1/18/2007
Does your wife wake you up to tell you you’re snoring so loud she can’t sleep? Have you found yourself nodding off while your boss is making an important presentation? Do you feel tired, even when you wake up from a full night’s sleep? If you answer yes to any of these questions, you could be suffering from obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder that causes a person to stop breathing for 10 seconds or longer numerous times every night. It’s estimated that 90 percent of Americans with sleep apnea don’t know they have it nor that it increases their risk of heart attack, stroke, heart failure and other serious illnesses.
There are three risk factors for heart disease that you can do nothing to alter. These are your family history, your age (the risk increases as you get older), and ethnic background. To learn more about your risks, plan on attending St. John’s Matters of the Heart program, next month on Saturday, February 10th. It runs from 9 to 1 in St. John’s Conference Center. For more info, call St. John’s Referral One at 625-2000 or log onto stj.com.
