Experts say that if you snore at night with the following symptoms, it is a dangerous signal from your body and you need to go to the hospital immediately: snoring during sleep, breathing with your mouth open, and frequent respiratory arrest; Repeated sleep, restless sleep and epilepsy; Sleepiness, daytime sleepiness and lethargy; Blood pressure rises after waking up; Shallow sleep and headache after waking up; Night sleep angina pectoris, arrhythmia; Nocturnal nocturnal enuresis and nocturia increase; Memory loss, slow response, and decreased work and study ability; I seem to sleep during the day, and I can't help falling asleep at work, meetings and meals. Impotence, loss of libido; Alzheimer's disease
In addition to going to hospital for treatment, the following measures can be taken in daily life to alleviate snoring symptoms: sleeping in a lateral position and changing the habit of sleeping in a supine position; Try not to drink alcohol before going to bed, don't drink strong tea, coffee, and don't take certain drugs, because alcohol, sedatives, sleeping pills and anti-allergic drugs will make breathing shallow and slow, and make muscles more relaxed than usual, leading to pharyngeal soft tissue blocking the airway more easily; Develop the habit of regular exercise, lose weight and enhance lung function.
Experts also specially remind that snorers should quit smoking immediately if they have the habit of smoking. Because only by keeping the nasopharynx unobstructed can snoring be reduced, and the stimulation of smoking on nasal mucosa will only make the blocked nasal cavity and respiratory tract worse. In addition, snorers should also prevent colds and treat nasal congestion diseases in time.
1. How about your sleep quality
Some people will ask, "I still feel sleepy after sleeping for more than ten hours, while some people are full of energy and refreshed after sleeping for four or five hours. Why?" This is the problem of sleep quality. The quality of sleep mainly depends on the amount of deep sleep in phase 3 and phase 4. If you have a short or even little deep sleep in phase 3 and phase 4, but mainly have a shallow sleep in phase 1 and phase 2 for more than ten hours, you will still feel tired and sleepy. If you have a long deep sleep and less sleep in the first and second stages, even if you only sleep for five or six hours, you can still be energetic and healthy. Therefore, sleep focuses on quality, not time.
if you want to know your sleep quality, you can monitor it in detail by using polysomnography.
2. Under what circumstances should we consider sleep diseases
Unhealthy sleep conditions include snoring during sleep, breathing with your mouth open, and even temporary cessation of breathing. Repeatedly awake during sleep, restless sleep. Nocturnal angina pectoris and arrhythmia often occur. Headache after waking up, dizziness, and high blood pressure after getting up in the morning. Fatigue and weakness during the day, drowsiness, lethargy and even falling asleep during work meetings or driving. Memory decline, slow response, work and study ability decline. Sexual dysfunction, impotence, etc. If the above manifestations appear, we should highly consider sleep-related diseases or obstructive apnea syndrome. First, we should go to the Otolaryngology Department to check the pharynx and conduct polysomnography.
3. Snoring is also a disease
Patients who snore used to think that it is the fragrance of sleep, but now people have gradually realized that it may be a pathological condition. Snoring people are often complained by others, and the relationship with their roommates or spouses becomes extremely tense, which annoys snorers. However, snoring is more harmful to cause apnea. The airway of snorers is narrower than that of normal people. In severe cases, the airway can be completely blocked and apnea occurs. When apnea occurs, gas cannot enter the lungs, resulting in hypoxia and carbon dioxide retention in the body. Severe cases can lead to hypertension, heart disease, arrhythmia, cerebrovascular accident, diabetes, nephropathy, hypothyroidism and so on, and even sudden death in sleep.
4. What is the mechanism of snoring?
The airway of snorers is usually narrower than that of normal people. When awake during the day, the compensatory contraction of the throat muscles keeps the airway open without blockage. However, when sleeping at night, the nerve excitability decreases, the muscles relax, and the pharyngeal tissue is blocked, which makes the upper airway collapse. When the airflow passes through the narrow part, it produces vortex and causes vibration, resulting in snoring. In severe cases, breathing can be temporarily stopped, thus affecting people's health. In addition, a small number of people are due to central reasons.
5. Causes of common snoring and apnea
Respiratory tract stenosis caused by various reasons, mainly the upper respiratory tract stenosis above the tracheal plane, can cause snoring and even apnea, including nasal septum deviation and nasal polyps. Pharyngeal stenosis: tonsil hypertrophy, slack throat and long uvula. Hypertrophy of the tongue, tumor at the base of the tongue and suffix of the tongue cause pharyngeal cavity stenosis. Maxillofacial dysplasia, such as micrognathia, obesity. Children are mostly due to tonsil hypertrophy and adenoid hypertrophy.
6. What about snoring?
If snorers want to know their sleep quality, how many times they have apnea during sleep, how long they pause each time, the oxygen content in blood during sleep, and the change of heart rate during sleep, you only need to do polysomnography monitoring for one night. At present, polysomnography has been considered as an important examination for snorers, which can dynamically observe the EEG, ECG, electromyography, oral and nasal airflow, oxygen saturation and heart rate during sleep.
7, children's snoring should be vigilant
Children's snoring patients are mostly due to nasopharyngeal adenoids and tonsil hypertrophy or craniofacial structure development deformity. Due to the obvious airway obstructive lesions, apnea is easy to occur, resulting in hypoxia, which affects the normal development and learning of children. It has been reported that severe snoring can cause dementia in children. Therefore, if your child snores at night, and has inattention, lethargy, poor memory and poor academic performance in class, you should first go to the Otolaryngology Department to check your nasopharynx and tonsils. If the hypertrophy is obvious, corresponding treatment should be carried out.
8. General treatment of snoring
The treatment of snoring patients should be treated according to different reasons, and the choice of treatment method is the most important factor to determine the treatment effect. We will talk about the main methods of treating snoring in four times. First, talk about general treatment. Weight loss: Obesity is one of the factors causing pharyngeal stenosis. Losing weight can reduce the degree of airway obstruction. Smoking cessation wine: smoke can stimulate inflammation of the pharynx, causing edema and stenosis of the pharynx, and wine can relax muscles and make the base of the tongue fall back, thus aggravating obstruction. In addition, not accepting sedative sleeping pills before going to bed and sleeping on your side all have certain benefits for snoring.
9. Surgical treatment of snoring
Different surgical methods should be selected according to the plane of obstruction. For example, patients with nasal obstruction should undergo nasal surgery to make the nasal passages unobstructed. Patients with pharyngeal stenosis can undergo palatopharyngoplasty, which is the most commonly used surgical method to treat snoring and sleep apnea by removing part of uvula and tonsils and increasing the space between pharynx. Its success depends on the choice of surgical patients. In addition, patients with small jaw are easy to fall back, and they can do orthognathic surgery.
1. Plasma low-temperature ablation technology for snoring
Plasma low-temperature ablation technology is a newly patented technology in the United States, and it is a very developed minimally invasive treatment method. It can make the tissue of pharynx melt, reduce the volume, and reduce the hypertrophy of tongue body. Because it is treated at low temperature, it has little local reaction, basically no pain, no bleeding or little bleeding, and the operation time is short. It can be treated in outpatient department, which is mainly suitable for patients with nasal cavity and pharyngeal stenosis and tongue hypertrophy. At present, the Department of Otolaryngology of Nanjing Bayi Hospital has treated many patients with plasma ablation technology and achieved good results.
11, continuous positive pressure ventilation and mouth orthosis to treat snoring
The main principle of continuous positive pressure ventilation (CPAP) is to wear a small CPAP machine when sleeping, so that the mask is connected to the ventilator, similar to the principle of blowing balloons, to enlarge the narrow part of the pharynx. Every patient needs different pressure, so doctors need to use polysomnography to determine an appropriate pressure. CPAP machine can obviously increase the oxygen content in blood, which is suitable for patients with moderate and severe snoring and other treatment failure.
12. Summary
Snoring and apnea syndrome can cause serious consequences including multiple systems of the whole body and affect people's health. Polysomnography is the main means to check and diagnose snoring. Different treatments should be selected according to the specific conditions of patients. At present, the Sleep and Respiratory Disorder Center of Otolaryngology Department of Bayi Hospital has carried out all the above treatments. Including surgery, radio frequency, CPAP machine and snorer. Basically, 95% of snoring patients can achieve satisfactory results through different treatment methods.