[Health] Someone please educate me...

[Jklsr55]

Thanks for a few moments of your time. I am new here. I have a question my pulmonary specialist can't seem to answer for me...

I have had sleep apnea since I was a kid. Sleepovers at friends house was always weird cuz my friends parents would always freak out as I'd stop breathing. Understandable I guess. But that tell you that I've had this issue for 40 plus years. If all that is true (which it is) and I've just only recently started using a cpap machine, why isn't my heart and everything else toast already??? Why only now is it an issue and why only now am I at risk of the issues associated with sleep apnea??? I am in the gym everyday. I walk/run 3-5 miles a day. My blood pressure is completely normal. All my numbers are great except my blood sugar when I eat what I shouldn't. (Which isn't very often might I add)!!!

I'm really interested in what you folks might think. I like many of you loathe wearing that mask at night. I wonder all of the time if it's necessary. I don't notice any more restful sleep whatsoever. Actually it's much the opposite.

Thoughts??

[mesenteria]

When we are young, our mitochondria are almost bulletproof.  Our cells are young, including young cardiac myocytes.  Also, CAs can vary in both duration and in frequency.  Mom n' Pop watched you a couple of nights while you were blissfully asleep and did freak out when you stopped breathing, perhaps for 30 seconds or more.  I'm sure everyone has done this at least once, but do a slow second-hand-rate count of 30 seconds.  You don't even have to hold your breath...you'll get uncomfortable near 15 seconds when you consider that you were not breathing up to this point, asleep, unconscious, and were going to go another 30 seconds. 

As we age, though, we become less capable, less tolerant, tired, we acquire co-morbidities, and we tend to sleep poorly, or at least 'poorer'.  It all adds up.  Eventually, usually with the onset of age, often with the man-bod, middle aged spread, we develop apneas slowly and they eventually get discovered.