A recent study held in South Korea found frequent snoring was associated with the development of chronic bronchitis, but the researchers themselves said they aren’t sure why.

“The mechanisms underlying the association between snoring and chronic bronchitis are largely unknown,” said the report, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, that was conducted by researchers at Korea University Ansan Hospital, in Ansan.

Bronchitis is inflammation of the air passages within the lungs. Acute bronchitis is often caused by an infection and goes away after treatment or on its own. Chronic bronchitis is most often caused by smoking or exposure to lung-irritating substances such as chemical fumes or dust, and does not go away quickly.

The Korean study of 4,270 individuals found that those who said they snored six to seven nights a week were 68 percent more likely to develop chronic bronchitis than those who said they never snored. The incidence of chronic bronchitis was 25 percent greater for people who snored five times a week or less.

Dr. Robert Keeton, a research fellow at the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Center, called the findings an interesting association, “but you can’t say it’s conclusive. It can’t be something you can cite to tell patients in the clinic that they have chronic bronchitis because they snore.”

The Korean study proposed two possible reasons for the association. One is that the vibrations caused by snoring lead to inflammation in the airways. The other is that the inflammation comes first, causing the snoring and possibly sleep apnea, in which breathing stops or becomes very shallow periodically for 10 or 20 seconds.

“It’s not unusual for people with obstructive sleep apnea to have such symptoms,” Keeton said. “A common cause of snoring is obstructive sleep apnea.”

Sleep apnea causes a distinctive kind of snoring, a loud gasping every time the airways are obstructed. Obese people are more likely to experience sleep apnea, but it can occur in persons of normal weight.

The incidence of sleep apnea is an unanswered question in the Korean study, said Dr. Charles Bae, a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center. All the information in the study was based on reports by the participants, Bae noted, and there does not seem to have been an attempt by the researchers to determine how many of the patients may have had sleep apnea.

“There is certainly a relationship between sleep apnea and increased inflammation in the body,” he said.

The bottom line, Bae said, is that the Korean paper “points out an interesting relationship that needs further research.”

That gives another reason to know your sleep disorders and get the right snoring treatment

Solutions like chin straps and sprays are effective on to a certain extent. After a while they are not as effective as they are in the beginning because our bodies get used to them and adapt accordingly.

Cpaps do well but how many among us would like to get attached to tubes every night for the rest of our lives and carry them along where ever we go

Surgery is effective as well but then again who would go through all that pain, its easier said than done. Its pain, discomfort and a ton of Do’s and Dont’s you have to follow.

So what’s the best solution- Go with what’s natural and effective.

Age old practices like yoga are popular till date. Numerous disorders, imbalances and diseases can be cured just by practicing yoga regularly. Breathing techniques and exercises are the essentials here.

Get to the root of a problem and cure it forever instead of going for an expensive but popular quickfix.

Daylight-saving time ends early Sunday morning, and it will be time to turn the clocks back an hour to return to standard time.

If you find yourself extra tired for a day or two around fall and spring time changes, you’re probably not the only one yawning.

For every hour of change, your body takes about a day to adjust, said Dr. Danny Bartel, a neurologist who works as medical director of the Sleep Lab at United Regional Health Care System.

“It’s the same as jet lag,” Bartel said. “You change the clock, you change your Circadian rhythm.”

A Circadian rhythm is a daily rhythmic activity cycle, based on 24-hour intervals, that is exhibited by many organisms including man.

While many people will be back to normal by Monday or Tuesday, people who work nights, have staggered schedules, or just plain don’t get enough sleep might deal with extreme tiredness and other sleep troubles throughout the year.

People who work varied shifts — switching every few days from nights to days, for example — don’t really get enough time for their bodies to adjust and get on a consistent sleep schedule.

Often, weight issues and sleep problems go hand-in-hand, raising the risk of serious troubles such as heart attacks or strokes because of breathing problems during sleep.

Too many sleepless nights (or days) can become a health nightmare. For years, people didn’t really think of sleep apnea as much more than a nuisance, but more recently, it has become clear that it carries a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, Bartel said.

Snoring alone puts you at a 2-1/2 times greater risk for heart attack, and the risk is 1-1/2 times greater for stroke.

“When they’re listening to their husband or wife snoring,” Bartel said, “they’re listening to their life ebb away.”

In addition to those risk factors, people who don’t get enough sleep are more emotional, said Jaquita Warnock, sleep lab manager. It’s also possible to fall asleep at the worst times, including while driving or during the middle of the day.

Every cell — even those in plants and in your skin — follows a certain rhythm, Bartel said.

Human body temperature is closely connected with the waking and sleep schedule, rising through the day until it nears time for sleep again. About that time, the temperature tends to drop about two degrees.

When the sun comes up, hormonal changes rouse you and take you through the day. After your brain has worked for a while, it gets depleted, and an overwhelming urge to sleep sets in.

The darker your sleeping environment, the better.

“Theoretically, we’re supposed to work during the day and sleep at night,” Bartel said.

Sure, that might have been the case for just about everyone hundreds of years ago, but we live in a 24-hours-a-day world, and for many people, that means staying up nights working, and sleeping when it’s possible.

According to United Regional’s Web site, 130 million people in America have sleeping problems of some sort, and dozens of sleep disorders exist, ranging from narcolepsy, which involves falling asleep during everyday activities including driving, to sleep apnea, which involves breathing disruptions, to insomnia, which means people have trouble falling asleep in the first place.

Courtesy – Jessica Langdon (http://www.timesrecordnews.com)

Get the right snoring treatment.

Moreover, more than 21 percent of the patients had severe sleep apnea, characterized by 30 or more periods of interrupted breathing each hour during sleep, said Patrick Lévy, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and a professor physiology at Grenoble University in Grenoble, France.

“Because of the excessive prevalence of undiagnosed sleep apnea we found, it could be recommended that all patients referred for a pacemaker should first be screened for sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is known to increase risk of cardiovascular disease,” Lévy said.

In the study, researchers investigated the prevalence and consequences of undiagnosed sleep apnea in pacemaker patients. Ninety-eight French, British and Belgian pacemaker patients (average age 64) who were undiagnosed with sleep apnea underwent laboratory monitoring of their sleep.

Twenty-nine patients had received pacemakers to treat heart failure, which means that the heart cannot efficiently pump blood. Thirty-three patients had a high degree atrioventricular block or AV block, which is a blocked electrical signal from the heart’s upper chamber (atria) to the pumping chamber (ventricle).

Thirty-six had sinus node disease, in which a heart chamber pumps too fast or too slow.

Abnormally slow heart rhythms (Bradycardic rhythm disorders) are common among patients with obstructive sleep apnea.

Researchers screened the patients with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and polysomnography, a device that records breathing and sleep. The pacemakers were programmed to pace the heart at a uniform lower pacing rate. Sleep apnea was defined as an apnea hypopnea (abnormally shallow breathing) index of 10 or more an hour.

Fifty seven patients (59 percent) had sleep apnea and 21 (21 percent) had severe sleep apnea, Lévy said. Half of the patients with heart failure, 68 percent of patients with AV block, and 58 percent of patients with sinus node disease had sleep apnea.

Previous studies have found that about one fifth of the general population has sleep apena, he said.

Researchers said they couldn’t determine if the sleep apnea preceded the pacemaker implantation or if it developed after the initiation of pacemaker therapy. Lévy noted that successfully treating sleep apnea with weight loss, smoking cessation and continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) might eliminate the need for pacing. But additional studies are needed to define optimal treatment strategy for pacemaker patients who have obstructive or central sleep apnea.

Source-Eurekalert

So that make it even more important to treat Sleep Apnea, it might be the reason for more severe health problems, we can not just ignore it. Find the natural snoring treatment and sleep apnea cure.

Current research indicates that undiagnosed sleep apnea during pregnancy (SAPS) puts mothers at risk for the following complications in pregnancy:

• growth retardation of the fetus (low birth weight)
• pre-eclampsia (pregnancy-induced hypertension)
• placenta abruptia (tearing of the placenta from the uterine wall)
• premature delivery.

Why it may happen?

Obesity is a major risk factor for sleep apnea, and some experts believe that pregnancy may also make you more susceptible, particularly in the third trimester. The heavier you are to begin with and the more weight you gain during pregnancy, the more likely you are to have trouble breathing at night because of the extra tissue in your neck and throat.

Other factors that make you more likely to snore during pregnancy, such as swollen nasal passages, may also put you at a higher risk for sleep apnea. Higher levels of estrogen during pregnancy contribute to swelling in the mucous membranes lining the nose and can even cause you to make more mucus. Also, the amount of blood in your body increases and your blood vessels expand during pregnancy, which can lead to swollen nasal membranes as well.

What you can do about it?

If your partner notices that you’re snoring a lot and making periodic snorting or gasping sounds in your sleep, be sure to mention it to your doctor or midwife so you can be evaluated for sleep apnea.

When you periodically stop breathing, the amount of oxygen in your blood drops temporarily. If left untreated, sleep apnea can take a toll on your health, and some research suggests it may affect your baby’s growth as well. Sleep apnea is also linked to high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disorders. And feeling tired during the day increases your risk of falling asleep at work, while you’re driving, or while you’re caring for your other children.

If you’re diagnosed with sleep apnea, you may go for the anti snore devices or equipment like CPAPs or you may benefit from some specific exercises meant to cure snoring and sleep apnea.

“We found that sleep-disordered breathing was common when chronic pain patients took prescribed opioids,” explains lead author Lynn R. Webster, MD, from Lifetree Clinical Research and Pain Clinic in Salt Lake City, Utah. “We also found a direct dose-response relationship between central sleep apnea and methadone and benzodiazepines, an association which had not been previously reported.”

Opioids, effective medications for chronic pain treatment, are often used for cancer patients, but are now gaining widespread acceptance as long-term therapy for chronic pain unrelated to cancer. An increasing number of patients with nonmalignant chronic pain are receiving around-the-clock pain relief through opioid therapy.

The researchers studied sleep lab data on 140 patients taking around-the-clock opioid therapy for chronic pain to assess the potential and prevalence sleep apnea in opioid treated pain patients. All patients were on opioid therapy for at least six months with stable dosing for at least four weeks.

The investigators say that their results show a higher than expected prevalence of sleep disordered breathing in opioid treated chronic pain patients. Obstructive and central sleep apnea syndromes occurred in the studied population at a far greater rate (75%) than is observed in the general population, where obstructive sleep apnea is known to be underdiagnosed but has been estimated at roughly 2% to 4%. Central sleep apnea is estimated at 5% in people older than 65 years and from 1.5% to 5% in men less than 65 years old.

People who stop breathing during sleep because of faulty brain control have central sleep apnea as opposed to obstructive apnea, which is triggered by obesity and other health problems and accompanied by loud snoring.

The investigators comment that the absence of crescendo-decrescendo breath size commonly associated with central sleep apnea suggests that the central sleep apnea mechanism is different for people taking opioids than the general public. They suggest it could be related to the direct effects of opioids on the part of the brain that controls respiration.

The authors also note that if opioid medications increase sleep apnea risk as their research suggests, then chronic pain patients who are prescribed opioids have a higher risk of morbidity and mortality. “The challenge is to monitor and adjust medications for maximum safety, not to eliminate them at the expense of pain management,” Dr. Webster concludes.

“The recent flurry of news reports of deaths associated with methadone use, and the synergy of opioids and benzodiazepines in causing respiratory depression, highlight the importance of Dr. Webster’s research.

Clearly we need more studies of these mechanisms as well as ways of identifying those at risk. Doctors and patients who are considering opioid medication for pain control, must balance this risk against the potential for improved quality of life,” comments Rollin M. Gallagher, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Pain Medicine.

Source-Eurekalert

Sleep Apnea is a sleep disorder causing interruptions in the regular breathing process of the human body. It’s not just about sound.

Apnea, the Greek word literally means without breath. The Blockage of the air passage while sleeping is Sleep Apnea. A huge percentage of the population, irrespective of age are victims of Sleep Apnea.

A person with Sleep Apnea often wakes up in the middle of his sleep, almost breathless to regain the rhythm of breathing. It’s a life threatening, progressive disorder which has to be treated.

Symptoms of Sleep Apnea can be as follows

• Regular blockage of air passage
• Loud snoring
• Frequent break down of sleep to normalize breathing
• Sweating during night
• Dry mouth, sore throat
• Sleepiness during day time
• Lethargy
• Loss of memory
• Morning fatigue when waking
• Change in personality
• Depression

There are three types of Sleep Apnea - central, mixed and obstructive. Obstructive Sleep Apnea is the most common. Most of the affected people are not aware that they even have the condition

Obstructive Sleep Apnea or OSA is characterized by a blockage of air passage through the nose and mouth. Reduction of oxygen supply and the uneven structure of the jaw are some of the main reasons for Obstructive Sleep Apnea.

Central Sleep Apnea or CSA is less seen as a respiratory disorder. It is often characterized by the delayed message for breath from the brain. Any defect in the central nervous system can be the major cause of this type of Sleep Apnea.

Mixed Sleep Apnea is a combined disorder of both Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Central Sleep Apnea.

There are medical treatments available for Sleep Apnea like Cpaps , Oral appliances or even surgery but it may also be cured by Behavioral therapy which includes weight loss and sleeping posture modifications in addition to simply avoiding CNS depressants and alcohol when within a few hours of going to sleep. There are some specific exercises for the throat which can tone up the muscles and the tissues in the throat and are very effective in treating it.

Get all the Info about these exercise at best snoring treatments

A CPAP device consists of an air blower which you place next to your bed, and a mask which fits over over your nose during sleep. The pressure from the air blower forces air through your nasal passages. This Sleep Apnea Machine keeps the airway from collapsing and opens a proper air passage by continuously pumping in air into the respiratory tract either through the nose or mouth. CPAP systems have been shown highly effective in preventing sleep apnea and snoring.

This is a lifetime treatment: apnea episodes return as soon as you ditch your CPAP machine. Why would you do that? Many people have found CPAP systems unbearably claustrophobic; they may cause nasal irritation and drying, facial skin irritation, abdominal bloating, mask leaks, sore eyes, and headaches. And they are not exactly conducive to spontaneous romance in the middle of the night. As many as 50% of patients quit wearing them. However, modern CPAP systems are far less intrusive than some of the earlier machines, and the air blowers are quieter, so compliance has been increasing steadily.

Advantages:

• Other methods of treatment can be followed if the patent is not fully satisfied
• A CPAP machine can be used alongside other treatments for other ailments
• Instant relief from Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Disadvantages of CPAP:

• Dryness in nose and mouth.
• Usage of the mask can cause uneasiness.
• Blockage in the nose
• The mask can affect the skin and nose
• The air pressure applied may obstruct deep sleep in some patients.
• Leakage in the air supply
• Stuffy nose

Since CPAP is a medical device, it should only ever be considered after seeking proper medical advice.
Even in CPAPs the objective is to prevent the throat tissues to obstruct the airways. This may also be achieved if your throat tissues are tightened naturally through exercises.

Get the best natural snoring treatment.

Chronic daily headache was defined as people with at least 15 headaches per month. Occasional headache was defined as two to 104 headaches per year.People with chronic daily headache were more than twice as likely to also be chronic snorers than the people with occasional headaches. The result was the same even when adjusting for factors that can affect breathing in sleep, such as body mass index and alcohol intake.

“If we can show that the snoring is causing the headaches, then we may be able to stop or lessen people’s headaches by treating their snoring,” said study author Ann Scher, PhD, of the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md. “This would be a great relief to people who suffer from chronic daily headache.”

The study involved 206 people ages 18 to 65 with chronic daily headache for five years or less and 507 people with occasional headache. Those with chronic headache had an average of 260 days with headaches per year. Those with occasional headache had an average of 24 headache days per year.

The participants were asked how often they snored, and researchers classified their headache types. Scher noted that few studies have validated the accuracy of having patients report their own snoring status. To test the validity, the researchers analyzed the link between snoring and chronic daily headache data separately by gender, age, marital status and headache type and found no significant differences.

Those with chronic daily headache were more likely to be female, have a lower educational level and have been previously married (divorced, widowed or separated) than those with occasional headache.

Scher said more research is needed to determine the link between snoring and chronic daily headache.

“The headaches could be causing the snoring, or the snoring could be causing the headaches, or both,” she said. “Chronic headache can result in disturbed sleep, and sedating medications used to treat pain can aggravate sleep-disordered breathing. On the other side, sleep deprivation or excessive sleep can trigger migraine attacks in some people.”

The study was supported by GlaxoSmithKline, the Migraine Trust and the American Headache Society.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Academy Of Neurology.

Courtesy- Science Daily.

But are they really that efficient..!

First of all you should know the cause of snoring. It can be one of the many causes, some of them I have taken up in the earlier posts. The main reason being soft tissues or weak muscles in the throat that cause obstruction of air passages while breathing in our sleep. When we are sleeping our muscles are in the relaxed form so we don’t have much control over them.

A good quality sleep is very important for our mental and physical health. Every aspect of our life can be affected by the quality of sleep we get. If its poor quality sleep or our natural sleep cycle is disturbed, its can have a negative effect on us. Sleepiness, tiredness, headaches, lack of concentration, intolerance can be some of the symptoms caused by lack of good sleep.

Now snoring can affect both the snorer as well as his or her sleeping partner. Most of us are tempted to try out various devices available in the market because we want to put an end to the sound as easily as possible. These devices come in different shapes and sizes like pillows, bands, straps or could be something else.

What do they actually do? The electronic ones will vibrate or send a pulse so that you can change your sleeping position. In other words they disturb you in your sleep or your sleeping cycle. So it might be possible that you don’t make that annoying sound anymore or are less frequent in making those sounds but the quality of your sleep will more or less remain the same. No better than snoring itself.

You also have safety and affordability issues attached to the use of these devices. If you want to go for any of the devices check out if they are reliable enough to be with you in your sleep.

Work on the cause of your snore and not your sleep by putting a quickfix. Natural treatments like exercises treat your snore by improving your muscle tone rather than prompt you to change your position in your sleep.