold his breath for a minute and a half in the middle of the night… without even trying!” My O2 saturation had gone from 95% down to 60%. Making me tired the next day, stressing my heart (and building up too much heart muscle as the heart rapidly tries to pump extra blood to the cells).
And probably starving some brain cells.
Get a sleep study.
Don’t ask for a cite, because I couldn’t find it any more, but…
I once read an article by someone who studied sleep apnea.
She said that there seemed to be a correlation between neck size and haveing sleep apnea.
One example she gave was pro football players. They assumed that most football players would have sleep apnea, based on neck size, and that when football players came in for sleep studies, they did find lots of them having sleep apnea.
From http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-apnea/sleep-apnea:
Yep, get the study. Maybe you’re right, and you sleep fine – no harm done and now you know. But being overweight and hypertension can both be symptoms of SOSA so maybe your doctor knows what he is talking about.
I lost weight and was able to drop my BP meds after getting my sleep apnea treated.
ETA: looked at Tase of Chocolate’s risk factors. Yikes I have 6/8 of those! And maybe more; I don’t know what the relative sizes of my tonsils/tongue/jawbone are.
I will pile on with agreeing to get one. It takes one night [2 if they need to have you come in and fit a mask because the test was positive, and to tweak the pressure, from what I understand]
I had been reading about the possible causes for my sleep issues, and rather abrupt high blood pressure, and inability to lose weight [just do not go there]
I decided that a sleep apnea study would be something that can contribute to all of these, and was easy enough to get done.
nope, not one nonbreath, not one leg twitch. I do flop around like a landed fish [oddly never rolling onto my back, that was at least observed] and I snore like a chainsaw. And I can call almost to the minute when I will wake up and go back to sleep without access to any form of clock, in a totally dark and silent room, in a strange bed. But I do seem to keep breathing all night. At least something on my body works per spec =)
My pulmonologist ordered one for me to see if apnea could be contributing somehow to chronic bronchitis, and got a strong positive result. I have all of Chocolate’s risk factors except I don’t know about the tonsil/tongue/jaw one. Then a physical therapist treating my degenerating neck pointed out that my awkward sleeping position, on my front with head to one side or the other, which helped avoid snoring, would be making the neck worse. Last night was about my 2nd fairly comfortable and restful night with the machine (which definitely took me some time to get used to and still isn’t all the way there).
Like the OP I thought I slept fine and didn’t feel tired during the day.
Did you read my whole post? The OP responded to the important part about asking his doctor, and checking on other symptoms. All medical care should be questioned, and double checked, because some providers just recommend the treatment du jour. That doesn’t mean ignore it, just check on more details. The OP mentioned that his doctor didn’t give him a meaningful response when he asked about it. You shouldn’t just assume because a doctor said it, you have to do it.
Thank you all for this information on sleep apnea! I have told my husband that he needs to have a sleep study done because I’ve been listening to him stop breathing all night for ten years (and he has GERD, a deviated septum, and allergies), but he’s always dismissed me. Now, he has chronic high blood pressure with no real cause … except for maybe this.
Couldn’t one just set up a tape recorder on the nightstand? Especially if they snore? Wouldn’t that reveal if one stopped breathing (snoring?) many times a night?
Not really … just because they are not snoring at any given moment does not mean they have stopped breathing. They could have rolled over and the throat opened enough to stop making the snore noise.
The person lying next to him or her can damn well tell whether that person is breathing or not. There is loud snoring followed by absolute silence for about forty seconds follwed by the sounds of someone struggling for breath. If I nudged him with my elbow gently, that struggling for breath would commence THEN – not when I thought he had breathed his last.
Some of you who are giving negative medical advice in this thread have NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. This happens every time there is an advance in medical science that helps to solve a condition that you are unfamiliar with. God forbid that anyone should earn any money from the benefits they provide others.
Maybe, but most people’s breathing is fairly soft and might not be caught by a recording device unless it was very sensitive.
Also, you can have apnea in the absence of snoring (I don’t snore, but I do have apnea).
Re the OP: Definitely ask the doctor at the next visit. Certainly there’s a strong correlation between overweight/hypertensive and sleep apnea but you can also “just” be fat and have high BP. I had 3 separate sleep studies around 2000/2001 and none of them turned up enough apnea to bother with… despite my being fat and hypertensive. So frankly it’s not unreasonable of the doc to suggest a sleep study.
But the “results not better” means what? What results is he referring to?