From snoring to dangerous breathing pauses
Snoring is annoying and sometimes harmful to your health. During a medical examination, clarify the reason for your snoring and whether there are any pauses in breathing that are hazardous to your health.
Snorers are in trouble. They make noise and disturb others, but they don’t do it intentionally. Some of them put themselves in a dangerous situation with their snoring. “While simple snoring is annoying for those around you but is usually harmless, dangerous snoring that is particularly loud and irregular can be an indication of sleep apnea, i.e. the prolonged cessation of breathing while sleeping,” says Univ.-Prof. Dr. Bernd Lamprecht, head of the University Clinic for Internal Medicine with a focus on pulmonology and deputy chairman of the committee of employed doctors in the Medical Association for Upper Austria.
Diagnosis in the sleep laboratory
You must ask your doctor (ENT or lung) to clarify which of these is normal and which is dangerous. A final diagnosis is made by a sleep study in a sleep laboratory. Your sleeping habits are recorded and analyzed there. Don’t forget: sleep apnea affects your quality of life and, in the long term, your health. If your partner reports loud snoring and pauses in breathing night after night, if you are less focused and very tired during the day, if your mouth is very dry when you get up in the morning, or if you have a headache in the morning, then you should seek medical advice as soon as possible.
Risk of missing alarm signals
Medical intervention is usually not necessary for simple snoring, but simple measures can be taken yourself, such as losing weight, not lying on your back, avoiding late and heavy meals, etc. However, if you have a medically relevant breathing disorder, you should seek medical help. If left untreated, you can expect to suffer from increased blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias and neurological deficits, among other things.
As a countermeasure, it is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Avoid alcohol (before going to bed), smoking, a heavy dinner and, above all, being overweight. These factors encourage snoring and therefore the risk of sleep apnea. “If such self-administered measures are not sufficient, doctors (ENT or lung) have treatment options to reduce snoring and pauses in breathing,” says Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lamprecht.
