This cartoon is by Brian Crane for his “Pickles” series.
Funny, right?
The problem is that this scenario, or something like it, is played out in bedrooms all over the world, every morning. For those living this life, it is not funny at all.
Snoring is not funny – It’s a sign of choking throughout the night.
That choking reduces the level of oxygen in your blood, and stops your body from healing and rebuilding over night. It alters your metabolism in various ways – all of which are harmful to your health. Simple snoring has even been shown to cause deadly strokes…
It also disturbs your sleep so that even if you have eight or nine hours of sleep, it is not restorative. This is because the snoring causes frequent “arousals” where you come out of deep sleep, into much lighter levels of sleep. Instead of about half of your sleep being in Deep and REM stages, snorers can have as little as 10% of their sleep time in Deep and REM sleep.
This explains why snorers feel sleepy during the day, and have difficulty focusing on tasks.
Snoring is also a sign that there is a high likelihood that you have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA), which is even more harmful to your physical and mental health. That’s a topic for another post.
Then you need to consider what snoring does to your sleep partner…
That, of course, is what the cartoon is about.
If you are snoring, you are disturbing their sleep as well – often as much as the snoring is disturbing your own sleep.
Over the years, I have seen many patients who have ended up sleeping in separate rooms, just so their parner, at least, can get a decent night’s sleep.
Good News
The good news is that we can treat snoring very effectively…
…and you don’t need drugs, surgery of that awful CPAP machine (except in those rare and very serious cases).
Some doctors will simply sell you a CPAP machine and do nothing else. This does stop the snoring in many cases (but nowhere near all cases), but is will not improve your situation.
Some ENT Specialists will say it is all about tonsils, adenoide, enlarged turbinates or a deviated septum. They will fix those problems and tell you that is all that can be done. Some will fix all of that and tell you that you need CPAP as well. A (sadly) small number of ENT Specialists know that you can do much better by having the nasal airway fixed, and then seeing a dentist properly trained in Dental Sleep medicine.
We can help much more, and actually help your condition to improve, instead of just stopping it from worsening.
You see, when CPAP works, at very best, it only treats the symptom of snoring, and opens up the airway so that you can breathe more freely. But the way it does this actually worsens the tissue tone in the airway, and makes you even more dependent on the CPAP.
Properly trained Dental Sleep Medicine professionals know that there is much more we can do to not only treat the symptoms (the noise and the ability to breathe overnight), but to also improve the tissue tone, change the tongue posture and retrain your breathing to be nasal breathing full time. Yes – I DO refer to the ENT – the right ENT – who knows how to work with me and others in our team of professionals, to help your airway actually improve, and to reduce the severity of the cause of the problem, rather than just treating the symptom.
So – go ahead… Laugh at the cartoon. I did.
But remember that for thoe suffering with snoring, or their partner’s snoring, it is not so funny at all.
If you have this problem, we can help.
Give us a call. The number and email are on the Contact Page.
You might be surprised how easy it is to get a good night’s sleep, and dramatically improve your health, quality of life and relationships.