Each season brings to life a new, brilliant idea – a fancy clothing style, the most recent hair-cut, brand-new diet. Further down the road even parts of your body that need to get fit also tend to change apparently. How to make your tongue slimmer and why even bother about it? The current research shows that tongue fat could be causing sleep apnea. Not surprisingly, when some credible scientists found it out, others asked – what the heck is tongue fat? Let’s have a quick biology lesson on sleep apnea first.
From sleep apnea suffer more than 18 million American adults. Fair and square, it occurs in all age groups and both sexes. Factors that increase risk of this kinda democratic disease are a small upper airway (or large uvula, tongue, or tonsils), recessed chin, obesity, small jaw or a large overbite, large neck circumference (greater than 16–17 inches), gastroesophageal reflux, allergies, sinus problems, deviated septum, smoking, and alcohol use, as well as, being older than 40. There is also a possible genetic basis for this health problem. There, there, pace your pickles. Wait until we get to the tongue fat scandal.
Sleep apnea is not easy to detect, and it’s also a serious disease, so we’ve got a two-in-one special here. Breathing that repeatedly stops for around 10 seconds during sleep and starts again can actually do a lot of harm. To discover that you may be suffering from it, look for symptoms like loud snoring, making gasping snorting or choking noises, waking up a lot during sleep, awakening with a dry mouth and headache, difficulty staying asleep (insomnia) or excessive daytime sleepiness (hypersomnia).
These warnings are comparably easy to find out, but the plot gets denser. Do you feel very tired during the day or have difficulty concentrating (very funny, most of us have it)? Do you experience irritability and have mood swings (still, no one is laughing!)? Further, there are a few more manifestations of this sneaky disease, but cool your beans, it can happen only if left untreated. Sleep apnea can lead to stroke, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmia, sexual dysfunction, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, heart failure, and heart attack. The stakes are high. Are you quaking in your boots? Easy tiger! Let’s see how to make your cutie-pie tongue heroin-thin.
A theory that people with more tongue fat were more likely to have sleep apnea it seems quite far fetched (but it’s confirmed). However, it was when other scientists published research in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, proving that you can slim your tongue down, the info really rocked the socks.
Are you ready to reduce the sleep apnea in the process by getting skinny up there, huh? Show how excited you are to get to know more! The first thing that usually comes to mind is that the tongue is a muscle, and they usually tend to be lean. Not exactly… It’s marbled with fat. Dazed and confused? The less fat you have in your body, the less of it is contained in your tongue. Research conducted on 67 people with sleep apnea shows that weight loss changes the anatomy (precisely: volume) of upper airway tissues, reducing the severity of sleep apnea. Getting your tongue skinny is even better in terms of efficacy than the surgery!
The current remedy is a CPAP machine that doesn’t evoke very good feelings among its users (results are pretty amazing though). Weight change isn’t the only answer, though. Skinny bitches suffer from their fair amount of apnea as well. Researchers don’t stop working on it! The tongue fat scandal may help researchers discover one more piece in the puzzle. Let’s hope for the successful elimination of sleep apnea shortly.
