Learn How To Stop Snoring Without Surgery Blog

Imagine a foghorn blasting, a chainsaw buzzing, a diesel truck downshifting on a slanted grade or a garbage disposal gurgling.

Some dear souls must live with sounds like these every night as they fitfully sleep beside snoring spouses.

While some snorers nonchalantly dismiss concerns, jests and punches about the cacophony of sounds they make each night, they might want to take heed. Snoring is a symptom. And for some, the real problem is obstructive sleep apnea (commonly referred to as sleep apnea).

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 90 million Americans snore, 37 million habitually. And of those, 12 to 18 million and possibly many more have sleep apnea.

“Awareness is growing about sleep apnea, but a lot go undiagnosed,” said Dr. Ralph Downey, director of the sleep disorder center at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

Confessions Of A Snorer

Yolayne Lapis slept many years in other rooms because her husband kept her awake at night with his loud snoring. After their divorce (for reasons other than snoring), Lapis learned she was snoring, too.

Before she found out, she said she’d been feeling physically rotten. She was tired all the time. She was overweight. And, she’d wake up with grinding headaches every morning.

Lapis underwent a sleep study at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center and discovered she was not only snoring, but she had sleep apnea.

“I was probably as close as possible to death as one can be,” the 57-year-old Claremont woman said. “And I was putting a major tax on my heart.”

People who snore typically have what doctors call primary or simple snoring, or, like Lapis, they have sleep apnea. It’s important to know which one. Sleep experts suggest concerned individuals — especially those whose snoring is associated with obesity, daytime sleepiness or pauses in breathing — undergo a sleep study.

Know The Difference

Primary snoring is caused by the vibrating of tissue in the back of the throat as it narrows and partially blocks airflow.

“The way to think about it is the party favor that you blow and the paper rolls out and flaps at the end,” said Dr. Robert Reyna, a sleep specialist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Fontana. “The narrowing creates a greater pressure and so the air going past it tends to pull on it enough to cause the fluttering of tissue.”

Primary snoring generally doesn’t cause severe health problems but recent studies have shown loud snoring could be linked to high blood pressure and heart disease, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. And that’s not even mentioning all the unhappy spouses who have to sleep next to their snoring counterparts.

“I’ve had many situations where couples have divorced over their partner’s snoring problem,” Nicholson said. “I’ve had them move out of rooms and wear ear plugs.”

People with sleep apnea don’t just snore, they often gasp for air. Apnea literally means “without breath.” The muscles in the back of the throat relax and aren’t able to keep the throat open, despite efforts to breathe. Gravity pulls the tongue back and all that extra tissue blocks the airway, causing pauses in breathing, or apneas, that can last at least 10 seconds per episode. In severe cases, a person can experience up to 60 episodes in one hour.

One doctor explained it like this:

“Imagine somebody is putting a pillow over your mouth and nose and trying to suffocate you and they do this hundreds of times a night,” Downey said. “We would call the police on somebody who was doing that to us. Sleep apnea is the same except our bodies are doing that to us. To not act on that is to ignore the dangers of it.”

(info by La Rue Novick from http://www.dailybulletin.com/Stories/0,1413,203~24505~2969459,00.html)