Four times as many strokes, four times as many sudden deaths during sleep…

We used to think that snoring and snoring were no big deal, but now it’s becoming as important a chronic disease as high blood pressure and diabetes. Because sleep apnea patients are often short of breath and interrupted halfway through their sleep, they suffer from chronic sleep deprivation, which can lead to inflammation and cardiovascular disease.

There are many patients who sleep in the middle of an arrhythmia, cardiac arrest increases the chance of sudden death, or even a heart attack; The incidence of stroke and cerebrovascular disease is 3 to 4 times of the general population. In addition, clinically some people have been unable to find the cause of hypertension, the result of snoring problem is solved, hypertension is not medicine and the more, it can be seen that the impact on the body is quite big.

People in the East have a high rate of sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is particularly severe in Asian countries, where we used to think that fat people were more likely to snore, but it turns out that many people in Asian countries are not obese but have moderate or severe apnea.

The reason lies in our skulls. Asian skulls are smaller than Westerners, so our lower palatal bones shrink back a bit, making our respiratory tract and oropharynx narrower than Westerners. The original cavity is smaller, and the space left by putting tongue, throat, other soft tissues, etc., becomes smaller. This is why easterners are less likely to be obese, but more likely to have snoring or sleep apnea.

In Taiwan, about 10 percent of women and 30 to 50 percent of men have related problems by middle age. In fact, the proportion is quite high, and there may be one or two million people with this problem, even more than that!

But almost none of these potential populations will come to see a doctor, because it’s a negligible disease. Many people will feel they can’t get enough sleep and go to work, or they will be so motivated to go to work that they don’t know how much impact it has on their body. Most people will choose to ignore it.

Bad living habits lead to snoring

Some bad habits can lead to snoring problems, such as drinking alcohol, taking sleeping pills or being overweight. The first two can cause the muscles in the throat to lose tension and the airways to flatten as soon as you lie down, leading to a very severe form of apnea.

If you don’t want to go to the doctor at first, you can try to change your lifestyle, such as losing weight, drinking less alcohol, taking less sleeping pills, muscle relaxation and other drugs, and exercising more to maintain muscle tone and vitality. See if your body improves after a period of time. If the symptoms do not improve and the severity of sleep apnea remains above moderate, I would recommend that you seek professional help for treatment.

As for how sleep apnea can be treated, there are surgical or medical methods available for patients to choose. Surgery can be performed near the throat of soft tissue, tonsil a clear; Some people even have plastic surgery to break the jaw bone and then pull it out and put it back in to add space.

If surgery is not desired, the medical treatment is to put the patient on a respirator and use it while sleeping. A respirator blows open a collapsed airway, helping the patient breathe in. I have a lot of patients who say they sleep better and feel better during the day. Many people wear them for years and still can’t bear to take them off.