Save our marriage! STOP SNORING!
By Doohi Lee, MD
Snoring is usually passed off as something annoying or embarrassing, but do you know the serious health risks associated with this common occurrence? There’s a continuum from just snoring to sleep apnea, and regardless of where you fall on this line, you are facing potentially devastating health risks if left untreated.
What are the Causes of Snoring?
- As you age, your body begins to relax and lose muscle tone, requiring more effort to keep your body defined. This process also occurs in the throat and tongue muscles causing them to relax and fall back into your airways causing obstructions that lead to snoring.
- If you’re overweight you could have an excess of built-up fatty tissues in your throat as well as poor muscle tone leading to a restriction of your throat muscles, thus causing snoring.
- Alcohol consumption, smoking, and medications.Alcohol, smoking, and some medications increase muscle relaxation allowing the flesh of the throat to relax and disrupt airflow. Smoking also irritates the nasal passages and throat muscles causing inflammation of these areas and further restriction of airflow.
- Nasal and sinus problems. Seasonal allergies and sinus infections can cause swelling of the nasal passages making breathing difficult. A deviated septum can also cause snoring due to the imbalance in the sizes of breathing passages and possibly lead to sleep apnea.
- Sleep posture. Sleeping on your back puts you at a higher likelihood of snoring. The tissues at the back of the throat can more readily fall back and cause partial or complete blockage of the airways leading to snoring. To avoid snoring, try changing your sleeping posture by sleeping on your side.
Types of health problems associated with snoring include:
Stroke – Atherosclerotic plaques in the carotid artery can loosen and travel to the brain due to snoring.
Heart disease – Sleep apnea is linked to cardiovascular problems such as high blood pressure, coronary artery disease and increased risk of heart attacks. People with sleep apnea have twice the risk of fatal and nonfatal heart disease. You can also develop arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation, which increases the risk of developing blood clots in the heart, which then can travel to the lungs and result in pulmonary embolism.
Mental health – Heavy snoring and sleep apnea are linked to depression, ADD, anxiety, decreased cognitive function.
Brain health –Chronic sleep apnea is linked to developing Parkinson’s disease later in life.
Other health problems –There is increased risk of injury (due to daytime sleepiness), obesity (half of overweight people have sleep apnea), hormonal disturbances (leading to erectile dysfunction), nocturia (there is a link between sleep apnea and prostate enlargement).
Sleeping partner’s health – There is negative impact on your sleeping partner arising from your snoring or sleep apnea, in areas such as physical health, depression, poor mental health, unhappiness, low optimism, feeling left out, not satisfied with relationship and unhappy marriage.
What are some solutions?
If causes include alcohol, obesity, allergies, smoking and medications, limiting the intake of alcohol, losing weight and treating allergies may go a long way to decrease snoring. There are other remedies including dental appliances or do it yourself kits or chic straps and other devices to hold the jaw thrust forward during the night to open the airway. These can and do work, but often the user awakes with stiffness or spasms in the muscles that are held in tension all night. And you have to wear the device every night.
For those with obstructive sleep apnea, the most common solution is C-PAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) devices that are designed to keep your airway open by pumping pressurized air to the back of your throat to keep it open. Many people get one but do not use it because of the loud noise, discomfort of the mask and strap on the face, leaking air drying out the eyes, and many other associated complaints.
All these solutions are effective to various degrees, but none of them presents a comprehensive permanent non-surgical solution for snoring and sleep apnea.
Introducing Snore-X™
Snore-X™ is a non-surgical, laser procedure that shrinks the tissues in the back of the mouth that are associated with snoring and OSA. Utilizing the latest technology, we gently heat all the loose tissue to shrink them and open up the airway in the back of the mouth. This is a painless and quick procedure that results in no downtime.
Call Dr. Doohi Lee at 972-612-1900 for more information on this exciting new procedure. As a cosmetic surgeon and vein surgeon, Dr. Lee heads the team of medical professionals at Advanced Surgical Arts in Plano. www.advsurgicalarts.com.