Have you ever encountered this situation: people in the same room snoring like thunder, so noisy that you can not sleep; have you ever experienced: business trips, hotels and other people in the same room or even next door said you sleep really well, snoring very loud; and the strange thing is that you start to snooze again in the next day when the meeting. Since ancient times, snoring is considered to be the performance of a good sleep and a deep sleep. In fact, it is not true, and even the opposite. If you pay attention, you will find that those who snore at night tend to be more sleepy during the day. Snoring, commonly known as snoring, why do you snore? Where does the sound come from? During normal breathing, there is no sound when the airflow passes through the open airway. However, when the upper airway is narrowed for various reasons, the gas passes through the narrow pathway to form a vortex, which vibrates the soft tissues of the pharynx and creates a snoring sound. The narrower the upper airway is, the louder the snoring tone will be. Generally speaking, it does not matter if the snoring is low and even, but the high pitched “thunderous” snoring should be watched out for, which indicates that the upper airway has become significantly narrower. Of course, the most fearful thing is uneven snoring: snoring intermittently, suddenly stopping, and then taking a long breath after a few seconds or even tens of seconds. When you hold your breath, you can hold your lips purple and move your arms and legs around. The people next to him are nervous, and they can’t hurry to push him to let him catch his breath. This is what we call apnea. So what is the danger of this snoring and the accompanying apnea? The first point I think we can all think of: lack of oxygen. Indeed, when apnea occurs, oxygen cannot be inhaled until a certain level of suffocation is reached, and breathing and snoring do not resume. Therefore, this kind of hypoxia is an intermittent hypoxia. Do not think that this intermittent hypoxia does not matter much. In fact, the damage of this frequent hypoxia-reoxygenation in some aspects even exceeds that of persistent hypoxia. Hypoxia, the “root of all evil”, causes damage to all systems of our oxygen-demanding organism. Intermittent hypoxia causes a severe oxidative emergency and inflammatory response, causing sympathetic excitation, which is responsible for the transient increase in blood pressure and the subsequent sustained increase. According to one example, the blood pressure rhythm of a normal person is low at night and high during the day. In patients with sleep disordered breathing, this normal blood pressure rhythm disappears, and blood pressure does not drop at night, but is even higher than during the day. This is the result of the lack of oxygen at night. Not only does it have a significant effect on blood pressure, but its close correlation with coronary heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and cerebrovascular disease has been confirmed by numerous studies and expert consensus. This frequent nocturnal hypoxia is also closely related to sudden death. In 2005, the famous sketch actor Gao Xiumin was at the peak of his interpretation career when he suddenly passed away, causing a great shock. After investigation, it was found that Gao Xiumin had been snoring for a long time and was accompanied by hypertension and coronary heart disease. The sudden death was probably due to acute heart disease induced by apnea and lack of oxygen during the night. Scientific research found that among sudden deaths, 20% were caused by sleep apnea syndrome. What is the second major hazard of snoring and sleep apnea that you think about? This danger is related to one of the main symptoms we mentioned at the beginning – sleepiness. Patients with sleep apnea tend to fall asleep with a sticky pillow. They sleep for a long time. But in the morning they still wake up feeling sleepy and unconscious. Even the more you sleep, the more sleepy you get. Why is this? Sleep apnea patients have frequent breath-holding and oxygen deprivation at night, so how does he resume breathing when he is holding his breath? Actually, our body has a protective mechanism. When oxygen deprivation reaches a certain level, it will stimulate the cerebral cortex and cause an awakening response. Only in most cases, this arousal response is subcortical and unnoticed by people. We can imagine that a person who is frequently held awake at night – falling asleep – and then held awake again, his sleep structure is disrupted and it is difficult to enter deep sleep. This is an important reason for his daytime sleepiness. There are many patients who do not pay attention to snoring and apnea and do not come to the clinic until after they drive into sleep and have a traffic accident. This is not an exceptional case, and we can encounter such patients from time to time in the outpatient clinic. According to statistics, traffic accidents caused by dozing off while driving account for 25% of total traffic accidents, and sleep apnea patients are seven times more likely to have traffic accidents than the general population. Because driving safety and traffic accidents are important social issues, Western countries are very concerned about this. Many western countries have now made sleep testing a medical test for professional drivers, and those who fail are temporarily suspended from driving. Long-term sleep discontinuity and disruption of sleep structure can also affect the brain function of the patient. Patients experience poor concentration, memory loss, and reduced work efficiency. In the case of school-age children with sleep apnea due to factors such as enlarged tonsils and adenoids, the development of the child can be affected and manifestations such as hyperactivity can occur. Some people may ask: Why do you have sleep apnea? Some people say I didn’t snore originally, and then I got fat before I snored. Indeed, obesity is an important factor. After obesity, fat accumulation in the upper airway will cause narrowing of the pharynx, increased compliance, etc., which makes snoring and apnea easy to occur. However, it is also common to see very thin people also snoring and apnea. This is related to the relatively flat jaw structure of our Chinese people. In addition, the functional factors of muscles and central regulation factors also play a very important role, and there is a large amount of research on this part, so I will not repeat it here. Generally speaking, snoring is far more common in men than in women. However, when women go through menopause the incidence of snoring increases significantly. Estrogen is a protective factor against snoring. Of course, some lifestyles also affect snoring, such as smoking and drinking alcohol. Smoking directly irritates the nasopharynx and causes chronic inflammatory edema, which is an aggravating factor for sleep breathing disorder. Alcohol consumption not only inhibits the brain’s response to hypoxic stimuli, but also further relaxes the upper airway muscles, which can significantly aggravate sleep breathing disorders. Of course, sleep breathing disorders in children are significantly different from those in adults. Snoring in children is mainly due to factors such as is tonsillar hypertrophy and adenoid hypertrophy. Since the pathogenesis of snoring in children is significantly different from that in adults, the treatment is also significantly different. However, one thing is that all of them should be examined and evaluated by a professional physician to provide a basis for choosing the right treatment method. Therefore, we should not underestimate snoring. With the modern high nutrition, less exercise, sleep rhythm disorder lifestyle and the increase of obese population, the incidence of sleep disordered breathing disease is increasing. And it is closely related to hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes and other “rich” diseases. Sleep snoring not only affects one’s own health, but also interferes with the rest of others. That’s why we say: “Sleep is better without sound than with sound”.