Sleep disorder could point to stroke risk
If your snoring wakes you and your partner, or you find yourself unaccountably drowsy and irritable in the daytime, beware - you could be suffering from a condition that can double the risk of suffering a stroke.
That warning comes from a Chinese University team that found that sleep apnoea - repeated interruptions of sleep caused by breathing problems - is twice as common in stroke victims as in other people.
The danger, says research team member David Hui Shu-cheong, is that the sleep interruptions can trigger repetitive surges in nerve activity. That causes platelets in the blood to thicken and block blood vessels, increasing the risk of strokes.
The warning was based on a study of 51 stroke patients and 25 healthy people by the university in 2002. The findings showed that 49 per cent of stroke patients suffered from sleep apnoea, compared with 24 per cent in healthy people.
Findings in the United States have shown that people with any form of sleep-disordered breathing have 2.4 times the usual risk of heart failure and 1.3 times the risk of coronary artery disease.
Professor Hui, head of the university's division of respiratory medicine, estimates about 4 per cent of men between 30 and 60 in Hong Kong suffer from sleep apnoea. He is worried the rate will increase if obesity, one of the causes of sleep apnoea, is not brought under control.
Sufferers stop breathing for 10 to 30 seconds at a time because the windpipe is blocked by soft or fatty tissue.
One treatment is for patients to sleep with a mask that forces air through the nasal passages.
Chow Kok-keung, 52, said he ignored his snoring problem for 20 years until he collapsed after a stroke four years ago.
'I snored so loudly that my children sleeping in the next room always complained,' he said. 'But I was not aware of any health risk until one day I felt my left hand was numb and I slurred when I talked.'
Mr Chow spent 10 days in hospital. 'I was fully paralysed on my left side in the beginning but started to regain mobility after six months of physiotherapy treatment.'
