Shedding few pounds key to good night’s sleep

[LahoreEstate]

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The key to a good night’s sleep could be keeping trim, doctors say. Poor sleepers who followed a low calorie diet and exercised regularly slept better and felt better, a study found. And the more weight people lost, the better they slept.

Writing in the ‘American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine,’ the researchers said that losing weight was “perhaps the single most effective way” to ease sleep disorders.

They added that while weight loss is not “a new miracle pill or a fancy high-tech treatment,” it is cheap and ‘exciting’ therapy for those who have trouble sleeping.

The researchers, from Kuopio University Hospital in Finland, studied 81 overweight and obese men and women with mild obstructive sleep apnoea, a common condition characterised by pauses in breathing, gasping and snoring.

The repeated interruptions to sleep leaves sufferers tired, and can affect mood, memory and concentration.

Half were put on very low calorie diet, taking in as little as 600 calories a day for three months. They were also given regular counselling and advice on exercise and encouraged to maintain their healthy lifestyle in the following months.

The others were simply given advice and leaflets on a healthy lifestyle. Those on the diet lost more than 20lb on average over the course of a year, while the others shed less than 6lb.

Weight loss eased the patients’ symptoms, improving their sleep. And the more they lost, the better they slept, with almost nine in ten of those who lost 33lb or more cured of their sleep disorder.

The benefits did not end there, with the dieters cholesterol, blood pressure and insulin levels improving to such an extent that some were able to throw away their tablets.

They also had a better quality of life — as did their partners.

Researcher Dr. Henri Tuomilehto said: “A very low calorie diet combined with active lifestyle counselling resulting in marked weight reduction is a feasible and effective treatment for the majority of patients with mild obstructive sleep disorder. The greater the change in body weight or waist circumference, the greater was the improvement in their sleep disorder. In fact, mild obstructive sleep apnoea was objectively cured in 88 per cent of the patients who lost more than 33lb, a statistic that declined with the amount of weight lost. Only in 62 per cent of those who lost between 11 and 33lb were objectively cured of their sleep disorder, as were 38 per cent of those who lost between zero and 11lb.”

Dr. Tuomilehto said that although sufferers of obstructive sleep apnea are advised to lose weight, there had been little evidence until now that it was sound advice.

Advising snorers and those who regularly feel sleepy during the day to think about dieting if they are overweight, he said: “This appears to be a fairly straightforward relationship, and while we would not necessarily recommend the severe caloric restriction used in our study to every patient, one of the first treatment for a sleep disorder that should be considered in the overweight patient is clearly weight loss.”

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