Category: Medical and Health
Analysis:
Snoring is a common sleep phenomenon. At present, most people think that it is commonplace and do not take it seriously. , and some people regard snoring as a sign of sleeping soundly. In fact, snoring is the enemy of health. Snoring causes repeated pauses in sleep breathing, causing severe hypoxia in the brain and blood, resulting in hypoxemia, which can induce high blood pressure, cerebrovascular disease, arrhythmia, myocardial infarction, and angina pectoris. Nighttime apnea lasting more than 120 seconds may lead to sudden death in the early morning.
At the International Snoring Symposium held in Beijing in April 1994, experts and scholars from various countries identified snoring as "sleep apnea syndrome", a disease and a syndrome, related to 27 diseases . How to define it? Every pause of more than 10 seconds is an apnea. If there are more than 5 pauses of more than 10 seconds in one hour of sleep, or about 30 pauses of more than 10 seconds in 7 hours of sleep, it is sleep apnea syndrome. It is extremely harmful to the human body. One-third of a person's life is spent sleeping. Normal people breathe evenly during sleep, and the oxygen intake meets the needs of all parts of the body. On the other hand, people who sleep for 7 hours a night and have apnea spend 300-400 seconds in anaerobic inhalation state, and their blood oxygen concentration is about 8-10% lower than the normal value. In this way, night after night, year after year, they have fragmented sleep. The oxygen intake is significantly reduced, and various important parts of the body are ischemic and hypoxic, which induces various serious diseases. If the brain cells and tissues continue to be deprived of oxygen for 4-6 minutes, it will cause irreversible death of brain cells. 53% of patients have cerebrovascular accidents while sleeping at night. Recent studies have shown that snoring and apnea are independent causes of cerebrovascular disease and one of the main causes of the disease. The mortality rate of snoring increases sharply at night. For untreated snorers, the mortality rate is 11%-13% with a history of about 5 years. If there are more than 15 apneas per hour, the mortality rate is 37% with a history of snoring for 8 years. , 72.5% of wives lose 1-2 hours of sleep every night due to their husbands snoring, or 30.6% are awakened by snoring. 9.7% of women suffer from neurasthenia due to their husband's snoring (there is no way to prove that snoring causes the breakdown of marriages). It can be seen from this that snoring is by no means a normal phenomenon but a serious disease and the source of evil that induces other diseases.
nSnoring while sleeping is a common phenomenon in daily life. Most people know that snoring can affect the rest of others, but experts from the Nursing Center of Fujian Provincial Hospital remind that snoring may also be a danger signal of sleep apnea syndrome, which can cause many harms to human health.
According to experts, snoring, medically known as snoring, is a major clinical manifestation of sleep apnea syndrome. It can not only cause daytime drowsiness and fatigue in snorers, but may also be related to the occurrence of certain respiratory diseases and cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, and cerebrovascular accidents.
Experts say that if you snore at night and are accompanied by the following symptoms, it is a danger signal sent by the body and you need to go to the hospital immediately: snoring during sleep, mouth breathing, frequent respiratory arrest; repeated awakening during sleep, Restlessness, induced epilepsy; unrelieved sleepiness, daytime drowsiness, lethargy; increased blood pressure after waking up; shallow sleep, headache after waking up; angina pectoris, heart rhythm disorder during night sleep; nighttime sleep enuresis, increased nocturia; memory loss, slow reaction , Reduced ability to work and study; sleepiness during the day, difficulty in falling asleep during work, meetings, and meals; impotence, decreased sexual function; Alzheimer's disease.
In addition to going to the hospital for treatment, you can take the following measures to reduce the symptoms of snoring in your daily life: sleep on your side, change your habit of sleeping on your back; try not to drink alcohol before going to bed, and do not drink strong tea or coffee , and do not take certain drugs, because alcohol, sedatives, sleeping pills and anti-allergic drugs will make breathing shallow and slow, and make the muscles more relaxed than usual, making the soft tissue of the pharynx more likely to block the airway; develop a habit of regular exercise habits, lose weight, and enhance lung function.
Experts also remind snorers that if they have a smoking habit, they need to quit smoking immediately. Because only by keeping the nasopharynx open can snoring be reduced, and smoking's damage to the nasal mucosa will only make the already blocked nasal cavity and respiratory tract worse. In addition, snorers should also prevent colds and promptly treat nasal congestion diseases.
1. How is your sleep quality?
Some people will ask, "I have slept for more than ten hours and still feel sleepy, while some people have slept for four or five hours." I feel energetic and refreshed every hour, why? "This is a matter of sleep quality. The quality of sleep is mainly determined by the amount of deep sleep in phases 3 and 4. If you have very short or even very little deep sleep in phases 3 and 4, and mainly light sleep in phases 1 and 2 for more than ten hours, you will still feel Fatigue and lethargy. If you have a long period of deep sleep and less sleep in phases 1 and 2, you can still be energetic and healthy even if you only sleep for five or six hours. Therefore, sleep is about quality, not time.
If you want to know the quality of your sleep, you can use polysomnography for detailed monitoring.
2. Under what circumstances should sleep disorders be considered?
Unhealthy sleep conditions include snoring, mouth breathing, and even temporary cessation of breathing. He wakes up repeatedly during sleep and has restless sleep. Nocturnal angina and arrhythmias often occur. Headache and dizziness after waking up, and high blood pressure after getting up in the morning. Feeling tired during the day, sleepy, lethargic, or even falling asleep during meetings at work or while driving. Memory decline, slow reaction, and reduced work and study ability. Decreased sexual function, impotence, etc. If the above symptoms occur, sleep disorders or obstructive apnea syndrome should be highly considered. First, you should go to the otolaryngology department to check the pharynx and conduct a polysomnogram.
3. Snoring is also a disease
Patients who snore used to think that they were sleeping well, but now people have gradually realized that it may be a disease. People who snore are often complained by others, and the relationship with their roommates or spouses becomes extremely tense, which makes the snorers troubled. However, the greater danger of snoring is causing apnea. The airway of a snorer is narrower than that of normal people. In severe cases, the airway can be completely blocked and apnea occurs. During apnea, gas cannot enter the lungs, causing hypoxia and carbon dioxide retention in the body. Severe cases can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, arrhythmia, cerebrovascular accidents, diabetes, kidney disease, hypothyroidism, etc., and even sudden death during sleep.
4. What is the mechanism of snoring
The airway of a snorer is usually narrower than that of normal people. When awake during the day, the compensatory contraction of the throat muscles keeps the airway open and prevents snoring. clogged. However, during sleep at night, nerve excitability decreases, muscles relax, and pharyngeal tissue blocks, causing the upper airway to collapse. When the airflow passes through the narrow part, vortices are generated and cause vibration, resulting in snoring. In severe cases, breathing can temporarily stop, thus affecting the human body. of good health. In addition, there are a small number of people who suffer from central causes.
5. Common causes of snoring and apnea
Respiratory passage stenosis caused by various reasons, mainly upper respiratory tract stenosis above the tracheal plane, can cause snoring and even apnea. Specifically include: nasal septum deviation, nasal polyps, etc. causing nasal stenosis. Pharyngeal stenosis: enlarged tonsils, loose pharynx, and long uvula. Tongue hypertrophy, tongue base tumors, tongue suffixes, etc. cause pharyngeal cavity narrowing. Maxillofacial deformities, such as micrognathia, obesity. In children, it is often caused by tonsil hypertrophy and adenoid hypertrophy.
6. What should I do if I snore?
If a snoring patient wants to know the quality of his sleep, how many apneas there are during sleep, how long each pause is, the oxygen content in the blood during sleep, the heart rate changes during sleep, etc., you only need to A one-night polysomnography test can tell you that polysomnography is now considered an important test for snoring patients. It can measure electroencephalogram, electrocardiogram, electromyography, oral and nasal airflow and other symptoms while the patient is sleeping at night. Through dynamic observation of blood oxygen saturation and heart rate, we can understand the extent of the impact of snoring on the body and guide the treatment of snoring.
7. Be wary of snoring in children
Snoring in children is mostly due to enlargement of adenoids and tonsils in the nasopharynx or developmental malformations of craniofacial structures. Because airway obstructive lesions are more obvious, apnea is prone 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. So if your child snores at night and has difficulty concentrating in class, drowsiness, memory loss, and poor academic performance, you should first go to an otolaryngology department to check the nasopharynx and tonsils. If hypertrophy is evident, appropriate treatment will be required.
8. General treatment of snoring
The treatment of snoring patients requires different treatments according to different reasons. The choice of treatment method is the most important factor in determining the effect of treatment. We will describe the main methods currently used to treat snoring in four sections. Let’s talk about general treatment first. Lose weight: Obesity is one of the factors causing pharyngeal stenosis. Losing weight can reduce the degree of airway obstruction. Quit smoking and drinking: Smoking can cause inflammation of the pharynx, causing pharyngeal edema and stenosis. Alcohol can relax the muscles and cause the base of the tongue to fall back, thereby aggravating the obstruction. In addition, not taking sedative and sleeping pills before going to bed, sleeping on your side, etc. are all beneficial to snoring.
9. Surgical treatment of snoring
Different surgical methods should be selected according to the plane of obstruction. Patients with nasal obstruction should undergo nasal surgery to unblock the nasal passages. Patients with pharyngeal stenosis can undergo velopharyngoplasty. This surgery mainly removes part of the uvula and tonsils to increase the space in the pharynx to treat snoring. It is currently the most commonly used surgical method to treat snoring and sleep apnea. . Its success depends on patient selection for surgery. In addition, patients with micrognathia are prone to tongue dropback, so they can undergo orthognathic surgery and other surgeries.
10. Plasma low-temperature ablation technology for snoring
Plasma low-temperature ablation technology is a recently patented technology in the United States. It is a very developed minimally invasive treatment method. It can ablate the tissues of the pharynx, reduce the volume, and reduce the size of the hypertrophied tongue. Because it uses hypothermia treatment, the local reaction is small, basically painless, no bleeding or very little bleeding, and the operation time is short. It can be treated in an outpatient clinic. It is mainly suitable for patients with nasal cavity, pharyngeal stenosis and tongue hypertrophy. Nanjing Bayi The otolaryngology department of the hospital currently uses plasma ablation technology to treat many patients and achieved good results.
11. Continuous positive airway pressure and oral appliances to treat snoring
The main principle of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is to wear a small CPAP machine during sleep to make the mask Connected to a ventilator, it works like a balloon to expand the narrow part of the pharynx. Each patient's pressure needs are different, so a doctor needs to use a polysomnogram to determine an appropriate pressure. CPAP machines can significantly increase the oxygen content in the blood and are suitable for patients with moderate to severe snoring and those who have failed other treatment methods.
12. Conclusion
Snoring and apnea syndrome can cause serious consequences in multiple systems throughout the body, affecting people's health. Polysomnography is an examination and diagnosis The main means of snoring. Different treatments should be selected according to the patient's specific situation. The Sleep Respiratory Disorders Center of the Otolaryngology Department of Bayi Hospital currently carries out all the above-mentioned treatment methods. Including surgery, radio frequency, CPAP machines and snoring devices, etc. Basically 95% of snoring patients can achieve satisfactory results through different treatment methods.
Patients who have failed other treatments.