I have severe apnea. One of the reasons that apnea patients have a tendency to gain weight, without a corresponding increase in calories, is because every time you suffer an apnea event, where you stop breathing, your brain floods your body with adrenaline, which wakes you up so you will take a breath. Adrenaline is the 'fight or flight' hormone. In the presence of perceived danger, the brain floods your body with this hormone, which allows for instantaneous bursts of energy and elevated heart activity and blood pressure, among other things. Adrenaline also reserves your caloric resources, in the event you'll be called on to run for your life. So, if it normally cost you 200 calories to run a half mile non-stop, when your body is flooded with adrenaline, it will cost you only 100 calories for the same distance. Your body is trying to conserve as much of those calories as possible, in order to give you as a better chance of reaching safety.
You can see, then, how it will take you much longer to lose weight, and less time to gain weight if your body is always under adrenaline attack. Even though you are not running for your life, your body thinks it is, and so as much as you try to exercise off weight, it's trying to conserve those calories. My above example with the running, was just using sample numbers to illustrate the body's conservation of those calories (I don't know what the exact ratio is, but maybe someone out there does and can tell me). So, if I'm being awakened 60 times an HOUR, every hour I'm asleep, and my brain brings on the adrenaline each time, you can see now, with all that extra adrenaline, how it affects the metabolism to such a degree.
As a matter of fact, for years I was gaining weight at a steady pace. My husband was always wondering aloud how I could eat so little and walk 3-5 miles each and every day, and I was gaining weight, and he ate 4 times as much, and a much more unhealthy diet than I, and he wasn't gaining a pound. I'd go to doctors and they just kept telling me that I was overeating, or that maybe I was eating in my sleep, or maybe I was in such denial, that I was binge eating and couldn't even admit it to myself. The only way I could lose weight was to go on very restrictive diets (about 1200 calories per day) and eat three times per day, etc. For someone as active as I was 1200 calories a day is too little, but it did cause me to lose weight, but I'm not sure it was the healthiest way.
The sad thing is, I've watched the reality shows on tv, about morbidly obese people and they tally up all the food they've eaten all day: pound of bacon for breakfast, with half dozen eggs, couple boxes of cereal and milk, bagel and toast, and then a whole pizza for lunch, with half gallon ice cream and a couple of burgers, etc. And it really saddened me, that I wasn't eating even the smallest percentage of that food, and here I weighed as much as they did. Not that I wanted to eat all that food, just that I deprived myself of the food I did want to eat, and I was no better off for the efforts.
If you are gaining weight and there seems to be no difference in either your food intake or your exercise routine, see a doctor. If you are already overweight, the chances that you have developed apnea, is almost 100%. Get to to a doctor today, and get treatment for your apnea, because apnea with KILL YOU. I don't want to scare anyone, but not even a lot of doctors take apnea seriously. Whenever you hear that an overweight person died in their sleep, the direct cause, almost every single time, is apnea. Apnea can cause heart arrythmias, which can be fatal. Most apnea episodes last from anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes, and then if you have 60 or so per hour, even 40 per hour, that's a whole lot of oxygen not getting to your brain, which can cause stroke. High blood pressure is another component. John Candy and Chris Farley, both died in their 40's, in their sleep, from complications of apnea which brought on heart attacks. If you go on apnea message boards, it will break your heart to read of all the loved ones who have passed because of apnea. The most chilling stories are the ones where survivors talk about how their loved one decided not to use their CPAP mask while they took one nap, and they had a fatal heart attack in the midst of an apnea episode. I tell you this, because if you're reading my blog, you're most likely struggling with your weight. If you're struggling with your weight, you most likely have some form of apnea. If you have apnea, I want you to live and not suffer the consequences of not having it treated.
For the last 15 years I have been fat, like really fat. I have seen a ton of doctors, about a ton of different problems and the first time any doctor has EVER suggested that I am overweight and should lose weight, was about 3 months ago. I am dead serious. I always assumed at some point a doctor would tell me that whatever problem I had was worsened by all the weight, and yet no one ever did. I have since learned that patients can get very combative and defensive when their doctors point out they're fat, and so most doctors won't even bring up the subject. Pretty sad.
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