19 Dec What’s the Connection Between Sleep Apnea, Cortisol, and Weight Loss?
If you have sleep apnea or exhibit sleep apnea symptoms and you also struggle with stress and excess body weight, we’re here to help. In today’s blog, our sleep specialists explain the connection between sleep apnea, cortisol, and weight loss. To learn more, just keep reading!
The Connection Between Sleep Apnea, Cortisol, and Weight Loss
- Whether or not you remember it, sleep apnea causes you to wake up several times each night, resulting in sleep deprivation.
- Our bodies regulate hormones while we are asleep. When you don’t get enough sleep, your body cannot properly regulate hormones like cortisol, the “stress hormone,” and ghrelin, the “hunger hormone.”
- Without proper hormone regulation, our cortisol and ghrelin levels remain at a constant high, making us feel excess stress, anxiety, and an urge to eat even when we are full.
- Overeating causes weight gain; when out of control, it leads to being overweight.
- Excess weight can cause or worsen obstructive sleep apnea by smothering the windpipe. This factor restarts the vicious cycle of weight gain, poor sleep, and stress.
Breaking the Poor Sleep, Stress, and Weight Gain Cycle
If you exhibit symptoms of sleep apnea and you’re stuck in the cycle of poor sleep, stress, and weight gain, we urge you to start by addressing your sleep apnea with your primary care physician (PCP).
Your PCP can refer you to a board-certified dental sleep medicine specialist who can help you control your sleep apnea. At our office, and most others, we start with a sleep study.
During your sleep study, your sleep specialist will monitor your breathing, sleeping position, mid-sleep movement, and vitals. The specialist will check to see if you snore, whether you breathe through your mouth only, and whether your weight or your position is causing a physical blockage to your airway.
Once you are diagnosed with sleep apnea, please make an appointment with us to discover the variety of treatment options we offer, such as oral appliance therapy. Very rarely is there a type of sleep apnea that our sleep specialists cannot treat.
When you begin receiving treatment, you’ll finally start sleeping better without multiple sleep interruptions. The hormones that cause excess stress and hunger will also start to regulate with better sleep.
You’ll quickly notice improvements in these areas and more and begin a new cycle—a healthy one of restful sleep, calm nerves, and successful weight loss.
Take Control of Your Sleep Health
Whether sleep apnea, insomnia, or something else stops you from getting fulfilling, restful, restorative sleep each night, you need a practical, effective solution, like oral appliance therapy; that’s our specialty at TMJ & Sleep Solutions of Alabama!
Setting up your first appointment is simple. Call us today at (205) 874-9699 or contact us online. Once we get in touch, if you have questions about insurance coverage, costs, treatment, or anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask! We will help provide the answers you need.
Thanks for reading this edition of our sleep advice blog! We create content like this so our patients have the resources to take charge of their sleep health instead of letting sleep problems rule their lives.
If you learned something new or want to spread awareness, don’t forget to share this post on your favorite social platforms! You can also ask questions about sleep health, TMJ disorder, or sleep apnea in our Instagram comments, and we might just feature them in our next blog.