Say Cheese Please, If You Want to Cut Risk of Tooth Decay and Sleep Apnea

When it comes to health foods, cheese is a champ. For starters, dietary gurus have decreed that unlike the mostly saturated fats in fats in red meats, dairy products are actually rich in unsaturated heart healthy ones. Next, late last year, food scientists reported that eating cheese reduces the risk of cavities two ways, first by coating your teeth with a protein and calcium-rich film that fends off the bacteria that would otherwise chew away at your dental enamel and then by increasing the flow of saliva to wash them away.

The latest grate news for cheese lovers arrived via a British study in the December edition of the Sleep Medicine Journal which linked eating cheese to a reduced risk of developing sleep apnea (from the Greek apnoia an absence of respiration), a potentially serious medical condition that can cause you to stop breathing while you sleep.

The Mayo Clinic lists two basic types of sleep apnea: Obstructive and Central. Obstructive sleep apnea happens if your throat muscles clench, blocking the flow of air into your lungs. Central sleep apnea is triggered when your brain doesn’t send the proper signals to the muscles which control breathing. The symptoms of both are similar. They include (but may not be limited to) serious snoring, felling exhausted even after what seemed to have been a full night’s sleep, and various mood changes including depression. For some sufferers this list expands to include waking up with a dry mouth, having night sweats, and otherwise unexplained frequent morning headaches.

The Brits based their cheese connection on data drawn from a study based on the UK Biobank and the FinnGen Biobank. The specific research project involved collected health info from 400,000 Finnish donors which they used to pinpoint potential associations between sleep apnea and cheese consumption.

The method they used to reach a conclusion was Mendelian randomization observing cause and effects links between risk factors and health outcomes as well as 44 different biomarkers such as blood pressure. Eating cheese clearly influenced blood and body levels for 33 biomarkers, six of which were directly linked to sleep apnea. The results? Cheese eaters had a 28 percent lower risk of having sleep apnea due to a reduction in inflammation and enzymes that are elevated in sleep apnea.

Meanwhile, as Dr. Kevin Shayani, Chief Fellow of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Northwell Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, told Food & Wine, “While this association is certainly exciting, it is far from perfect and should not give people free rein to consume excessive amounts of cheese.” His basic research caution: Yes, the study shows a correlation between cheese consumption and a lower risk of sleep apnea but that’s not yet hard evidence that cheese consumption causes a reduced risk of the disorder.

Which is obviously why the medicos at The Cleveland Clinic list several different ways to alleviate sleep apnea and its various effects. Some recommend nasal sprays to open the passages that pass air into the lungs. Others suggest weight management, which is to say trimming excess fat not slimming down to skinny. The Sleep Foundation votes for sleeping on your side to reduce snoring and improve other symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea. If none of this does the job, sleep docs may move up the line to medically designed mouthpieces, positive airway pressure devices that pump air into the lungs, and even mouth, nose, and throat surgery.

For the moment, Dr Shayani ends with a tasty touch: “These findings underscore the potential of dietary interventions in public health strategies.” In short, you may sleep what you eat.