From what I learned in the past few weeks researching, weight it is certainly a big contributing factor, but not the only one .... family history, age and even race all contribute. Of course, you can't do anything about those last three, so ya gotta go after weight, which seems to be the biggest factor you have control over. The problem with loosing weight while suffering sleep apnea is that you have no energy to exercise, which in turn causes you to gain weight, which in turns makes the apnea worse, which in turn causes you to have even less energy, and so on and so on into a big ole sleepy death spiral ..... JUST A big pain in the butt!