How do you sleep at night? Having a fat tongue could be a key reason you snore, choke, gasp or stop breathing sometimes during the night a condition that could ruin your health. Millions suffer from sleep apnea a common disorder in which the airways constrict during sleep, leading to repeated stops and starts breathing, with obesity being a key risk factor for the condition.
A new study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine has revealed that reducing the fat in your tongue, does improve sleep apnea. Previously, a study had found obese people with obstructive sleep apnea had considerably larger tongues with higher percentages of tongue fat than obese people without the condition.
Obstructive sleep apnea is very dangerous to one’s health as it could damage the brain’s white matter, raise blood pressure, contribute to depression and heighten the risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
“You talk, eat and breathe with your tongue – so why is fat deposited there? It’s not clear why. It could be genetic or environmental, but the less fat there is, the less likely the tongue is to collapse during sleep,” said study author Dr.Los Richard Schwab.
The new study also found that weight loss reduced the size of the jaw muscle that controls chewing and the muscles on each side of the airway, although not as significant as the loss of tongue fat. The researchers now plan to work out which low-fat diets are particularly good at slimming down the tongue, as they have established a unique therapeutic target.