One of the biggest issues with upper airway restriction and sleep apnea is its strong correlation with heart disease. Not merely as an “association”, but as a significant actual cause, often by multiple pathways.
One indirect pathway has to do with sleep apnea as a causative contributor to obesity which we have discussed on another page. Sleep apnea causes obesity, and obesity in turn causes heart disease.
But it goes way beyond that. A recent study reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine showed that it is the actual physical airway blockage that occurs in sleep apnea that leads to a critical oxygen deprivation called hypoxia resulting in a 45% increase in heart attack events.
For either heart disease prevention, or for heart disease recovery, effective treatment of sleep apnea is absolutely essential!