That's Fit

Self magazine, a popular health and fitness publication for women, ran an article titled "When Weight Gain is a Warning" in their current issue.

If, after you've ruled out the more likely causes -- a hiatus from the gym, a few too many pina coladas, etc. -- the cause of the weight gain remains a mystery, certain health problems may be to blame. The article highlights a few that may be cause for pause.

A 5-POUND GAIN MAY MEAN...

Sleep Apnea. If you're also snoring excessively at night, have been experiencing headaches and feel tired all the time, sleep apnea may be the culprit. How it links to the five pound weight gain is as follows: sleep apnea greatly disrupts sleep, which in turn causes a rise in cortisol levels and the subsequent accumulation of fat. And, if you're not getting much sleep, you're obviously not going to exactly be an animal in the gym (well, maybe a sloth).

Are you envious of your bed partner, who drifts off to sleep quickly while you toss and turn? Do you find yourself lying awake at night, despite your best efforts to fall asleep? You aren't alone. Insomnia is a common condition that steals precious sleep from those who need it, and a lack of sleep can have a serious impact on your health, including weight gain.

The first step in treating insomnia is identifying the cause. Forbes has an excellent gallery to help you do just that. Their 14 reasons you aren't sleeping covers topics like:

• relationship trouble
• co-sleeping with children
• pregnancy
• being a woman
• medications
• sleep disorders
• stress
• poor sleeping habits or environment
• worry
• age
• heart disease
• depression
  

If this sounds like you, you might already be on your road to recovery. Try and make some lifestyle or environmental adjustments, and if that doesn't work, speak to your doctor to see if your health may be part of the cause. While you're at it, visit AOL Health to see what they're saying about sleep.

It's free, it takes no skill or education, and it's one of the #1 things we can all do to improve our health, yet we never seem to get enough of it. Sleep! Despite all those other qualities, sleep, for millions of Americans, is also one of the most elusive things due to time constraints, stress, and any other number of things that keep us from the getting the deep restful repose we all so desperately want and need.

Making the commitment to make sleep a priority is only the first step -- after that, beating all the sneaky obstacles (like finding the time and "getting in the mood" for sleep) becomes a necessity. Follow these tips to beat whatever sleep problems you are facing and get the best sleep possible, and hence, the best results from your healthy lifestyle and fitness efforts!

Before my father was retired he had to wake up at 3 a.m. for work. After retirement, his early morning habit proved hard to break. Subsequently, the afternoons would inevitably find him snoozing on his recliner. Without fail, as soon as he'd hit a deep sleep he'd let out a massive snort, wake himself up, and grumble at my mom and I for "waking him up."
My dad's afternoon snoring puts him in the company of many others. How about you? Do you snore, too? Revolution Health offers some tips on snoring. Snoring is caused by a narrowing of the throat due to congestion, enlarged tonsils, or other issues. Conditions like asthma and obesity can also cause or exacerbate snoring. Contrary to what some might believe, snoring doesn't necessarily mean you have sleep apnea. But if you feel your snoring is excessive, it's a good idea to check with your doctor.

You can minimize your snoring by changing up some of your sleep routines. Try sleeping on your side and avoiding alcohol and smoking before bedtime. Also, if you have some weight to lose, dropping excess pounds will likely help your snoring. You can also see your doctor for other possible solutions such as a mouthpiece designed to minimize snoring.

Want to learn more? Chris tells us how excessive snoring may signal a health risk.

At That's Fit, we've discussed the importance of good sleep many times. A restful night's sleep can boost your energy, help manage stress, and can even help you maintain a healthy weight. But there are a lot of notions about good sleep that may or may not be true. To help you decipher fact from fiction, Revolution Health busts some of those sleep myths.

• Myth: Health issues have no relation to sleep. Fact: Other health problems such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and depression can lead to sleeplessness or disrupted sleep patterns.
  
• Myth: The older you get, the less sleep you need. Fact: The average adult needs seven to nine hours of sleep. Older adults may have more disturbed sleep, so a short nap during the day can help them catch up on their body's need for sleep.
• Myth: Snoring isn't harmful. Fact: While, for some people, snoring is nothing but a nuisance, it can be a sign of sleep apnea.
  

Sleep studies are undoubtedly uncomfortable. Dozens of wires attached to multiple locations across the head, face, neck, and body; a strange bed in a strange room with new environmental sounds; the knowledge that a technician is watching you sleep -- it's enough to give anyone temporary insomnia.

Those aren't exactly the reasons that Medicare is pushing at-home testing for sleep apnea. Instead, they cite the fact that lab testing is expensive and sometimes inaccessible. Home testing is around $500, compared to $1500 in a sleep clinic, and patients get to sleep in their own beds.

But the idea has its critics. At-home testing for sleep apnea can diagnose severe cases of the condition, but can't give patients the reassurance of a clean bill of health, because it doesn't test for any other sleep disorders. Sleep experts acknowledge that home testing may have its place for certain patients, but are reluctant to recommend it for everyone. Still, if you think you might have sleep apnea and don't have access to a sleep clinic evaluation, it might be worth mentioning to your doc.

Sleep apnea can be quite disturbing to one's sleep as well as the quality of life one experiences the day after not getting enough solid sleep.

Although sleep studies and CPAP machines can alleviate much of the problems associated with sleep apnea, a new U.S. study finds that a surgical procedure that removes excess tissue in the throat or mouth to widen the airway can assist those suffering from sleep apnea -- perhaps even cure it completely.

In the latest research, 63 patients were observed and the results showed that after seven years of observation, the surgery eliminated sleep apnea in 25 percent to 33 percent of those studied.

If you're familiar with the term CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), you probably have been diagnosed with sleep apnea, which causes irregular breathing and oxygen delivery during sleeptime. Beyond that, did you know that sleep apnea can contribute to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)?

Using a CPAP machine to keep that airway unobstructed can cut the risk of artery hardening by a long shot, though, according to new research. The study's main conclusion was that there is indeed a direct link between sleep apnea and hardening of the arteries.

In the study, 24 men with sleep apnea received CPAP or no treatment and were monitored for four months for the early signs of pre-clinical atherosclerosis. A decrease in atherosclerosis signs were noted among those who used the CPAP machines. Coincidence? Not on your life.

If you have diabetes but tend to overexert your activities each and every day, are you also suffering from sleep apnea? Possibly, according to new research that states 33% of diabetics also suffer from obstructive breathing during sleep -- also know as sleep apnea.

Men were twice likely as women to suffer from sleep apnea if diabetic as well. What if you have sleep apnea right now but have never investigated the possibility of having diabetes? Perhaps a checkup with your doctor is in order just to make sure.

People who are found to suffer from both diabetes and sleep apnea and diabetes may need treatment for both conditions, a conclusion which seems pretty natural. If you've been screened for type 2 diabetes, you may want to have sleep apnea checked for as well according to the report from The Whittier Institute for Diabetes in La Jolla, California.

If you're being treated for sleep apnea, chance are you wear a C-PAP machine at night, wear a dental appliance, or have had surgery. Because treatments for sleep apnea are often uncomfortable, many people go untreated. Sleep apnea can cause a range of health problems, including heart attack, stroke, and diabetes, and cause daytime drowsiness as well.

A new, less cumbersome device to treat sleep apnea is currently being studied, and is showing promising results. When 11 people with mild to moderate problems wore a nasal cannula (a thin tube with prongs, typically used to deliver oxygen) that sent warm, moist air into their upper airways, breathing pauses and night awakenings were cut dramatically. Further studies are underway to find out if this more comfortable method may be useful in treating the condition.

Wouldn't you love it if there was some sort of pill you could take before bed that would make you lose weight while you slept? Well, keep hoping -- there's nothing that will help you effectively burn fat while you sleep, but the act of sleep itself might have a big impact on your waistline. eDiets has found evidence that that chronic sleep deprivation might be making people fat.

In short, the findings found this: The less sleep the subject got, the higher the BMI. It's also been noticed that since the 1960s, people on average are getting less sleep than 50 years ago -- by two hours a night. So maybe it's not coincidence that people are heavier today than they were in the 1960s.

But here's what I think: It's been shown that overweight people who aren't active are more prone to sleep problems, like insomnia and sleep apnea. So is poor sleep the cause or effect of body weight? What do you think?

Asthmatics usually feel like their goal is to breathe more, because attacks can leave us feeling breathless. But according to practitioners of the Buteyko method, what we all should be doing -- asthmatic or not -- is breathing less.

Over breathing, or chronic hyperventilation, has been linked to a litany of health problems, including asthma, but also conditions like allergies, snoring, sleep apnea, and heart palpitations, among others. The Buteyko method teaches patients to breathe less through reduced breathing exercises, slowly and naturally raising body's CO2 set point. In clinical trials, asthmatics saw a 90% drop in the use of bronchodilaters and reduced the use of inhaled steroids by about 50%. (Buteyko practitioners do not recommend stopping any asthma medications and encourage patients to use emergency inhalers when necessary. When symptoms improve, patients are taught only to reduce the use of preventer medication ONLY with the help of their doctor.)

My own asthma flared this spring and refused to respond to an increase in medications, which led me to Buteyko. I read a book and ordered a DVD, but ultimately ended up meeting with a trainer anyway and was glad I did. In the month that I've been learning the techniques, I've seen my own reduction of bronchodilater use and hope that as I get better and more consistent with the reduced breathing exercises, I see an even bigger reduction of symptoms.

For more information about Buteyko or to find a practitioner, visit the Buteyko Institute of Breathing and Health.

Suffering from sleep apnea? I would venture to guess that you discovered it from waking yourself up at night or by your spouse or partner waking you up based on noise. What to do? Visit your doctor and see what the cause could be.

Don't let sleep apnea slip under your health radar -- and to further that point, new research states that the condition can lead to a higher risk of diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy. Females, pay attention to this.

With obesity being a main cause of sleep apnea these days, this is yet another good reason to find a way to reduce your weight while maintaining a lifestyle to keep those extra pounds off.

People suffering from sleep apnea may soon have another option for getting better sleep. A new two-piece device called the Thornton Adjustable Positioner II (TAP II) is designed to hold the lower jaw forward while a person sleeps and has had positive results in reducing major snoring events per hour and also in helping to keep patients from running low on oxygen during the night.

There are more than 300 devices out there designed for this very purpose, but why not add one more? Snoring is an ongoing problem for as many as 45% of adults, so obviously there's always room for new and better treatments. Let's just hope this one doesn't become "random device number 301," and that it actually has a big impact and helps a lot of people.

Do you suffer from sleep apnea? If so, a recent study indicates that this sleep disorder may actually lead to heart problems down the road, if not directly incite heart-related problems.

Now, I generally do not believe every study I read, but this one makes logical sense. The breathing and sleep disruptions alone are enough to stress the heart out a bit, and I'm one to believe that most body systems are connected in many ways. The body's systems are just not isolated compartments that operate independently.

If you have sleep apnea, are you using a sleep regulator/ventilator to ensure you are getting the best "Zs" you can?