Snoring can cause a great deal of stress in the bedroom for both the person snoring and their spouse. A good night’s sleep is the cornerstone of our health and when sleep is disrupted, it causes our health to decline and our risk for diabetes, heart disease and obesity to greatly increase. To improve both your lives, learn more about what snoring is doing to your health and how you can trade snoring for a much healthier lifestyle!
Snoring affects you and your spouse.
Basically, snoring is the vibration or sound coming from an obstructed airway often caused by alcohol or drugs relaxing the throat muscles, sleep on the back with the tongue dropping to the back of the mouth, a mispositioned jaw or fat gathering around the throat. However, snoring could be a symptom of more serious diagnosis – Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).
OSA is actually repetitive pauses in breathing during sleep, which means you actually stop breathing throughout the night. This causes a reduction in blood oxygen saturation and simply causes you to get very poor quality sleep. Poor quality sleep leads to daytime sleepiness, weight gain and then a greater risk for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and other health problems.
If you feel you may have OSA, you could easily determine your risk at home through a Sleep Apnea Screening using an Apnea Link Monitor. The ApneaLink Monitor is not a substitute for an overnight PSG sleep study but it is a good start. If you’ve ever been told you stop breathing while you are sleeping or that you snort and gasp for breath, which is also a good indication of OSA. Juro’s Respiratory Center provides these screenings at a fraction of the cost of a full blown sleep study.
You may also discuss your snoring habits with your doctor, visit a sleep lab and receive direction on what type of CPAP machine you will need. CPAP machines are an extremely common, non-invasive and effective method of treating OSA.
At Juro’s Medical, we carry a wide selection of CPAP machines and CPAP masks. Depending on your sleeping habits, you may prefer one mask design over the other or differing functions in machines, but you are welcome to visit our Billings location to check them out!