Why are few people treated for snoring
1. Snoring means sleeping soundly and there is no need for treatment.
2. It’s not because you don’t want to be cured, but because you can’t cure it.
3. Can not accept the treatment methods such as wearing a ventilator or performing surgery, so give up the treatment.
Is snoring really unnecessary or can’t be cured? If not treated, what are the consequences of long-term snoring?
Snoring leading to 5 serious consequences
Snoring is related to the narrow airway during sleep. When the air passes through the narrow part, it will form a vortex, causing the uvula and tongue base to vibrate rapidly, thus making a snoring sound.
Simple snoring: generally, it appears after fatigue, drinking and cold, which has little influence on the body, mainly affects sleep of others, and “harms” interpersonal relationship.
Sleep apnea: because of obesity, nasal septum deviation and other problems, resulting in airway stenosis to a certain extent, or even total airway occlusion, sleep apnea syndrome may occur.
If not treated, sleep apnea can cause a variety of diseases, severe cases will cause sudden death at night.
Lack of sleep
Sleep apnea can cause sleep interruption, hypercapnia and hypoxemia. Because sleep apnea causes frequent micro arousal, it is like a knife to cut the whole sleep into small pieces, leading to “fragmented sleep”, which makes it difficult to enter deep sleep.
Lack of oxygen in the body
Airway stenosis or sleep apnea, oxygen intake will be reduced, causing systemic organ hypoxia, so the damage of snoring is systemic.
Induced hypertension and diabetes mellitus
Repeated apnea or reduced airflow can seriously damage the vascular wall, resulting in decreased vascular elasticity, thus causing or aggravating hypertension.
Snoring can also cause insulin resistance, which may lead to the occurrence of diabetes.
Increased risk of myocardial infarction
Repeated apnea can reduce the oxygen content in the blood. The incidence of complex arrhythmia in patients with severe snoring is 2-4 times higher than that in patients with coronary heart disease.
Affect fetal health
Compared with healthy pregnant women, snoring pregnant women had 8% and 6% higher incidences of pregnancy induced hypertension and preeclampsia, respectively.
In addition, long-term snoring can increase the risk of asthma, glaucoma, endocrine and other diseases, and even promote the occurrence and progress of cancer.
Why don’t snorers wake up by their noise?
Many snorers snore like thunder, which will affect other people’s sleep. Why can’t they hear it themselves?
In deep sleep
Snoring does not occur in light sleep or awake state, but only in deep sleep period. It is difficult to hear your own snoring theoretically.
Used to it
The brain is familiar with its own rhythm, and people who snore for a long time are less sensitive to snoring, which blocks out the noise.
Some people say that they have heard their own snoring or awakened by their own snoring, which may be caused by abnormal sound caused by poor respiratory tract, and the listener confused it with snoring.
A reason to treat snoring: to save your life
If you snore for a long time, you’d better go to the hospital for a sleep monitoring.
Simple snoring needs no treatment, and can be relieved after adjusting the lifestyle.
For patients with sleep apnea, timely treatment of snoring is not only a treatment, but also a life-saving means to prevent sudden death during sleep.
Currently, there is no drug treatment for snoring in clinic. There are usually three methods to treat snoring.
Wearing a ventilator
Noninvasive positive airway pressure is the first choice and initial treatment for adult patients with sleep apnea.
The method is to buckle the special nasal mask on the nose of the patient, and introduce the gas in the ventilator into the nasal mask through a tube, so as to maintain a certain gas pressure in the upper airway, and force the upper airway to be open and unblocked, so that the patient can breathe normally during sleep, without affecting sleep due to apnea.
Before wearing it, it must be adjusted in a professional sleep medical center, and it should be worn when sleeping every day.
Dental tray treatment
The dental tray placed in the mouth during sleep can pull the mandible and the tongue base forward to prevent the tongue base from falling back, thereby achieving the purpose of treatment.
Surgery
For patients with nasal or throat diseases that cause sleep apnea symptoms, the nasal cavity and pharyngeal cavity can be enlarged, such as surgical removal of nasal polyps or correction of deviated nasal septum, tonsillectomy, soft palate plasty, chin advancement, etc., the treatment effect better.
In both cases, you must see a doctor in time
☑ The sleep time is long enough but I still feel very sleepy and tired after waking up, dry mouth, headache, difficulty concentrating, and memory loss after waking up in the morning.
☑I often hold back at night and open my mouth while sleeping. Sometimes my snoring stops suddenly for more than 10 seconds, so I need to go to the hospital.
4 “behavioral therapies” for snorers
In addition to hospital treatment, the following methods can help improve airway narrowing and relieve snoring symptoms.
Lose weight
Obesity is likely to cause narrowing of the airway, especially for people with a neck circumference greater than 43.18 cm. Losing weight can help relieve symptoms.
Do 30 minutes of exercise every day, 5 days a week, such as walking, swimming, cycling, etc. The exercise intensity of “heart rate = 170-age” is appropriate.
Patients with body mass index (BMI) more than 28 and other health risks, or patients with BMI more than 30, on the basis of reasonable diet and exercise, can consider drug weight loss.
Quit smoking, limit alcohol and don’t stay up late
People who stay up late are very tired and sleep heavier than ordinary people. They also tend to relax the throat muscles and narrow the airway.
Smoking and drinking will paralyze the nerves around the respiratory tract and promote the relaxation of the muscles in the throat area, thereby making the airway relatively narrow.
Getting rid of bad habits such as staying up late, smoking, drinking, etc. can help alleviate the symptoms of snoring.
Cure rhinitis
People who have a cold or rhinitis, the respiratory tract is blocked by the nose, or the tonsils and other parts of the rhinitis caused by hypertrophy, resulting in poor breathing.
Some over-the-counter medicines and anti-snoring patches can help restore the airway, but if the nasal congestion lasts for a long time, you need to go to the hospital for examination.
Sleeping on the side
When lying on the back, the base of the tongue is closer to the mandible and the back wall of the pharynx, and the volume of the pharyngeal cavity is further reduced, which will aggravate the symptoms of pharyngeal stenosis, so it is easier to snore than lying on the side.
People who snore can try to change their sleeping position and choose to lie on their side when sleeping.
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