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Even moderate drinking raises sleep apnea risk

Saturday, 21 April 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The more alcoholic drinks that men have at any time of day -- not just before bedtime -- the greater are the risks of breathing problems during sleep, a new study shows.

Sleep-disordered breathing has been associated with high blood pressure and blood vessel disease, and many studies have found that drinking alcohol before going to sleep increases the likelihood of abnormally shallow breathing or even episodes in which breathing stops, Dr. Paul E. Peppard and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison report.

To investigate, the researchers looked at 775 men and 645 women participating in a sleep study. Two hundred eighty-one men (36 percent) and 332 women (51 percent) did not drink. The majority of the rest (42 percent of men and 41 percent of women) reported, on average, having less than one drink per day.

The subjects consumed two or fewer drinks in the afternoon of the days that the evaluation was done. All of the subjects had been reporting their drinking habits for five years before their breathing was evaluated, and

After the researchers accounted for the effects of body size, smoking and medications that can cause breathing problems, they found that for every additional drink a man habitually took per day, his risk of sleep-disordered breathing increased by 25 percent.

Source: REUTERS

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