Swimmers, Watermelon Spitting, and Sleep Apnea

I agree about getting tested via a sleep study if your insurance will pay for it. (Actually, very expensive if you have to pay out of pocket--in the neighborhood of $2,000 a night.) It's true that the Pickwickian Syndrome types--corpulent, loud snoring, turkey wattle necks, sleepy all the time, slightly befuddled--are more likely to have apnea. But you can have a normal BMI, thin neck, minimal snoring, etc. and still have the condition. It has to do with the anatomy of your airway and the muscle tone of the surrounding muscles that keep your airway open. Playing the digeridoo and doing special throat exercises can help bolster muscle tone a bit, at least this has been shown in small studies here and there. Also, if you lose a significant amount of weight, it can get rid of the condition. For a few, whose apnea is positional, i.e., only happens when you sleep on your back, you can sometimes find relief from the old home remedy of sewing a tennis ball into the back of a t-shirt. Anyhow, I just got diagnosed with apnea and am currently writing an article on the experience. I will keep you all posted on when it comes out. As far as lung capacity goes, whether the typical swimmer has greater vital capacity then the typical, say, basketball player or golfer is probably not that key to success in the sport. Perhaps the flotation effect would help, but the ability to inhale great volumes of air is sort of secondary to the cardiovascular system's ability to pick up Oxygen in the blood stream, circulate it to the skeletal muscles, where muscle cells then extract and use it and give off C02. In a way, big lungs with huge carrying capacity are like gigantic trucks. They don't do any good if the freight you are hauling can't be received and used. I think what makes a really good aerobic athlete, vis a vis VO2 Max (see Phil Whitten's interesting article in this month's Swimmer) is not so much the quantity of oxygen you can inhale but the quantity you can use. The trained muscles of top distance swimmers are superb at extracting loads of oxygen from the blood stream. I was told years ago when researching another article on training effects that there have been elite one-lunged Olympians, though I admit none immediately come to my mind. Anyhow, there are many things to take pride in and imagine they provide a swimming edge. But watermellon seed spitting distance probably has, at best, a specious connection to distance swimming. I, for one, am more likely to register negative watermellow spitting distance because of accidental inhalation of said missile. But Charlie, correct me if I am wrong, but I did beat you in the 2-mile swim, eh? I shall never, however, stand on the watermellon podium with the likes of you. In that sport, you are by far il miglior fabro. PS back to apnea for a moment. If you do have a very slow resting breathing rate, note that apneas are defined as cessation of breathing lasting 10 seconds or longer. I suspect that it's possible that in an extremely relaxed state, a superbly trained athlete might breath so slowly that he or she might be misdiagnosed with apnea. I told the sleep tech lady that my resting heart rate was pretty slow, that I once recorded it at 37 (it might have been lower, but I got so excited to think I could break a record that it started speeding up towards the end of the measured minute.) I am not sure if low heart rate correlates with low breathing rate, but I do know that the algorithms on the first CPAP machine I used were set for faster breathers than I am. If I didn't initiate a breath within 3 seconds or so of exhaling, it started blowing air at higher pressure to jump start a breath. Very annoying. I would start breathing, then the higher pressure would stop and switch to almost a suction effect. This was a Respironics machine for those of you who know about these things. I switched to a ResMed and the problem disappeared.

I agree about getting tested via a sleep study if your insurance will pay for it. (Actually, very expensive if you have to pay out of pocket--in the neighborhood of $2,000 a night.) It's true that the Pickwickian Syndrome types--corpulent, loud snoring, turkey wattle necks, sleepy all the time, slightly befuddled--are more likely to have apnea. But you can have a normal BMI, thin neck, minimal snoring, etc. and still have the condition. It has to do with the anatomy of your airway and the muscle tone of the surrounding muscles that keep your airway open. Playing the digeridoo and doing special throat exercises can help bolster muscle tone a bit, at least this has been shown in small studies here and there. Also, if you lose a significant amount of weight, it can get rid of the condition. For a few, whose apnea is positional, i.e., only happens when you sleep on your back, you can sometimes find relief from the old home remedy of sewing a tennis ball into the back of a t-shirt. Anyhow, I just got diagnosed with apnea and am currently writing an article on the experience. I will keep you all posted on when it comes out. As far as lung capacity goes, whether the typical swimmer has greater vital capacity then the typical, say, basketball player or golfer is probably not that key to success in the sport. Perhaps the flotation effect would help, but the ability to inhale great volumes of air is sort of secondary to the cardiovascular system's ability to pick up Oxygen in the blood stream, circulate it to the skeletal muscles, where muscle cells then extract and use it and give off C02. In a way, big lungs with huge carrying capacity are like gigantic trucks. They don't do any good if the freight you are hauling can't be received and used. I think what makes a really good aerobic athlete, vis a vis VO2 Max (see Phil Whitten's interesting article in this month's Swimmer) is not so much the quantity of oxygen you can inhale but the quantity you can use. The trained muscles of top distance swimmers are superb at extracting loads of oxygen from the blood stream. I was told years ago when researching another article on training effects that there have been elite one-lunged Olympians, though I admit none immediately come to my mind. Anyhow, there are many things to take pride in and imagine they provide a swimming edge. But watermellon seed spitting distance probably has, at best, a specious connection to distance swimming. I, for one, am more likely to register negative watermellow spitting distance because of accidental inhalation of said missile. But Charlie, correct me if I am wrong, but I did beat you in the 2-mile swim, eh? I shall never, however, stand on the watermellon podium with the likes of you. In that sport, you are by far il miglior fabro. PS back to apnea for a moment. If you do have a very slow resting breathing rate, note that apneas are defined as cessation of breathing lasting 10 seconds or longer. I suspect that it's possible that in an extremely relaxed state, a superbly trained athlete might breath so slowly that he or she might be misdiagnosed with apnea. I told the sleep tech lady that my resting heart rate was pretty slow, that I once recorded it at 37 (it might have been lower, but I got so excited to think I could break a record that it started speeding up towards the end of the measured minute.) I am not sure if low heart rate correlates with low breathing rate, but I do know that the algorithms on the first CPAP machine I used were set for faster breathers than I am. If I didn't initiate a breath within 3 seconds or so of exhaling, it started blowing air at higher pressure to jump start a breath. Very annoying. I would start breathing, then the higher pressure would stop and switch to almost a suction effect. This was a Respironics machine for those of you who know about these things. I switched to a ResMed and the problem disappeared.