Greetings readers, how are you all? So as many of you will already know, I got the results of my sleepapnoea study back this week. This is from when I spent a night in the hospital and my sleep was monitored. Not the most fun experience in the world. Lots of electrodes everywhere. The results, while expected, were still a little disquieting. The study is quite involved, so I will just run you through a couple of the main points:
I ‘woke up’ (i.e. my brain technically brought me back to consciousness, not sat up wide awake) 338 times, or an average of 45 times an hour. I didn’t get enough oxygen to the brain for approximately 27% of the time. Finally, to give everyone a chuckle, under the category of ‘Snoring’, the technician wrote ‘Loud and frequent’…. No shit, really?!
In other words, I am now officially diagnosed with full blown, severe sleepapnoea. Thanks Dr. Obvious, I could’ve told you that WITHOUT spending a thousand bucks on hospital visits and specialists. The reason I’m telling you all this is because it does actually tie into my weight loss plans. As I lose weight, the sleepapnoea should get better. It will not cure it, but it will help. So I have another reason to keep up the regime.
However, I am starting to wonder if I shouldn’t shake things up a bit. Ever since I started this blog, friends have been approaching me saying that they tried this diet or that diet and lost insert stupid amount of weight here. So, I’m putting it to you all – what diets worked for you, and why? Any advice is appreciated. I will be weighing up the benefits (HA! Accidental pun) and possibly choosing a new eating plan over the next couple of weeks.
Weight: 118.9kg
Muscle percentage: 37.3%
Fat percentage: 43.7
Goal progress: 21.9%
Hooray, back on the straight and narrow! (boom tish, that’s two) I want to be at least 50% of the way there by my birthday – an average of 2kg a week. It’s not an outrageous goal, but still challenging.
Finally readers, something happened last night that I’m not happy about. I went to a party, had a few drinks, and smoked 4 cigarettes. I honestly don’t know why. The whole time I was smoking them, they tasted like garbage. I didn’t get any enjoyment out of them. I woke up today feeling gross, and with no desire to smoke at all. But there you go – it happened, and I’m here to tell you guys about this kind of stuff. Very strange though.
It's amazing how weight makes a difference with sleep apnoea (PS, why did you need to go to hospital? My doctor just organised for a mob who specialises in sleep studies to meet me at her surgery at 5pm one day, and wire me up to a little portable unit with 200,000 electrodes everywhere - then met me there againt at 8:30 the next morning to un-wire me.. a week later they sent my doc a fairly detailed report saying I stopped breathing 30-something times an hour, etc etc.. I'm not sure what it would normally cost (I got it free under my 'complex health plan' thingy), but i wouldn't think it would be overly costly? )
ReplyDeleteI was also having pretty serious high blood pressure problems, so the doctor told me I was either getting a cpap machine, and going on blood pressure meds, or I was losing at least 20kg (I was 109kg at the time).. That was almost 12 months ago, and I managed about 15kg in 3 months, but have stalled there.. On the upside, I don't have sleep apnoea anymore, my blood pressure is back to what the doc considers normal (not normal for me though, I've always had *really* low BP..), and I only snore when I'm *really* tired, or have a bad allergy happening.. Still trying to get back to the 80-85kg mark though! Not sure how that's going to work, as we eat NO fat, almost no carbs, stick to our 1000-ish calories a day, and walk a fair bit.. - just don't have time to excercise like I did when I was in my 20's, with a bub around!
Good luck anyway mate - it's amazing what a difference weight loss makes to sleep problems!