Snoring: causes, mechanism of development, methods of treatment

Sleep apnea is a very real prob­lem. Snor­ers — both men and women — not only do not let their soul mate sleep peace­ful­ly, but also endan­ger their own health, and some­times life. The caus­es of snor­ing are var­ied. This can be a cur­va­ture of the nasal sep­tum, exces­sive growth of the pala­tine ton­sils, which in chil­dren are called ade­noids, chron­ic run­ny nose and sinusi­tis, and even excess weight.

With obe­si­ty, adi­pose tis­sue accu­mu­lates not only in places famil­iar to us, but also in the nasophar­ynx, inter­feres with nor­mal breath­ing and can cause short-term ces­sa­tion of breath­ing dur­ing sleep, which deprives the body of much-need­ed oxy­gen. In addi­tion, the snor­ing of the spouse, as a rule, inter­feres with the nor­mal sleep of the house­hold. As a result, the lat­ter can get up sleepy, irri­tat­ed and with a headache. How to deal with snor­ing in your sleep?

Apnea as a cause of snoring during sleep: the risk of heart attack

The most unsafe con­se­quence of snor­ing is the ces­sa­tion of breath­ing dur­ing sleep, the so-called sleep apnea, which can even lead to car­diac arrest. Loud inter­mit­tent snor­ing speaks of apnea. And per­haps the most harm­less con­se­quence of it is the inabil­i­ty to get enough sleep. Such peo­ple some­times wake up from their own snor­ing, and in the morn­ing they look wrin­kled, sleepy and gloomy. This is due to super­fi­cial unre­fresh­ing sleep against the back­ground of snor­ing.

An impor­tant fea­ture of snor­ing dur­ing sleep apnea is arte­r­i­al hyper­ten­sion. It occurs main­ly at night and in the morn­ing. If ordi­nary hyper­ten­sion occurs dur­ing the day in response to some stress­ful sit­u­a­tions, then a per­son wakes up in the morn­ing, mea­sures the pres­sure — and it is already ele­vat­ed. More­over, main­ly the low­er, or dias­tolic pres­sure, ris­es, for exam­ple, up to 150 to 110. In addi­tion, from snor­ing with sleep apnea, the heart rhythm can be dis­turbed up to a heart attack or stroke. That is, snor­ing is a seri­ous prob­lem that can short­en a per­son­’s life.

Anoth­er fea­ture that char­ac­ter­izes sleep apnea snor­ing is fre­quent uri­na­tion. A snor­er can get up 3–4 times at night and uri­nate with a full blad­der. This sug­gests that even at night a per­son is in a state of stress.

Types of snoring with sleep apnea

Sleep apnea can be of two types. The first is sud­den fright­en­ing paus­es for 30–40 sec­onds, up to a minute, fol­lowed by loud snor­ing. The sec­ond option is when snor­ing grad­u­al­ly increas­es and then abrupt­ly stops. In fact, this means the clos­ing of the air­ways, the moment of suf­fo­ca­tion. Fol­low­ing this, from a lack of oxy­gen, the brain “emerges from sleep” and caus­es the air­ways to open. At this time, there is a sharp snor­ing. In the sec­ond option, the nar­row­ing of the air­ways goes grad­u­al­ly, but at the end the same thing hap­pens: the lack of oxy­gen wakes you up and makes you take a nor­mal breath.

Snoring checkup: lose weight

What if a rel­a­tive or spouse snores in sleep with signs of sleep apnea? Are there any reme­dies for snor­ing in this case? For good, such a snor­er should spend a day in a spe­cial clin­ic for the study of snor­ing, where spe­cial­ists will observe him at night and record what hap­pens when breath­ing stops. There are many vari­eties of snor­ing and stop­ping breath­ing dur­ing sleep. One of them is posi­tion­al snor­ing, when a per­son snores in one posi­tion and not in anoth­er. From a prac­ti­cal point of view, this is con­ve­nient. You can ask a snor­er sleep­ing on his back to roll over on his side, which will open the air­ways and stop snor­ing. Thus, when a snor­er lies on his side, there are no threats to his life — the sleep­ing posi­tion works against snor­ing and against breaks in breath­ing.

Dur­ing the exam­i­na­tion in the clin­ic, many sen­sors are attached to the patien­t’s body, which allow deter­min­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion of the blood. The sen­sor is put on the fin­ger, and dur­ing the night it makes up to 30 thou­sand mea­sure­ments. When breath­ing stops, blood oxy­gen sat­u­ra­tion drops, and this can be record­ed. Anoth­er sen­sor sim­ply detects whether a per­son is breath­ing or not. It looks like a thin tube with pro­tru­sions that are insert­ed into the nos­trils. The tube is attached behind the ears.

In addi­tion, dur­ing the whole night the patien­t’s elec­tro­car­dio­gram is record­ed. So when breath­ing stops, a doc­tor watch­ing a sleep­ing snor­er sees what hap­pens to his heart. Per­haps the only prob­lem with such an exam­i­na­tion is that not every per­son will be able to fall asleep, hung with sen­sors. But, inter­est­ing­ly, when nor­mal breath­ing is restored dur­ing sleep, when an anti-snor­ing rem­e­dy is found, oxy­gen “burns” fat in abun­dance, and a per­son can get rid of excess weight.

Snoring remedies

The first piece of advice a snor­er might hear from a doc­tor is to reduce weight. This in itself will improve the sit­u­a­tion with snor­ing. There are more curi­ous, sim­ple and at the same time inge­nious reme­dies for snor­ing. For exam­ple, a spe­cial paja­ma with a pock­et at the back, between the shoul­der blades, in which a ten­nis ball is placed. When the patient rolls over on his back in his sleep, the ball inter­feres with him, forc­ing him to take a posi­tion on his side. Lying on your back is sim­ply impos­si­ble. How­ev­er, it is unlike­ly that such a “tech­nique” will help you sleep bet­ter. But snor­ing and sleep apnea will stop, and the body and brain will receive enough oxy­gen.

There is anoth­er rem­e­dy that facil­i­tates nasal breath­ing dur­ing snor­ing. This is a nar­row elas­tic strip with an adhe­sive com­po­si­tion on one side. The strip is fixed on the snor­er’s nose, after wip­ing it (not the snor­er!) With alco­hol to degrease, oth­er­wise the strip sim­ply will not stick. Dur­ing sleep, when the nos­trils fall down, the strip, due to its springi­ness, straight­ens them, facil­i­tat­ing air access and stop­ping snor­ing.

Alternative methods of dealing with snoring

You can, of course, approach the prob­lem of snor­ing from the oth­er side — for exam­ple, buy earplugs or go to sleep in anoth­er room. But not every­one in the apart­ment has enough space, and in earplugs a per­son will sleep peace­ful­ly all night and … in the morn­ing, that is, he will not hear the alarm clock. More­over, co-sleep­ing is believed to strength­en and bring togeth­er mar­i­tal rela­tions. You can try numer­ous folk reme­dies, but it is still bet­ter to show a chron­ic snor­er to a doc­tor. This can solve the prob­lem once and for all, and save a per­son from dis­eases lead­ing to snor­ing in a dream and unpleas­ant com­pli­ca­tions.