Key points from today’s guests:

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System; executive vice chancellor, The University of Kansas Medical Center

• Millions of Americans live with sleep apnea, and I am one of those people.
• Once diagnosed, many patients end up with a prescription for a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine. I use one too.
• Obstructive sleep apnea obstructive sleep apnea is a type of issue where your airway closes while you sleep.
• When your airway closes down, you can't get air in very well, and it leads to a whole host of downstream problems, fatigue, headaches, heart arrhythmias and other types of heart problems.
• Take good care of yourself, whether that is great sleep or vaccinations.

Joseph Smith, sleeps with CPAP

• He noticed that he was very tired during the day for a 26-year-old, so he underwent sleep tests and was prescribed CPAP therapy.
• He didn’t have snoring issues, but his breathing would stop during the night before the CPAP.
• With the CPAP, he had no issues with sleeping and his quality of sleep has improved.
• He said it is not as scary or intrusive as you think it is and encourages people to get help with their sleep if they are having issues.

Dr. Saurav Luthra, sleep medicine specialist, The University of Kansas Health System

• Sleep apnea is a chronic health condition, just like diabetes.
• It has cardiovascular effects, where it can affect your blood pressure, heart rate, and can lead to arrhythmias, like atrial fibrillation, and that can lead to stroke.
• Sleep apnea even has a metabolic impact on your body, so it can increase insulin resistance that we now know is then the cause for obesity, diabetes, etc.
• It also affects your neuro cognitive function, so your memory, your mood and your processing of tasks, organizing thoughts – it is all related to how deep you slept and then how uninterrupted you slept.
• Sleep quality has a big impact on quality of life.
• Healthy sleep is important for a healthy life span

Diego Mazzotti, Ph.D., sleep disorder researcher, The University of Kansas Medical Center

• One of the things that medical informaticists do is really try to gather all this clinical data that's been collected over several years across many patients in the health system like ours and even across the United States.
• We organize this data very well and then start asking questions that we really want to know.
• The question that we address in the study -- does CPAP help reduce someone's risk of mortality or someone's risk of cardiovascular diseases?
• In this study, which spans 900,000 people, we looked at adults 65 and older with sleep apnea and compared groups using CPAP with groups not using it to determine differences in health.
• We found almost a 50 percent reduction in all causes of mortality for people using CPAP.
• You sleep for about 30 years of your life, so you might want to consider thinking about how important it is for your overall health.

Infectious Disease Updates

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director, Infection Prevention & Control, The University of Kansas Health System

• Dr. Stites and I are getting our influenza vaccine and COVID vaccine live on the air.
• Never miss an opportunity to get vaccinated, but now is a good time for the influenza vaccine because it will cover the months where influenza activity has historically been higher.
• With bird flu right now, there is nothing to suggest easy transmission from human to human of this.
• A mention in The New York Times front page this morning was talking about the rise in mycoplasma pneumonias. Mycoplasma pneumonia is sometimes called walking pneumonia. This is something for our parents to keep track of for young kids.
• When it comes to boosting the immune system – get vaccinated, be active and have a good diet, and get good sleep.

Thursday, Oct. 31 at 8 a.m. is the next All Things Heart. A single mother of six who had no time to slow down was told her heart is failing. We’ll show you what doctors did that has her back to living her life and being a mom.

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