Key points:
- Nine out of 10 people who are overweight or obese suffer from snoring while sleeping.
- Lack of sleep affects people’s growth and concentration.
- Polysomnography allows for quantifying the amount and type of snoring.
You may have heard that snoring is normal and indicates deep sleep, but the fact is that snoring is not good. Medically, says Dr. Óscar Sánchez Escandón, a neurologist and sleep specialist at ABC Medical Center, this action can be tolerated if it occurs less than five times in an hour of sleep, but if you snore more than that, you will have major problems.
“The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes 88 different types of sleep disorders, but insomnia is the most frequent. Chronic insomnia affects 8-10% of the adult population, and transient insomnia is suffered by around 40% of the population of any Western country.”1
Snoring while sleeping means that we begin to have problems with the airflow to the lungs, which decreases and causes different pressures between the structures of the pharynx and trachea.
This means that continuous sleep will be lost, and snoring might wake you up and trigger something known as micro-arousals or major arousals. Resulting in rest alteration.
By not sleeping, the next day’s activities will be disturbed and you will have difficulty concentrating, you will be irritable, and with problems with work or school performance, among others.
Children and snoring
According to OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) data from 2021, nine out of 10 overweight children have snoring problems or respiratory pauses.
Children who are overweight, snoring, or have sleep apnea will see their growth affected, and their cognition and mental performance will also be reduced due to respiratory pauses that necessarily translate into less oxygenation for the brain, indicates Dr. Sanchez.
How to prevent snoring?
There are different causes of snoring and treatment will depend on them.
Being overweight and obesity are closely associated with this because nine out of 10 people who have this condition suffer from snoring or breathing pauses during sleep, also known as apnea.
Both problems, says Dr. Sánchez, significantly alter the quality of your sleep and, as time goes by, they will affect other basic functions such as the heart, kidney, or brain, and knowledge, memory, calmness, and performance in everyday life will be affected.
For patients who are not overweight, the causes of snoring could be associated with septal deviation of the nose or chronic inflammation of the adenoids or tonsils. Allergies can also cause inflammation in the throat.
We have therapeutic alternatives for managing snoring and sleep apnea, says Dr. Sánchez, but to decide the correct tool to be implemented, a test called polysomnography, or sleep study, must first be performed, which will allow quantifying the amount and type of snoring, as well as the respiratory pauses that occur during the night.
Once the source of snoring is identified the solution will come, following several treatment guidelines that will help us correct it without further complication. This will allow the patient to resume good quality sleep and have better daytime performance.
At the ABC Medical Center’s Neurology Center we can provide you with specialized care. Contact us!
Fuente:
Dr. Óscar Sánchez Escandón – neurologist and sleep specialist at ABC Medical Center
https://youtu.be/BJskpe9H_j8
1 https://ssl.rima.org/noticia.aspx?idnota=3013#:~:text=La%20Organizaci%C3%B3n%20Mundial%20de%20la,poblaci%C3%B3n%20de%20cualquier%20pa%C3%ADs%20occidental.
