Learn How To Stop Snoring Without Surgery Blog

Children who are habitual snorers may show behavioral abnormalities and mental deficits. This holds true even when the kids don’t have sleep apnea — temporary cessation of breathing during sleep — according to a report in the medical journal Pediatrics.

“Most parents and pediatricians have traditionally assumed that unless frank sleep apnea is present in the sleep study, there is no need for concerns and the condition has been therefore termed ‘primary snoring,”‘ says senior investigator Dr. David Gozal.

“Our study,” he continued, “indicates for the first time that even among such primary snoring children there is hidden morbidity that is not as severe as in children with frank sleep apnea, but is of sufficient magnitude to consider these manifestations as being of clinical importance.”

Gozal and colleagues from University of Louisville, Kentucky note that habitual snoring during sleep affects an estimated 10 percent to 12 percent of young children.

To gauge possible effects, the team investigated compared 87 such children with 31 similar children without primary snoring.

During sleep studies, children with primary snoring spent significantly less of their sleep time in rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep than did control children.

Kids who snored had significantly lower scores in overall cognitive ability and on several measures of language ability and visuospatial ability, although the results remained within normal limits.

They also performed significantly worse than non-snoring children on measures of anxiety and depression, hyperactivity, social problems, and attention, the researchers report. The differences were generally small, however.

Given these findings, Gozal concluded that snoring more than 3 or 4 times a week and evidence of poor sleep including such symptoms as fatigue and learning problems, “should prompt the parents to seek medical advice by their pediatrician and be referred for evaluation in an accredited sleep center.”

The cure for snoring may be here, and it’s the dentist not the doctor, who is helping snorers.

As a person sleeps, his jaw can drop back a bit. The tongue and the soft tissue can close the airway, and that causes the snoring sound.

A device called Thornton Adjustable Positioner, or TAP, adjusts the jaw forward, keeping the airway open.

One user says he’s now allowed to stay in bed with his wife. John Jennings says, “It’s been really nice to be able to come back and sleep with her again after many years of starting out, and having to go out and end up on the couch or in the other room.” Dentists, Dr. Brian Schroder, says, “You certainly wouldn’t think that the dentist was a place to solve your snoring problems, but the reality is that we’re very, very fluent in making oral devices and appliances.”

The TAP device can cost up to $2,000. That includes sleep studies and follow up visits.

Some insurance companies may cover part of the cost.

The British Medical Journal published a study that found that regular didgeridoo playing reduces snoring and daytime sleepiness. The didgeriddo, a long, tubular musical instrument, emits a sound somewhere between a hoot and a twang. It’s that funny background sound you hear on the Outback Steak House commercials.

Patients participated in didgeridoo lessons and daily practiced at home with standardized instruments for four months. The researchers concluded that regular training of the upper airways by didgeridoo playing reduced daytime sleepiness and snoring in people with moderate obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and also improved the sleep quality of partners.

The didgeridoo is a wind instrument of the indigenous Australians of northern Australia and can be traced back 1500 years to Aboriginal tribes. It sometimes is described as a natural wooden trumpet or “drone pipe.” It produces a variety of interesting sounds and tones such as dogs barking or kangaroos hopping.

Snoring and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome are common sleep disorders caused by the collapse of the upper airways. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy is effective, but is not suitable for some patients. Researchers link the therapeutic effect to two factors: the strengthening of muscles in the back of the throat and the deep, circular breathing required to play the didgeridoo. Results of the study can be found at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov.

If you or someone you love snores, it could literally be ruining your life. Did you know that the non-snoring partner loses an average hour of sleep every single night, tossing and turning as they try to block out the noise or try and quiet the snorer? And we joke about the snorer all the time, but it really isn’t a laughing matter. The Today show found out some of the reasons behind loud snoring. And how, if not properly treated, it might even be life-threatening.

Whether you snore like a timid monster or a freight train, it could be more than just annoying.

In America, it’s become an epidemic. Why?

The fatter we get, the more we snore. 45% of all adults snore occasionally. 25% are habitual snorers.

Sometimes, breathing actually stops …

Dr. Clifford Foster, otolaryngologist: The airway collapses and when they try to breathe in, they create a pressure like a vacuum and that pulls the airway even more in and they’re not able to get air in.

That’s called sleep apnea. Often, it’s the partner who recognizes the symptoms.

Dr. Glenn Singer, sleep specialist: We get things like ‘I looked over to see if he was still alive — there was a deafening silence.’

An estimated 18 million people have obstructive sleep apnea, and experts say, most don’t even know it. Waking up exhausted, or being unusually tired during the day is the first sign.

Dr. Alex Chediak, sleep specialist: The fragmentation of sleep that occurs in order to breathe makes it so that you get no rest.

A new Yale University study shows obstructive sleep apnea doubles the risk of stroke.

Dr. Chediak: Is it dangerous? You betcha it’s dangerous. It’s associated with all these medical problems, it’s associated with more blood pressure problems, it’s associated with more heart disease. Football player Reggie White died from it.

And no one knows how many others who’ve died in their sleep went undiagnosed.

Doreen Brown worries that her sleep problems are becoming life threatening.

Doreen Brown: I fall asleep driving on the road. When I stop at the traffic light, I fall asleep.

At Broward General Hospital’s sleep lab, Doreen learned she stops breathing an average of 90 times an hour. That’s every 45 seconds.

No wonder she’s so tired.

Richard Rossiter’s always exhausted, but he thought his poor sleep habits just came with age.

Richard Ross Rossiter: When you get older things start to change.

Monitors in the sleep lab at Mount Sinai reveal Ross never really falls into a deep sleep what’s known as deep REM.

Dr. Chediak: On average you stopped breathing or had partial cessation of breathing 19 times an hour.

Not as bad as Doreen’s 90, but clearly a problem.

For Doreen and Ross, the only remedy is CPAP, a machine that provides continuous positive airway pressure. It forces air straight into the lungs.

Almost magically snoring and apnea disappear.

Dr. Glenn Singer, sleep specialist: People think who’s going to want to sleep with this thing on? And I tell people you’re gonna either think this is something we ought to do to bin Laden when we capture him or you’re gonna come back saying this is the greatest thing ever invented.

Brown: I’m wide awake and I’m not tired.

By the time Ross got home, he was up and running, and ready to seize the day.

Rossiter: I feel great. I haven’t slept like that in a long time.

(info from MSNBC Interactive)

Complex sleep apnea doesn’t respond as well to therapy

Snoring is commonly caused by what scientists call sleep apnea, in which you stop breathing and the body has to do something to restart the rather vital process. There are two types.

Make that three.

Researchers have identified a new type they call “complex sleep apnea.”

More than one-third of adults snore at least a few nights each week, according to the Mayo Clinic. Air flowing past relaxed tissues in your throat causes the tissues to vibrate as you breathe, creating those awful noises that keep your partner awake.

In obstructive sleep apnea, the more common form, the throat muscles relax and the airway is narrowed, momentarily cutting off breathing and resulting in noisy snoring. With central sleep apnea, the brain does not send proper signals to the muscles that control breathing.

The newly discovered complex variety is a combination of the other two.

Patients with complex sleep apnea at first appear to have obstructive sleep apnea and stop breathing 20 to 30 times per hour each night. For that problem, a continuous airway pressure machine, or CPAP, works like a pneumatic splint and can open a patient’s airway. But in patients with complex sleep apnea, CPAP opens the airway but they still don’t breathe right, and symptoms of central sleep apnea then crop up.

“This phenomenon has been observed for years, but this study is the first attempt to categorize these people,” said Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler of the Mayo Clinic.

Researchers don’t know why some people have complex sleep apnea, Morgenthaler said, and there is no effective treatment. Perhaps sufferers can manage to breathe easy or sleep better, knowing that researchers continue to test breathing-assistance machines that might one day alleviate the symptoms.

(info from LiveScience.com)

Does snoring have something to do with wetting the bed?

According to a recent report, kids who snore are nearly four times more likely to wet the bed than those who sleep silently.

The study, which was done in Greece, looked at just over 1,800 kids between the ages of 5 to 14. About 130 were found to be “habitual snorers” who snored more than three times a week. Among the snorers, just under 7.5 percent were also regular bedwetters, compared to only 2% of the kids who didn’t snore. Do the math and you’ll find that, indeed, the snorers were about four times more likely to wet their beds.

This doesn’t mean that kids who wet the bed are more prone to snore. What causes snoring is a different matter. But, according to the study, things that cause snoring, like enlarged tonsils and blocked airways, may also cause abdominal pressure. And it’s thought that increased pressure on the abdomen may be one cause of incontinence.

All of which leads the researchers to a surprising notion: having your child’s tonsils removed can not only silence snoring, but it may also put an end to wetting the bed.

According to researchers in the U.S. if either parent is a snorer, a child is three times more likely to be a noisy sleeper.

Researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio suggest that snoring runs in the family.

They also say children with allergies are more likely to be snorers.

The researchers monitored 681 infants with an average age of 12 months.

The study group was 80 percent white, 17 percent African-American, and 3 percent biracial or Asian.

The researchers found that 15 percent of the children were habitual snorers, defined as snoring at least 3 times per week.

The findings also suggest that African American children were much more likely to be snorers.

Snoring is one of the most common sleep-related complaints and is a significant cause of sleep disruption and stress.

Studies have linked snoring with behavioural problems, mental impairment and heart and metabolic disease.

Maninder Kalra, the lead researcher, says the study underlines the link between regular snoring and genetic make-up.

Kalra believes the extent of the problem in very young children and the negative impact of obstructive sleep-disordered breathing indicates high-risk groups need to be targeted for early identification and treatment.

Kalra says snoring is the primary symptom of sleep-disordered breathing, which in children is associated with learning disabilities and metabolic and cardiovascular disorders and early detection and treatment can potentially reduce the effects.

Interestingly the investigators found no association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and habitual snoring.

The findings are published in the journal Chest at http://www.chestjournal.org/

Children who snore are likely to have emotional and behavioural problems, according to new research.

Snoring ‘frequently or always’ is common among school-age children and strongly associated with poor performance in school, say the authors of a study in Pediatrics.

In the cross-sectional study of 1129 children, 114 were classified as habitual snorers, while 410 and 605, respectively, were reported to snore ‘never’ or ‘occasionally’.

Habitual snoring was significantly associated with hyperactive and inattentive behavior and with daytime tiredness and sleepiness.

Habitual snorers were significantly more likely than non-snorers to have conduct and peer problems as well as emotional symptoms.

Fifty-nine (51.8%) of 114 habitual snorers performed poorly at school compared with 129 (31.5%) of the 410 non-snoring children.

‘Considering its high prevalence and assuming a causal link to disturbed behavior, habitual snoring seems to be a substantial public health problem in school-aged children,’ conclude the authors.

In the book Stop Your Snoring Now, Juan Walker illustrates how to end the snoring problem by using a simple program anyone can follow. Common men and women from all around the globe can now stop snoring quickly, easily, and without surgical procedures. Consumers can now sleep better, feel better, and increase their energy 150% by banishing their snoring problem in as little as 7 days!

Stop Your Snoring Now offers a simple and easy-to-follow snoring program. Author, Juan Walker, states, “I didn’t think I would EVER get rid of the snoring problem that had tormented my life and marriage for so long. However, I desperately wanted to sleep better and feel better (so did my wife), and I just wanted to be normal again. I wanted my snoring to STOP - so, I decided to give it a shot.

After a few days of following the program, I woke up to the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. Even my wife said she had slept very well that evening, not being interrupted by my snoring. I continued with the program knowing that it was working, and then one day my wife said to me…YOU HAVE STOPPED SNORING! With my snoring problem completely out of the picture, my energy went through the roof! My health also improved dramatically and since we were able to sleep normally for the first time since we had been married, our lives finally got much better!” Over 100,000 customers have experienced similar results.

The program is guaranteed to help you stop snoring permanently or customers will receive their money back. The offer is backed by a 60 money back guarantee. Users have mentioned how they were able to stop snoring in 7 days or less with Juan’s program. Other users have been shocked at how well the program has worked for them.

To learn more about Juan Walker’s book, Stop Your Snoring Now, please go here.

“Neem neem nee ney nai na.” John, my tone-deaf husband is singing. More precisely, he is exercising his nasalis, or nostril-flaring muscle, a lax little area that could be causing him to snore - and me to want to kill him - several times a night.

Do you know the exercises that are part of a Singing for Snorers CD programme of daily vocal “muscle toning”?

The answer to the nightly problems of an estimated 30 million people in Britain, the snorers and their unfortunate sleep partners, could, it seems, lie in a simple daily singsong.

The programme, invented by choir director Alise Ojay, may seem a little kooky at first, but it is the basis of a clinical trial at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and the results, so far, are promising.

A recent study suggests that more than 40 per cent of middle-aged people in this country, and twice as many men as women, snore. Snoring is known to be not just a passion killer but also a genuine cause for relationships breaking down. In a survey a few years ago, 10 per cent of cohabiting couples said their snoring problem was so acute they were thinking of splitting up. Malcolm Hilton, an ear, nose and throat specialist and director of the “Singing for Snorers” clinical trial, says the dreaded noise - whether it sounds like a wild boar, an angry rhinoceros, a chainsaw or a mongoose - comes from “turbulent airflow that makes the structures at the back of your throat rattle”.

This usually happens because the soft palate, the area at the back and top of the mouth, is too relaxed. It (and sometimes the tongue) then “flops” backwards when you are prone, causing a partial obstruction and making the air whistle, honk or roar as you breathe. Smoking or drinking too much alcohol can contribute by relaxing the muscles. Being overweight is also a factor, as the extra flesh around your neck presses down when you lie on your back, narrowing the opening.

Ojay has come up with a set of vocal exercises, to be performed daily over three months, to tighten the lax muscles that affect the soft palate, tongue, nasal passages and palatopharyngeal arch (at the back of your mouth, where the dangly bit, the uvula, hangs). “When we sing, we use certain muscles to make different sounds, tunes and pitches,” says Ojay. “It’s like going to the gym and lifting a weight again and again: repeating these sounds tightens these muscles, so they no longer vibrate so much.”

More info about it here