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Snoring and its Implications

Jul 21 , 2018 | 1 min read

Snoring sound while asleep can certainly disturb partners and may even force them to stay in separate rooms. Snoring may be a reason for social embarrassment while travelling in trains or when travelling executives need to share room with their colleagues.

Air from atmosphere is needed by the lungs to get oxygen and to pass out waste as carbon dioxide. This air gets sucked in by negative pressure in the lungs and when passes through narrow areas, start vibrating soft tissues to produce sound of snoring.

The muscles of the throat are meant to maintain resting tone while asleep to keep the airway open. The soft tissues around the muscles can become bulkier with fat deposition or the muscle might loosen their tone to collapse during inspiration. This collapse can be partial or complete. Partial collapse may be extended enough to decrease oxygen supply or may be complete to produce a period of no breathing. This cessation of breathing has serious implications on health and body metabolism besides fragmentation of good quality sleep. These subconscious periods of awakenings during sleep, prevents the person from getting good night rest, and these people feel sleepy and dull during the day. They are known to sleep during meetings making them poor performers at work. Sleep may come to them while driving or at work if they are working with heavy machinery, making them accident prone.

Snoring when starts to collapse the airway for a period, this leads to a disease named as OBSTRUCTIVE SLEEP APNEA SYNDROME (OSAS).

Medical implications of this disease makes one to have heart rhythm abnormalities, heart attacks, brain stroke, high blood pressure, Diabetes and many fold chances of dying during sleep.

Snoring and OSAS need attention to be diagnosed and treated early before sinister implications start occurring.

Dr. Sanjay Sachdeva

Senior Consultant,

ENT and Head neck Surgery

New Delhi

India