How sleep apnoea treatment cured a father’s breathing problems, giving him an energy boost and helping him lose 15kg
- Diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea after developing symptoms, Gabriel Lam first tried a CPAP machine to help him sleep before deciding to get surgery
- ‘I felt like a new man’ after the procedure, he says – he even lost 15kg without changing his exercise routine, after years of struggling to trim down
In 2015, Gabriel Lam noticed that he was waking up in the mornings feeling lethargic and more fatigued than usual during the day.
He wasn’t alarmed at first, but over the next couple of years, he started to experience abnormal breathing while asleep. In 2018, the 39-year-old father of three was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea, or OSA.
“I was already a heavy snorer, but then my wife began to notice that I would sometimes gasp for air during the night,” says Lam, the chief operating officer of a moving company in Singapore.
“Worried about how my sleep issues and chronic lethargy were affecting my health and dumbfounded as to why I was gasping for air during my sleep, I sought medical help.”
After undergoing a sleep study, he was diagnosed with OSA.
Lam was right to be concerned. OSA is a potentially dangerous condition that should be taken seriously, says Dr Annabelle Leong, a Singapore-based consultant ENT (ear, nose and throat) surgeon and head and neck surgeon.