Snoring is mostly seen in adult obese men. Snoring can also cause fatal complications in severe cases. Snoring is caused by airflow through the upper airway during sleep causing vibration of the edges of the pharyngeal mucosa and secretions on the mucosal surface. Obese people with excess fat accumulation and narrowed pharyngeal cavity are more prone to snoring. Other symptoms of snorers include daytime sleepiness, early morning headache, mood and behavior disorders such as restlessness, personality changes, excessive dreaming and urination. Based on these characteristics of snoring, it is not difficult to make a diagnosis, but the key is to correctly distinguish which type of snoring belongs to, because the treatment principles and means for central, obstructive and mixed snoring are different. Sleep respiratory monitoring can make a clear diagnosis. Patients only need to rest in the sleep respiratory monitoring laboratory for one night to understand the quality of their sleep, whether they have snoring, the degree of impact on the systemic systems, which type they belong to and what kind of treatment they are suitable for. Symptoms of snoring 1. Severe snoring sound, but snoring is terminated from time to time. The patient’s upper airway is narrowed during sleep due to factors such as airway relaxation, collapse and backward tongue root, and the airflow passes through the narrow pharynx during breathing, causing the soft tissue of pharyngeal cavity to flutter and emit snoring sound. 2. Daytime dozing. Patients often feel sleepy and dizzy during the day, and whenever they are in a meeting, listening to a lecture, reading, watching TV, riding in a car or even driving, they yawn one after another and fall asleep quietly, and snore like thunder. When they wake up again and go back to sleep, but the quality of sleep is not good. Patients often sleep for a long time and are still drowsy and sleepy. 3. Breath-holding and apnea occur frequently during sleep. When snoring patients sleep at night, breath-holding is often triggered by breathing blockage, and each breath-holding time is as little as ten seconds or as long as several minutes, and severe patients are awakened by breath-holding many times a night. Patients often stop snoring suddenly after they have been sleeping loudly for a period of time, and their breathing is suspended, and the patient’s mouth and lips become blue and purple, showing painful struggle, accompanied by sweating profusely. Sometimes the patient suddenly turns over or sits up, and then sends out a coarse grunting sound from the throat, which is harsh and hard to hear, with a variety of sounds. Especially in the dead of night, the continuous grunting sound is unusually loud and annoying. The patient’s family enjoys the “ear blessing” and can’t sleep peacefully and have dreams. Other manifestations of snoring include: increased urination and urine loss at night; headache, dizziness and weakness in the morning; slow reaction, poor memory and inability to concentrate in the daytime; change in personality of some patients, temperamental, irritable and depressed; and declining libido in some patients. Snoring – pathological causes We know that if the airflow passes through a narrow passage, it is possible to make a sharper sound. When the airflow cannot pass freely through the airway of the pharynx, it causes the vibration of the soft tissues of the pharynx and snoring will occur. At this time, you will have questions, why there is no “snoring” during the day? But only late at night? During the daytime when you are awake, the muscles in the soft tissues around the pharyngeal cavity compensate for the contraction and tighten the pharyngeal tissues so that they do not block the airway, but at night when you fall asleep, the muscles relax and the hypertrophied soft tissues around the pharynx partially block the airway, causing the local narrowing of the airway. So when the airflow passes through this narrow part, it generates vortex and causes vibration, which causes the familiar snoring sound. And when this sound is too loud, it can wake up other people or the person himself. Generally speaking, when the airflow obstruction increases, the snoring also increases. If you snore a lot, do you feel dizzy or “sleep deprived” when you get up in the morning? If so, but do you know how it is caused? If you snore badly at night, you may not know it, but your family or your roommates may notice a pause in your regular snoring. Did you know that apnea occurs when the airflow is completely blocked by the enlarged soft tissue of the pharynx? Since fresh air is not available to the lungs, the brain briefly awakens the body to the point where it can just contract the pharyngeal muscles, accompanied by a loud wheezing sound that releases the airway obstruction and resumes breathing. The process repeats itself, making what should be a full night’s sleep shallow and fragmented. You may not be aware of this process when you wake up in the morning, but you will feel dizzy and still “sleepy”. The lack of fresh air for long periods of time leads to a decrease in blood oxygen levels and an increase in blood viscosity, which can damage the lungs, heart and other organs, leading to serious diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart rate disorders, pulmonary heart disease, cerebrovascular accidents, endocrine disorders and neuropsychiatric disorders. In addition, studies have also shown that the incidence of sudden death in patients with sleep apnea syndrome is similarly much higher than that of the normal population. Snoring – diagnosis Snoring can be divided into two categories: simple snoring and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Simple snoring is caused by partial obstruction of the upper airway during sleep, resulting in snoring during sleep, but apnea and hypoxia rarely occur, which has little impact on health and does not cause drowsiness during the day. If the periodic complete obstruction of the upper airway during sleep causes frequent cessation of oral and nasal breathing and breath-holding, it may be obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. If the obstruction of airflow in the upper airway causes the respiratory airflow to stop for more than 10 seconds, it is called the occurrence of one apnea; if the apnea occurs more than 5 times in one hour of sleep, it can be diagnosed as obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, i.e. snoring. Generation of snoring: Since the airway of snorers is usually narrower than normal, the compensatory contraction of the muscles in the throat keeps the airway open during the daytime wakefulness and no blockage occurs. However, at night when sleeping, the neural excitability decreases, the muscles relax, and the pharyngeal tissues are blocked, so that the upper airway collapses, and when the airflow passes through the narrow part, it generates vortex and causes vibration, thus snoring occurs, and in serious cases, breathing can be temporarily stopped, thus affecting the health of the person. The treatment of snoring snoring can be broadly divided into two categories, namely conservative treatment and surgical treatment. Conservative treatment includes medication, weight loss and the application of some medical devices. Medication is to avoid the use of sleeping pills, narcotics and alcohol that reduce the excitability of the central nervous system; apply nasal mucosal constrictors and steroid sprays to improve airway structure and compliance. Because snoring is associated with obesity, an aggressive and effective weight loss program and its implementation can help improve symptoms. If the patient has good compliance, the application of medical devices such as intranasal positive pressure ventilation therapy and tongue rest can effectively improve the symptoms. For obstructive snoring, surgery, radiofrequency, laser, microwave and other methods can be used to treat it according to the different parts of the lesion causing snoring. If you are a snoring patient, the first thing you should do is to visit a specialist. The doctor will do a sleep monitoring on you. The monitoring instrument will monitor your heart, brain activity, respiratory movement, oral and nasal airflow, blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure and snoring, etc. Based on the monitoring results, the nature and severity of snoring will be judged and effective treatment methods will be adopted. Commonly used treatment methods: Weight loss is suitable for early and mild patients, as most snoring patients are obese, they can reduce their weight through exercise and diet control. Surgery is suitable for patients with upper airway obstruction, such as enlarged turbinates, deviated nasal septum, enlarged tonsils, enlarged uvula and low hanging soft palate, etc. The ventilation problem can be solved by surgical methods such as nasal septal correction and palatoplasty. 1.Radiofrequency ablation therapy. Suitable for mild to moderate snoring patients, using plasma cryogenic elimination system to reduce the volume of the hypertrophied tissue in the pharynx, this method is simple, less traumatic, no bleeding, and can generally be treated on an outpatient basis. 2.Tranasal positive pressure ventilation treatment. The air is pressurized by a special ventilator to blow open the patient’s airway, which is no longer blocked, and cure the complications of airway obstruction and oxygen deprivation. This method is non-invasive, but the patient needs to wear a nasal mask when sleeping, and should be under the guidance of a specialist physician to purchase and use the ventilator. 3. Mouthpiece treatment. A special dilator is placed into the pharyngeal cavity at bedtime to expand the pharyngeal cavity and reduce upper airway resistance. Because of the discomfort of having to put the dilator in the mouth while sleeping, it is not easy for patients to accept. In conclusion, the causes of snoring are multifaceted and often require multidisciplinary collaboration and comprehensive analysis to determine the appropriate treatment plan.