What you feel on Mondays after late nights and drinking alcohol on the weekend might be more than mere fatigue.
A new study says it may be the result of social apnea – a weekend spike in the severity of obstructive sleep apnea that can happen to anyone.
Dr. Vikas Jain, a sleep medicine specialist at Texas Health Center for Diagnostics and Surgery Plano, tells KERA’s Sam Baker why alcohol is often a contributing factor.
Dr. Jain: Well, sleep apnea is merely your airway is relaxing and you're then having diminished airflow.
Alcohol by itself relaxes the upper airway. So, it can put you in a position to experience sleep apnea on a given night. It doesn't mean that you will, but if you're someone who maybe already has some degree of muscle relaxation, is that extra alcohol going to put you over the edge where you're going to start to experience this condition?
So, sleep apnea is considered where you're stopping breathing five times every hour. Perhaps you could be someone who stops breathing three or four times every hour, which we would say, is within normal limits.
But on nights when you are drinking, if that number increases to nine or 10 times an hour, now you're having apnea.
Baker: You mentioned alcohol. Are there any other things that could lead to this?
Anything that is going to contribute to muscle weakness or muscle relaxation.
So, if there are medicines that patients may take more on the weekends that relate to muscle relaxation, that can also contribute sometimes to things that influence breathing.
If you tend to be a social smoker, that could potentially put you in a place where maybe you're not going to breathe as well on those weekend nights as you would on a weekday night.
So, it's not just a case of just breaking your normal sleep schedule for a couple of days, it's what else you do during that time?
Right. Both kind of what you do during the day and then what you suffer from at night.
And I think the idea behind it is because patients may be suffering from a higher degree of sleep apnea on the weekends, then that's going to lead you to go into the week feeling really tired. Then you're sitting there wondering, hey, I'm really tired, maybe I should go get this checked out.
But then if you test yourself on a weeknight, that might miss the condition because it's only present on the weekend.
So, what are warning signs people should look for when it comes to social apnea?
Are you being told that you're snoring more on those particular nights?
Do you feel like you're waking up more often, having more disrupted sleep?
Do you feel a bit more tired, sleepy throughout the day?
Do you tend to notice those symptoms more on a Saturday, Sunday, and Monday entering into the week?
Those are often signs of disrupted sleep and can be helpful in determining if maybe you need a more extensive evaluation.
What are the main health concerns of social apnea?
What happens with sleep apnea is that your airway is narrowing, it's affecting your air flow and that, in turn, then affects how much oxygen you're getting and so, if you're having repeated bouts of low oxygen throughout the night, that over time can contribute to cardiovascular disease.
We see that it contributes to atherosclerosis, to high blood pressure, to arrhythmias, heart attack, and stroke. The more often you're sort of suffering from this over time, it can have an impact on health.
So, then the concern is, is if this is going on week over week, and you're unaware, is that contributing to diminished health over time.
So, what are tips to combat this?
One to combat it would be trying to keep a consistent schedule and being mindful of sort of weekends and weekdays and maybe trying to keep those as close together as you can.
Being mindful of how many alcoholic drinks you may be having on the weekend.
Making sure you're not staying up too late.
The more consistent we keep our sleep schedules and day schedules, the more opportunity there would be then to see, 'Hey, do I feel healthy on a consistent basis or am I feeling unhealthy on a system basis that might help to diagnose whether the condition is present or not.'
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