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People who suffer from sleep apnea can choose a number of treatment options, the most popular being a CPAP mask that’s worn at night. The mask—which looks like a traditional oxygen mask that’s hooked up to a machine with tubes—gauges levels of the swollenness of tissue and pushes air past the swollen tissue so that you can breathe easier. Though it has a 90 to 95 percent success rate, its downside is inadequate patient compliance because many wearers don’t like looking and sounding like Darth Vader when they go to bed. There are also surgical treatments, which are about 50 percent successful. Surgery removes some of the obstructing tissue, which helps you breathe better and cure the apnea, and procedures that help you lose weight (that is, gastric bypass surgery) are also effective and can help some people who have severe sleep apnea. But the biggest change can come from you. Losing just ten pounds can decrease your episodes of sleep apnea by 30 percent, while gaining ten pounds does the reverse—making weight loss even more effective than surgery.
Actually, that’s part of it. But the technical reason you yawn is because your body senses a dip in the oxygen level in the blood, so your body wants to yawn to take in more oxygen and get it back into the bloodstream. What we don’t understand is why yawning is contagious.
Sure, a lack of air means something’s not working in your respiratory system, but the problem doesn’t always start and stop with your lungs. If your heart isn’t working properly, it can’t pump blood forward, meaning that blood can back up into your lungs—making the dry, fluffy substance soggy. And that means it can no longer exchange air. So in many cases when you feel shortness of breath, the solution is in finding out and addressing what’s wrong with the heart to help move blood out of the lungs so they can work properly.
On the surface, air filters sound like they’d be the best things for your lungs since snorkeling tubes. Air filters are supposed to work by taking allergens out of the air so you can have cleaner breathing. But many of them don’t work that well, and the primary reason isn’t a mechanical malfunction, but an owner malfunction. Most people don’t change air filters or humidifiers with enough regularity, so they’re not that effective. Unless humidifiers are cleaned regularly, they’ll form a cesspool of water, which grows mold and fungi, and then you end up breathing it. If you stick to regular maintenance, however, they can be useful for taking allergens out of the air.
Supplementing your diet with vitamin A and beta-carotene can lead to megadosing—that is, taking in more than 2,500 IU of vitamin A or the vitamin A equivalent in beta-carotene. When you get more than that amount from supplements or vitamins, it doesn’t serve its purpose as an antioxidant. In fact, it does the opposite and oxidizes tissue, which causes DNA damage. One study from Finland showed that people taking vitamin A had a higher risk of lung cancer, atherosclerosis, and, for smokers, stroke. So keep your vitamin supplement dose to 1,500 to 2,500 IU a day.
Everybody knows the two primary things teeth are used for—eating and stopping hockey pucks. But what may surprise you is that your teeth can provide clues into your health like virtually no other outward part of your body. Why? The biggest concern when it comes to aging and your teeth isn’t the presence of cavities; it’s the presence of periodontal disease, which can make you up to 3.7 years older. Gum disease (gingivitis) has been linked to many other health problems, presumably because the same bacteria that cause periodontal disease can also trigger an immune response that causes inflammation and hardening of the arteries. That same plaque that causes tooth decay—that sticky coating of bacteria, saliva, and three-day-old cauliflower—can also contribute to the plaque in your arteries. And that has a profound effect on all kinds of vascular problems, from heart attacks to erectile dysfunction. Here’s a telling fact: Many people in Great Britain don’t have regular dental care because it’s not provided free in the National Health Service. But when people in Great Britain go to the hospital with chest pain, they’re given an aspirin, a beta-blocker, and an antibiotic for gum disease—because doctors know there’s a strong link between the inflammation of gum disease and an aging and unstable cardiovascular system.
Our remarkably efficient digestive system extracts the most calories possible. The process starts in

the mouth with a temporomandibular jaw (TMJ) joint that purposely dislocates during chewing in order to allow the masseter muscle to more forcefully compress food. The teeth fit together like puzzle pieces to ensure that no morsel is left unchewed and underdigested. Clenching teeth and having a tight jaw often cause TMJ pain and headaches.
We are born to eat, and our stomachs can digest nearly anything, but in order to be able to experiment with new and sometimes poisonous foods, humans must have the ability to vomit food or burp gas. The esophagus makes a sharp angle as it enters the stomach to reduce this regurgitation, but if the junction is opened (the angle is reduced), we get burning and indigestion from GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disorder). The gallbladder stores bile that can be secreted into the small bowel once the food bolus has passed through the stomach. The stored bile can harden and form painful gallstones.
That’s true—but it’s not for the reason you think. The real reason men tend to be able to drink more alcohol doesn’t have anything to with body mass or machismo. Men have an enzyme that metabolizes half the alcohol they drink before it even hits the bloodstream. Women don’t have as much of that enzyme in their gut wall and blood.
Gallstones and the Rolling Stones aren’t the only stones that can change your life. The other is the one that’ll make you keel over like a rugby player who’s been kneed in the groin. Kidney stones form when urine becomes so concentrated that small crystals and then stones are formed—creating intense pain in your lower back and side, and when you urinate. The main method of prevention is to treat your body like an empty swimming pool and flood it with water to flush it out, which inhibits the formation of the crystals by diluting them with water.
Diarrhea is usually caused by an infection releasing a toxin that paralyzes the small intestine wall and allows water to leak wherever it wants, which is why you feel like a water pistol while sitting on the toilet. The best solution isn’t making camp on the toilet and waiting for the infection to run its course. It’s chicken soup with rice. That combination of the rice and broth seems to protect the lining cells of your intestines by providing critical sugars so you can minimize the onset of Ole Faithful. Or even calcium tablets work. We’re not sure why, but they do slow all muscular movements, which may help keep sewage from propelling through your intestinal pipes.
Grapefruit juice can add to the potency (and side effects) of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs. The good side: If you drink eight ounces of grapefruit juice a day, you may need to only take a quarter of your statin dosage. The bad side: Grapefruit juice increases the effective dose and the side effects of other drugs like calcium channel blockers, benzodiazepines, amiodarone, and Zoloft. So if you like grapefruit juice, work with your doctor to determine the right amount of each of your pills to take.
Adequate fiber in the diet cleans the colon as the stool is stored in the curving rectum. Too little fiber or water can increase the risk of diverticuli forming. At defecation, the “caca”—an important diagnostic for measuring your digestive health—is expelled and should retain its banana shape in the toilet bowl unless you are constipated. Hard stools may injure the hemorrhoid veins, which can bleed and hurt.
Your digestive system has two main hormones that control hunger and appetite. Ghrelin is secreted by the stomach and increases your appetite. When your stomach’s empty, it sends ghrelin in out requesting food. Leptin tells your brain that you’re full. When you eat, your fat cells secrete it so that you stop eating. One of the biggest evil influences on our diet is the presence of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a sugar substitute that itself is a sugar found in soft drinks and many other sweet, processed foods. The problem is that HFCS inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off ghrelin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry. The double whammy on our hormones has contributed enormously to our collective enormity. When you consider that many American women will often obtain as much of 50 percent of their daily calories from salad dressing (which contains HFCS), you can see the problem. While food manufacturers may eliminate fat, they make up for its taste with sugar and HFCS—which are simply empty calories that serve no nutritional purpose.
Through sleep, your brain also plays a role in gut functions. If you want to eat less, get more sleep. When you don’t sleep enough, more ghrelin is secreted and less leptin is released. So lack of sleep can have the same effect as HFCS by causing you to eat more often.
We all produce one to three pints of gas daily. Less than 1 percent of it smells.
Nuts can theoretically get stuck in those little pouches in your colon that are indicative of diverticulosis, but nuts don’t actually cause it. In fact, there’s never been a case where nuts have been implicated as the perpetrator. The real culprit is not having enough fiber and water in your diet.
While fiber is the wonder nutrient for your tubing, it hasn’t been shown to prevent colon cancer. You can reduce the chances of getting colon cancer by 40 percent by taking two baby aspirins a day and by 30 percent by taking high doses of folate and/or calcium. But the best prevention also includes a regular colonoscopy to check for precancerous polyps and to check your stool regularly for blood.
We can’t say enough wonderful things about aspirin for all of its antiaging power, but you should be aware that aspirin and ibuprofen actually promote stomach irritation. They have an anti-inflammatory effect in other parts of the body, but here, they promote inflammation that causes gastritis or even ulcers. To avoid the acidic aspirin causing so much gastric upset, use either (or both) buffered aspirin or aspirin that dissolves quickly. Take your aspirin after you drink half a glass of warm water and chase it with another half glass of warm water to promote faster breakup of the tablet.
Vegetarians who haven’t eaten meat in a long time don’t like it if they try it again. That’s because they don’t secrete the right mix of enzymes from the salivary glands to the stomach’s digestive enzymes and small intestine to optimally digest meat. That triggers a reaction when you do eat it: it feels heavy, you don’t digest it as well, so you don’t feel good and you don’t enjoy it.
Fifty-four percent of men think about sex several times a day, compared to 19 percent of women.
Erectile dysfunction, like wrinkles and partaking in early-bird dinner specials, increases as you age. It affects 5 percent of men in their forties, and up to 25 percent of men by the age of sixty-five. While half of men experience some kind of erectile problem between the ages of forty and seventy, it doesn’t mean you have to be one of them—especially if you follow our guidelines for optimum arterial health in Chapter 2. In fact, many men over the age of seventy report that they’re swinging the clubs just fine, thank you very much.
In order for the penis to develop hard erections, the large blood vessels from the heart (aorta to iliacs) bring blood to smaller arteries, which must relax to let blood into the dorsal artery. The veins then shut off the exit path so all the blood engorges the penis to form an erection.
Nerves around the prostate, which lies on the rectum, also help control blood flow, but can be injured during prostate surgery. The two testes, which are typically different heights, lie outside the body so they can keep sperm cool to increase their survival. During copulation, special muscles retract the testes in preparation for ejaculation.

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