The Connection Between Weight and Sleep Apnea

Doctors say it constantly; eat healthy foods and get plenty of exercise. It does more than simply help you keep your weight down, it will benefit your overall health in a number of surprising ways. One of them is in ensuring you not only get a good night’s rest, but also don’t put undue strain on your body trying to simply breathe throughout the night.

Obstructive sleep apnea is a health problem where the body doesn’t get enough oxygen during sleep. When it happens, your heart will beat stronger and faster to help boost the amount of oxygen getting to your vital organs. Snoring and snorting during sleep is your body attempting to improve air flow into the lungs, so oxygen can be moved into the blood in sufficient quantities. Eventually your brain will trigger a wake up message to encourage you to take a conscious deep breath, which interrupts your REM sleep cycles, and dramatically worsens the quality of sleep you’re getting.

Poor health, and also being overweight, can greatly contribute to whether or not you have sleep apnea, and further how severe it might be if you do. Aside from having more body to support, your muscles and airway can be compromised by excessive body fat. Particularly if your lungs are compressed more than is normal, or if the structure of your neck puts pressure on your airway.

Key Points:

  • 1There are several factor that contribute to sleep apnea, but one of the biggest is excess weight.
  • 2Sleep apnea can also cause you to gain weight by disrupting your sleep. This in turn disrupts your hormones.
  • 3Getting treatment for sleep apnea is important, so talk to your doctor if you believe you have symptoms such as snoring and interrupted sleep.


While not everyone who is overweight has sleep apnea, putting on extra pounds does increase the chance of having the disorder.
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Written by HealthStatus
Medical Writer & Editor

HealthStatus has been operating since 1998 providing the best interactive health tools on the Internet, millions of visitors have used our health risk assessment, body fat and calories burned calculators. The HealthStatus editorial team has continued that commitment to excellence by providing our visitors with easy to understand high quality health content for many years.

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