The Dangerous of Eating Fast Foods and Junk Foods

Eating fast food is completely routine for many individuals often heading to a drive-thru multiple times per week, or even multiple times per day. While eating fast food is unquestionably convenient, the price you pay in terms of your health for that convenience is simply too high. Here are the facts about how excessive junk food and fast food consumption affect your body.

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Obstructive Sleep Apnea Raises Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death

            People who have obstructive sleep apnea -- when a person stops breathing for periods during sleep -- have a greater risk of sudden cardiac death, according to a study published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. An estimated 12 million American adults have obstructive sleep apnea, and many of them are undiagnosed, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

In the study, funded by the NHLBI, 10,701 people who participated in sleep studies were followed for an average of 5.3 years for incidence of sudden cardiac death. In that time, 142 patients died of sudden cardiac death. The most common predictors were an age of 60 or older, 20 or more apnea episodes per hour of sleep, and oxygen saturation below 78 percent during sleep.

"What we found that is new with this study is that if you have sleep apnea, your risk of sudden death increases almost twofold, particularly if you stopped breathing more than 20 times per hour of sleep and if you had severe falls in oxygen saturation during sleep," says senior author Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist.

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