Common Reasons for CPAP Intolerance
Treating Sleep Apnea with Custom Oral Appliances
Common Warning Signs of Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Simple and Effective: NightLase Laser Snoring Therapy
What Is The Best Sleep Position For People With Sleep Apnea?
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Hearing your partner making loud, honking, and huffing snoring sounds while you sleep? Snoring can severely impact the quality of sleep of the person doing the snoring and everyone around them. Over the course of time, you may begin to notice it in how you feel throughout the day and may even start to feel fatigue.
While sleeping, the muscles of the throat and mouth relax, which leads to a narrowing windpipe that obstructs airflow. Within the airway, that is now narrow, the tissues of the soft palate and uvula shake and vibrate. The sounds generated from the vibration is the sound of snoring.
Some specific people are more at risk for snoring than others. It becomes a more common problem as we age. Here are the factors that increase your likelihood of having a snoring problem:
Overweight – When you weigh more than your average BMI, your chances of snoring will become significantly elevated.
Inflammation of the nasal passage – Respiratory infections and allergies causes inflammation in the nasal passage and increases your likelihood of snoring.
Drinking too much alcohol – Consumption of liquor make your muscles relax much more, which in turn causes snoring.
Smoking – It irritates the sensitive tissues of your nasal passage, making them more likely to vibrate and cause snoring.
Sleeping on your back – Many people are more likely to snore when they sleep on their backs, rather than their sides.
Non-Surgical Snoring Treatments
There are snoring treatments that are based on behavior modification. Here are some of the non-surgical treatments:
a) Weight Loss
Losing the excess weight can help reduce or eliminate snoring for some people. If you are overweight, shedding those pounds should be made a priority, as it can help reduce snoring and improve other aspects of your life as well.
b) Positional Therapy
Changing your sleep position could improve your snoring dilemma. There are a variety of products that you can wear when you go to sleep that prevents you from sleeping on your back and keeps you in positions that are better for your quality of sleep.
c) Oral Appliances
It is a small plastic device that fits into your mouth over your teeth while you sleep that stops you from snoring. It looks like a sports mouth guard or an orthodontic retainer. The device blocks the airway from collapsing by holding the tongue in position or by sliding your jaw forward so that you can breathe when you are asleep.
Laser surgery with a local anesthetic is a procedure that is also recommended to correct the anatomic cause of snoring by trimming the uvula and soft palate. Each session takes about 15 to 30 minutes.
After the treatment, the patient can eat, speak and return to daily activities. Eighty-five percent of the patients has reported that their snoring has been reduced after undergoing the treatment.
It is one of the latest, less-invasive surgical measures for snoring treatments. After local anesthesia is administered, radiofrequency energy is delivered directly by an ENT specialist through an insulated needle to the tissue that causes snoring.
The needle remains in the fabric for approximately three minutes, during which time hardening occurs. One to three applications at six-week intervals may be necessary to achieve the desired results.
If you or a loved one has a snoring problem that keeps everyone awake, a trip to the Snore Experts can help solve the problem. Contact our office to learn more about the treatment options available to you.
Posted by jason on Feb 21st, 2019 10:31 pm
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CPAP/APAP
Positive Airway Pressure (PAP) is considered by many the gold standard for the treatment of sleep apnea, especially for very severe cases. The CPAP and APAP machines are designed to increase air pressure going through the throat. This prevents the airway from collapsing during inhalation. At Snore Experts, we have helped countless patients get a good night’s rest using CPAP treatments to treat their sleep apnea. The goal of positive airway pressure is to keep the airway from collapsing using air pressure.