Dr Jonathan Greenburg DDS

As the youngest of 76 million boomers are now move through their 40s, men especially over 40 are more likely to have sleep disorders than women.

About 37 percent of American adults ages 30-69 have at least mild OSA. In a sleep apnea cycle, breathing stops, blood oxygen levels drop, and the person wakes briefly gasping for breath. This continues hundreds of times throughout the night.Apnea is classified as a complete cessation of breathing. Each episode of sleep apnea lasts a minimum of 10 seconds

What causes this high prevalence of sleep disordered breathing in baby boomers? It’s not just because they are ‘boomers’; rather, it is due to the continued changes of growing older. Changes in airway anatomy occur with age. The soft palate gets longer, the pharyngeal fat pads increase in size, and the shape of bony structures around the pharyngeal airway change. All of these contribute to the increased prevalence of sleep apnea in baby boomers.

Being overweight increases sleep disordered breathing

Football legend Reggie White, a defensive end for the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles, is regarded as one of the NFL’s greatest players. He died from complications related to sleep apnea and sarcoidosis at age 43.

Sleep apnea has an insidious and damaging impact on a person’s health. It makes patients feel chronically tired, erodes their quality of life and impairs their ability to perform safety-critical tasks, such as driving a car. It also heightens the risk of high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes.

Untreated sleep apnea causes accidents and illness, undermines a person’s effectiveness in the workplace and imposes large burdens on the healthcare system.

While hypothyroidism is more prevalent in female baby boomers, male boomers with constant fatigue are more likely to be suspects of sleep apnea - although 80 to 90 percent of those who are go undiagnosed. As many as three million middle-aged men don’t know they have this chronic upper airway obstruction during sleep, usually associated with loud snoring.

Many people long to die peacefully in their sleep, their heart stopping while they dream and snore. But reality is different: Heart attack deaths actually hit their nadir at night, and peak between sunrise and noon.

The exception is people who suffer from sleep apnea. New research shows that they are far more likely to die in their sleep.

The new research, published in today’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 112 Minnesota residents, diagnosed with sleep apnea, who died suddenly of heart-related causes. Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn

Researchers found that more than half the sleep apnea sufferers died between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. In the general population, this was the time people were least likely to die of cardiac-related problems.

The literature suggests up to 80 per cent of people with sleep apnea don’t have a clue what’s going on, Research shows that a neck circumference greater than 16 inches in a woman and 17 inches in a man correlates with an increased risk for the disorder, said Dr. Robert Gunnink, medical director of REM Medical and a board-certified sleep medicine and neurology specialist.