Men's Deep Throat
Linked to Sleep Problems
Excerpt By Alison McCook , Reuter's Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men are more likely than women to develop breathing problems during sleep that can seriously cut into their quality "z" time, and new research suggests that one portion of the male anatomy may be to blame.

Dr. Atul Malhotra of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and his colleagues discovered that a section of the breathing passage known as the pharyngeal airway, which starts at the roof of the mouth and extends to the throat, tends to be much longer in men than in women.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Malhotra explained that this anatomical difference between the genders may explain why men are also more likely than women to develop sleep apnea, a condition in which people temporarily and frequently stop breathing each night during sleep.

Malhotra said the longer this portion of the airway, the more likely the pharynx--the region that connects the mouth and nose to the organs they supply with food and air--is to collapse back around the mouth, bringing the tongue with it and cutting off air to the lungs.

"This explains why men are more at risk of (sleep apnea) than women," Malhotra said.

To discover the anatomical differences behind the gender gap in sleep apnea, Malhotra--who also holds positions at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University--and his colleagues compared the head and neck anatomies of 19 men and 20 women, none of whom had sleep apnea.

Reporting in the second November issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the authors discovered that men have significantly longer pharyngeal airways than women.

The authors then tinkered with the impact of longer versus shorter pharyngeal airways on the risk of sleep apnea using a mathematical model. "And when we modeled that, the longer airway was more likely to collapse," Malhotra said.

The researcher explained that sleep apnea can have a significant impact on a man's life. When the airway closes, he said, lungs can't bring the body oxygen and remove carbon dioxide, which induces the body to release adrenaline. The only way to keep breathing is to wake up, Malhotra added, and people with severe sleep apnea may be roused between once and twice each minute while snoozing.

Interrupting sleep to such a degree can render people seriously drowsy during the day, Malhotra said, and sleep apnea has also been shown to up the risk of a host of other problems, such as high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems.

People who are obese are more likely to develop sleep apnea, Malhotra said, so one thing men can do to reduce their risk is to avoid gaining weight or lose weight if they need to.

SOURCE: American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2002;166:1388-1395.

Reference Source 89

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".