Causes of Snoring and Treatments

Snor­ing is a rat­tling sound that often accom­pa­nies the breath­ing of a sleep­ing per­son. This phe­nom­e­non has a dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cy, and can be traced in both adults and chil­dren. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics, most often mid­dle-aged and elder­ly peo­ple snore in their sleep (from 35–40% of men and more than 15% of all women).

Snor­ing is a social prob­lem. And main­ly mar­ried cou­ples suf­fer from it, because some­times it is almost impos­si­ble to sleep next to a snor­ing per­son. What are the caus­es of snor­ing? How is snor­ing diag­nosed and treat­ed with­out a doc­tor?

Sleep snoring and diagnosis of the syndrome

Clin­i­cal diag­no­sis of snor­ing con­sists of a whole list of infor­ma­tive manip­u­la­tions, which can be pre­scribed and par­tial­ly car­ried out by an ENT. Ini­tial­ly, the doc­tor exam­ines the patient, learns about the nature of snor­ing and the pres­ence of asso­ci­at­ed symp­toms. It is impor­tant to estab­lish the approx­i­mate dates when a per­son first began to snore in his sleep. Are there any changes in weight over this peri­od?

An exam­i­na­tion of the ENT organs can pro­vide impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the caus­es of snor­ing. It is this pro­ce­dure that allows you to quick­ly iden­ti­fy var­i­ous defects of the phar­ynx and nose, includ­ing polyps, an elon­gat­ed pala­tine tongue, a devi­at­ed nasal sep­tum, inflamed ton­sils, hyper­tro­phy (increase in vol­ume) of the nasal mucosa.

The patient may com­plain about:

• reg­u­lar snor­ing dur­ing sleep;
• noc­tur­nal attacks of suf­fo­ca­tion;
• headaches after sleep;
• con­stant sleepi­ness while awake.

It is impor­tant to know that snor­ing while sleep­ing is dan­ger­ous. The sound phe­nom­e­non can be a symp­tom of a severe sleep dis­or­der — obstruc­tive sleep apnea syn­drome (OSA), in which there are short-term paus­es in breath­ing and col­lapse may devel­op. OSA requires strict med­ical super­vi­sion. It is impor­tant to con­duct a com­plete diag­no­sis of the patien­t’s con­di­tion, deter­mine the caus­es of snor­ing and elim­i­nate them.

All diag­nos­tics of snor­ing and obstruc­tive sleep apnea can be con­di­tion­al­ly divid­ed into four dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories:

• screen­ing sys­tems;
• sys­tems with a lim­it­ed set of para­me­ters;
• mobile polysomnog­ra­phy sys­tem;
• sta­tion­ary polysomno­graph­ic sys­tem.

Screen­ing sys­tems are com­put­er pulse oxime­try and res­pi­ra­to­ry mon­i­tor­ing. For exam­ple, for pulse oxime­try, spe­cial portable devices are used that record sig­nals. Based on the result of such a test, a report is gen­er­at­ed, con­sist­ing of pulse data and blood oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion para­me­ters.

Sys­tems with a lim­it­ed set of para­me­ters are time-con­sum­ing and expen­sive tech­niques that are often used in som­nol­o­gy. These include car­dio-res­pi­ra­to­ry devices and advanced res­pi­ra­to­ry devices.

A sta­tion­ary polysomno­graph­ic sys­tem records var­i­ous para­me­ters of the body’s work dur­ing day­time or night­time sleep. The mobile polysomnog­ra­phy sys­tem works on a sim­i­lar prin­ci­ple. The only dif­fer­ence is that the diag­no­sis of the patien­t’s con­di­tion can be car­ried out with­out the con­trol of the med­ical staff on duty.

Also, to diag­nose snor­ing, the doc­tor may pre­scribe com­put­ed tomog­ra­phy, rhi­no­manom­e­try (mon­i­tor­ing the paten­cy of the nasal pas­sages) and polysomnog­ra­phy (an elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal pro­ce­dure).

Causes of snoring

All the caus­es of snor­ing are dif­fer­ent in appear­ance, but the sound dur­ing sleep appears main­ly due to the relax­ation of the mus­cles of the soft palate, tongue or phar­ynx. Due to the fact that weak­ened tis­sues block the air­ways, the flow of air dur­ing inhala­tion and exha­la­tion increas­es, cre­at­ing vibra­tion and, as a result, snor­ing.

Doc­tors note two sep­a­rate cat­e­gories of caus­es of snor­ing:

• Exter­nal fac­tors. This sub­group of caus­es includes tak­ing sleep­ing pills or seda­tives, bad habits (drink­ing alco­holic bev­er­ages just before bed­time), and incor­rect pos­ture dur­ing sleep.
• Phys­i­o­log­i­cal fac­tors. This cat­e­go­ry of caus­es of snor­ing includes polyps, anatom­i­cal fea­tures of the nose and throat, excess weight, chron­ic nasal con­ges­tion, mal­oc­clu­sion, ade­noids (growth of the nasopha­ryn­geal ton­sil).

Some­times the cause of snor­ing is a com­mon cold. The accu­mu­la­tion of mucus in the nasal pas­sages makes breath­ing dif­fi­cult and leads to the appear­ance of a sound syn­drome that accom­pa­nies sleep.

Doctors’ advice: how to cure snoring?

It is impor­tant to treat the sound syn­drome, which appears due to the vibra­tion of the tis­sues of the throat dur­ing sleep, under the strict guid­ance of a com­pe­tent spe­cial­ist. You need to under­stand that snor­ing is only a con­se­quence, but it is nec­es­sary to estab­lish exact­ly the cause of its occur­rence. Only a doc­tor can deter­mine the sever­i­ty of a patien­t’s con­di­tion. To under­stand how to cure snor­ing in a par­tic­u­lar case, you need to con­tact a ther­a­pist or ENT. Con­sul­ta­tion with a pul­mo­nolo­gist or ortho­don­tist may be rec­om­mend­ed.

Snor­ing is a phe­nom­e­non that occurs for a num­ber of rea­sons. And the ther­a­py of such a syn­drome will depend sole­ly on the type of dis­or­ders lead­ing to snor­ing.

• If your snor­ing is due to a mal­oc­clu­sion, then an ortho­don­tist will help solve the prob­lem. The doc­tor will diag­nose the con­di­tion of the oral cav­i­ty and try to cor­rect the prob­lem with the help of den­tal struc­tures: braces or train­ers.
• If snor­ing appeared due to the anatom­i­cal fea­tures of the struc­ture of the lar­ynx or nose, then you may need spe­cial med­ical designs that are select­ed on an indi­vid­ual basis, for exam­ple, face masks or devices for the oral cav­i­ty.
• To cure snor­ing with a run­ny nose or sore throat, when the ton­sils of the lar­ynx are enlarged, you should try to take into account all the advice of doc­tors. The attend­ing spe­cial­ist will def­i­nite­ly pre­scribe anti-inflam­ma­to­ry med­ica­tions for the throat, which will relieve swelling from the ton­sils, as well as vaso­con­stric­tor drops and aerosols for the nose.

How to cure snor­ing, the doc­tor knows. If an unpleas­ant sound syn­drome is com­bined with the habit of sleep­ing with an open mouth, then the ENT may pre­scribe a spe­cial ban­dage that fix­es the low­er jaw. Tires to main­tain a soft palate are also com­mon. To know exact­ly how to treat snor­ing, and not to exper­i­ment with your own health, it is best to seek med­ical help as soon as pos­si­ble.