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Researcher links neck and sleep

"Different races have different craniofacial anatomy, and that will change the severity of sleep apnea."

Lin Chia-mo, chief director of the Sleep Research Center at Shin Kong Memorial Hospital

Job stress keeping you awake? Maybe your neighbors are too noisy? But then again, it could be your neck or body size.

A research study by Lin Chia-mo (林嘉謨), chief director of the Sleep Research Center at Shin Kong Memorial Hospital, shows that men with a neck circumference larger than 41.5cm and women with a neck circumference larger than 40cm may suffer from a higher risk of respiratory problems during sleep.

Lin's research, which was based on clinical data gathered from the center's 699 male and 183 female patients over the past year, was presented in the 14th Annual International Wu Ho-su Memorial Symposium on Sleep Medicine held in Taipei yesterday.

Lin said that there is an established body of literature on the relationship between neck circumstance and sleep apnea -- sudden breath discontinuity during sleep -- but most of this work was performed on Western men.

Western men with a neck circumference of above 43cm were shown to have a high incidence of sleep apnea and Lin was keen to see if these results applied to Asian patients.

According to his research, the ideal neck circumference for Tai-wanese men and women is 37cm and 33.5cm, respectively.

Lin told the Taipei Times that having a larger neck size increases the likelihood that a person's upper airway will be obstructed by muscles and fat inside the neck, leading difficulties in breathing.

"Different races have different craniofacial anatomy, and that will change the severity of sleep apnea," he wrote in his research abstract.

However, he said that neck circumference is also related to a person's hormones, adding that male hormones contribute to fat accumulation around the neck while female hormones help fat accumulate on their bottoms.

But he also said that there is still no research that confirms an absolute relationship between obesity and neck circumference.

Lin also tried to find out the relationship between Body Mass Index (BMI) -- an index used worldwide to measure if a person is overweight -- and sleep apnea. Ideal BMI for men and women are 24 and 22, respectively.

He found that 75.2 percent of his male patients and 77.8 percent of his female patients with a BMI over 30 suffer from sleep apnea.

Only a relatively low percentage of patients with BMI lower than 25 suffer from the illness, he said.
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