Online Health Tips Health Blog
New Research has indicated that men who have the sleep disorder, Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) have a higher risk of depression than those without.
The condition means an obstruction can cause shallow breathing, or the person can literally stop breathing for short periods and this can occur in some cases up to 100 times a night. It leaves people suffering from this condition very fatigued and confused in the daytime.
Carol Lang, a research fellow in the department of medicine at the University of Adelaide in Australia, evaluated just under 860 men in her research – with ages from 35 to 83.
The study spanned a five year period and the men were evaluated twice for depression. They attended sleep labs to see if they had obstructive sleep apnoea and were scored via the apnoea hypopnea index (AHI) that measures how often someone has shallow breathing or pauses in breathing per hour.
Men with undiagnosed severe sleep apnoea and daytime sleepiness had up to five times a greater risk of depression than those without.
“Many of the symptoms of OSA and depression overlap, such as tiredness, fatigue, daytime sleepiness, low vitality and poor concentration,” Lang said in a feature in HealthDay Reporter published on 18 May.
A favoured treatment of obstructive sleep apnoea is CPAP that involves wearing a mask to provide a continuous positive away pressure.
Lang is now considering a similar research project to discover if the correlation is the same in women.