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Sleep
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.Apnea
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sleep leading to behaviour and mood changes as well as learning problems, especially in kids, and snoring has been linked to higher risks of some health problems such as high blood pressure and even strokes - I bring snoring up today because loud snoring is a major sign of sleep apnea, a condition that many of you suffer from but don’t know that you do.
....In sleep apnea, a snorer suffers bouts of interrupted breathing while asleep that the snorer never knows about. Sleep apnea varies in severity so that some people with sleep apnea suffer only a few bouts of interrupted breathing a night while others suffer very frequent stops in breathing. These episodes can last from a few seconds to (and sleep experts assure me this is true), two minutes, which needless to add, sends the non-snoring but now wide-awake bedmate into spasms of concern (but only, I suppose, if the non-snoring spouse actually cares about the snorer; if she doesn’t, I imagine it’s not too hard for her to continue to still sleep soundly while the snorer stops breathing periodically).
....There are two types of sleep apnea: the less common central sleep apnea (in which the brain doesn’t send proper signals to the tissues in the throat to control , |
.....I don’t snore, and I say that in full knowledge that 1) my wife will not agree (which would certainly not be anything new, of course) and more important, 2) I know that most of you won’t believe me either because (and this may very well be Newton’s fourth law of thermodynamics): nearly every human being who snores fervently denies that they do so, especially, of course, human beings of the female persuasion. In fact, from my very limited understanding of the other genders, I believe that no woman –either currently living or long dead – has ever admitted to being the source of any bodily functions that go awry.
.....But I digress, so back to snoring, and the reason I started by saying that I don’t snore although my wife may disagree is that this month’s column is about sleep apnea, and snoring is a very important sign of sleep apnea, yet snoring is often a matter of one’s viewpoint, by which I mean that depending on who’s listening (and complaining) to the person beside them, one man’s loud snoring might just be another man’s somewhat loud breathing. Yet failing to recognize the kind of pathological snoring that accompanies sleep apnea can have terrible consequences for a snorer’s health, so it’s very important to pay |
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attention to someone’s snoring.
....So let’s start with a definition: snoring is merely a sound produced by air rushing down a throat that is
 .narrowed by the vibration of tissues in the throat, particularly the soft palate, the muscles, the tonsils, and the uvula (that small thingie that hangs down the back of the throat but which not one person in a million can actually name).
....Although snoring by itself can result in several key negative health consequences - snoring can and does, for a start, seriously impact relationships, snoring can interrupt |
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