Sleep apnea and heart health

The missing link between sleep apnea and heart disease

If you follow Dr. Breus, you already know that sleep is about much more than feeling rested. Obstructive sleep apnea and poor-quality sleep have been linked to:

• High blood pressure
• Atrial fibrillation and other heart rhythm disorders
• Coronary artery disease and stroke
• Heart attacks that occur during the night

Treating sleep apnea can improve sleep, lower blood pressure, and support better heart health. But there's another part of the picture many people never hear about: you can sleep better, use your CPAP faithfully, feel perfectly healthy — even pass a normal EKG or stress test — and still have plaque quietly building in your coronary arteries.

That's why we wanted to share this conversation — produced by ClearCardio — with Dr. John Osborne, a Harvard-trained preventive cardiologist who has spent nearly three decades focused on finding heart disease before it becomes a medical emergency.

In this 15-minute video, Dr. Osborne explains:

It's about understanding something standard checkups — and even sleep studies — aren't designed to show: whether plaque is already present, and what that could mean for your long-term heart health.