By Amanda MacMillan for Life by DailyBurn
People who snore may think that their partners or roommates are the
ones most affected by their nightly symphonies — after all, they’re the
ones who are kept awake while the noise-maker remains, for the most
part, blissfully unaware.
But snoring can be more than just an annoyance to anyone else in the
room; it can also be a symptom of a serious health condition, and has
been linked to dangers like heart disease and falling asleep behind the
wheel.
Of course, there are many reasons why people snore and not all of
them are chronic or hazardous to your health. If you sleep alone, you
may not even be aware that you’re “sawing logs” on a regular basis.
Here’s how to know if you or a loved one is at risk for snoring-related
health problems and what you can do about it.
1. Why We Snore
Middle-of-the-night wheezing, snorting and snuffling can happen for a
variety of reasons, but they all have to do with obstruction of a
person’s airways. Most often, muscles in the roof of the mouth (known as
the soft palate) or the back of the throat relax and partially block
the flow of air.
“If you blow air through a floppy tube, it’s going to vibrate and
make noise,” explains Michael Grandner, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry
and a member of the
Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at
the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “And at
night, for a lot of people, your airways become a floppy tube.”
This can occur when people sleep on their backs instead of their
sides, when they’ve had a few drinks before bed (because alcohol relaxes
muscles) or when they have nasal congestion due to allergies or a cold.
In fact, about half of adults snore at least some of the time, says
Grandner, and it’s usually not dangerous. “Most of the time, we can
still get enough air to keep things functioning normally.”
But other snoring triggers can be harder to fix. For example, having
an enlarged uvula (that ball of tissue hanging in the back of your
mouth),
a large tongue, or being overweight — especially for men, since they tend to gain weight around their necks — all raise your risk for
obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the heart isn’t able to get enough oxygen to function properly.
2. Spotting The Sleep Apnea Symptoms
Between 5 and 15 percent of middle-aged adults probably suffer from
sleep apnea, Grandner says, although it often goes undiagnosed and
untreated. And that’s bad news, since
studies have shown strong
associations between sleep apnea and high blood pressure, high
cholesterol, heart attacks and other cardiovascular conditions.
For people with sleep apnea, airway obstruction is so severe that
breathing slows to a trickle. It may even stop for seconds at a time.
These episodes are called apneas, at which point the brain sends alert
signals to the body, forcing a gasp, a gag or an extra powerful snore.
“A lot of people think sleep apnea will cause them to suffocate, but
it won’t,” says Grandner. “You’re still getting enough air to breathe —
and if not, your brain will wake you up.” (Note though that according to
the Mayo Clinic, for those with underlying heart disease, sleep apnea
can lead to sudden death due to cardiac arrest.) The bigger risk, he says, is the
long-term damage it can do.
Fluctuating oxygen levels throughout the night causes stress and
oxidative damage to cells within your body. They also force the brain to
be on high-alert all night and to deliver a shot of adrenaline to the
heart every time an apnea occurs, when the body and brain are ideally
supposed to be resting and recovering.
“It’s much more of a cardiovascular problem than a respiratory one,”
he says. “People with untreated sleep apnea tend to develop these
conditions years before they normally would.”
3. When to Take Snoring Seriously
So how do you know whether you have run-of-the-mill snoring or a more
serious problem? If someone hears you sleep on a regular basis and
notices that you periodically stop breathing for several seconds at a
time, that’s a red flag.
So is the volume of your snoring. “If you can hear it pretty clearly
through a closed door, that’s a sign that your body is probably working
too hard to get sufficient oxygen,” says Grandner.
If you don’t have a live-in partner or roommate, you can still watch
out for daytime symptoms. Because the condition doesn’t allow people to
get the deep sleep they need, about two thirds of people with sleep
apnea experience excessive daytime sleepiness. “If you can stop whatever
you doing, just about any place and any time of day, and sit down and
immediately fall asleep, that’s a problem,” says Grandner.
Waking up feeling exhausted is also a sign, especially if that
feeling doesn’t go away within 10 to 15 minutes of getting out of bed.
People with untreated sleep apnea may also have trouble getting high
blood pressure under control, even with the help of medication.
4. How To Treat Sleep Apnea
The good news is that sleep apnea is very treatable and easily diagnosed
through an overnight sleep study done either in your own home or at a
sleep clinic.
Lifestyle changes, like losing weight or not sleeping on your back,
may help some people. And if not, almost all cases can be treated by
using a device called a
continuous positive-air pressure, or CPAP, machine. The device sends air through a tube and a mask, into a patient’s nose and mouth while they sleep, keeping the airway open.
“It may take a few weeks of getting used to, but once they get over
that hurdle most patients say it literally changes their life,” says
Grandner. “It gives them more energy during the day, so a lot of them
are finally able to exercise, eat better, and really get healthier
overall.”
