Snoring to your heart's
content
Your sleep can greatly affect
your heart's health, especially if you are always having trouble getting a good
night in.
I'm not talking about insomnia (which is also a problem, but we'll cover
that some other time) but rather about sleep apnoea, which is a sleep disorder
characterised by abnormal pauses in breathing during sleep, commonly found in
obese people.
Sleep apnoea can cause blood pressure to rise and is caused by
abnormalities in the respiratory tract and sometimes in the brain's breathing
centre.
Interestingly, it is not people with sleep apnoea that come to see the
doctor _ usually it's someone who sleeps next to them, or more to the point,
someone who cannot sleep next to them, due to heavy snoring or sudden pauses in
breathing. It's usually the latter that makes them rush to see a doctor.
One of the signs of sleep apnoea is feeling tired during the day despite
having had a long night's rest. If you feel sleepy for no reason, check with
the person who sleeps next to you or your doctor, just to make sure.
In the long run, sleep apnoea can cause chronic oxygen shortage, and the
body will release substances that trigger the nervous system and essentially
tell the blood vessels to tighten up, causing high blood pressure.
Apart from that, sleep apnoea can damage the inner lining of blood vessel
walls, interfering with the substance that causes the blood vessels to dilate,
which in turn affects the blood pressure and heart function and leads to heart
failure.
The heart can stop beating altogether if the person leaves the condition
untreated long enough to develop a weakened heart muscle or heart failure.
Those with sleep apnoea have a greater chance of having high blood
pressure, heart disease and a stroke.
Therefore, if sleep apnoea is the cause of your high blood pressure,
treating it will help bring your blood pressure level back to normal _ or at
least make it easier to control. In mild cases, losing weight can help a great
deal, and it also lowers the chance of heart disease, high blood pressure,
diabetes and high cholesterol. Changing sleeping positions can also make a
difference.
Avoiding alcoholic drinks, sleeping pills and smoking are also very
important to the treatment. If the condition doesn't improve, consult a doctor,
because there are so many reasons why a person has sleep apnoea. It can be the
brain or an obstruction in the respiratory tract.
To determine the real cause, careful examination is needed. It is best
to start treatment early before sleep apnoea has permanently damaged your
health. If you sleep next to someone who snores, listen to the sound of his or
her snoring. Sometimes snoring becomes heavier after drinking alcohol or taking
sleeping pills.
In obese people, sometimes the soft palate and soft fatty tissue behind
your tongue relaxes down during sleeping in the supine (on your back) position
and obstructs the respiratory tract. This is why for some people, sleeping on
the side can get rid of the snoring completely.
In general, if there is obstruction in breathing momentarily, the person
will gain consciousness and the soft palate will firm up, stopping the snoring.
Some might wake up and fall back to sleep in a cycle, causing sleep
deprivation.
That explains why they might feel sleepy during the day _ some even fall
asleep while tying their shoelaces! They are also unable to focus because the
body does not get enough rest.
This is where the vicious cycle begins. Once the body is not
well-rested, the person cannot do activities well, and inactivity leads to
weight gain. Weight gain leads to sleep apnoea and high blood pressure, which
is worsened by the fact that when snoring, the obstruction causes the pressure
in the chest to increase, which might cause an enlarged heart. An enlarged
heart can lead to heart failure. See how scary it is?
A patient of mine was 56 years old. He was overweight and sometimes
snored when he slept.
However, he came to see me because his blood pressure was found to be
high.
After careful examination, I found that he had sleep apnoea, so I
prescribed some medicine and told him to lose weight. After he had lost 6-7kg,
his blood pressure was back to a healthy range, and his snoring stopped
completely.
Ironically, it was his wife that started to lose sleep, because without
the sound of his snoring, she would sometimes wake up in the middle of the
night thinking he had snuck out
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