Nearly all people snore from
time to time. If you are not known to keep everyone awake with your loud
snoring, it’s not unlikely for you to occasionally snore such as when you’re
stressed or suffering from the common cold or flu. Alcohol consumption can also
turn you into a snorer due to the relaxing effects of it on your throat
muscles.
According to health
authorities, having structural issues such as a deviated septum, large tonsils
or an unusually long soft palate can also turn you into a snorer.
Then there’s also sleep
apnea, which is considered as a serious type of sleep disorder.
What makes sleep apnea
dangerous is the fact that it causes you to stop breathing several times while
you’re in dreamland — it’s possible for it to happen hundreds of times per
night. It is due to this reason why being a snorer as a result of sleep apnea
can put you at high risk of certain health nightmares.
Read on to know some of the things that can make seeing a sleep specialist a good idea.
- Heart Disease
Everyone knows that heart disease
can stem from being obese or overweight, leading a sedentary lifestyle, having
poor eating habits and cigarette smoking. Did you know that having sleep apnea
can also considerably increase your heart disease risk?
That’s because sleep apnea
can cause your blood pressure to increase and also your arteries to clog up.
Having heart disease can considerably increase your odds of encountering a
heart attack.
- Stroke
Based on a study, a person is
likelier to have narrowing of the carotid artery, a blood vessel that supplies
the brain with oxygen-containing blood, if he or she snores as a result of
sleep apnea. And the louder the snore, the narrower the carotid artery tends to
get can get.
You don’t want to deprive
your brain of much-needed oxygen. If a part of your brain fails to get
oxygenated blood, a stroke happens — not all people are lucky enough to survive
a stroke.
- Weight Gain
According to doctors, one of
the risk factors for sleep apnea is having excess weight. It’s exactly for this
reason why individuals who are obese or overweight are at higher risk of
suffering from sleep apnea and also encountering the many different
complications of the said sleep disorder.
Did you know that sleep apnea
is also something that can cause unnecessary gaining of weight? That’s because
sleep apnea can keep you from having a restful kind of sleep, and this can put
a lot of stress on your body — stressed individuals are at risk of gaining
weight.
- Anxiety or Depression
Aside from unwanted gain
weight, there are so many other unfavorable things that stress can bring such
as mental health issues. And this is why snoring as a result of sleep apnea,
which is something that leaves the body in a great deal of stress, can cause
anxiety and depression.
The problem with having a mental
health problem is it can keep you from having a good night’s sleep — lack of
sleep can worsen anxiety and depression. Clearly, a self-perpetuating cycle can
strike.
- GERD
Short for gastroesophageal
reflux disease, GERD is a digestive disorder in which the stomach’s contents
escape and wreak havoc on the esophagus. Pregnant women and obese or overweight
individuals are at higher risk of suffering from GERD. Experts say that those
with sleep apnea may have GERD, too.
In fact, a lot of those who
are diagnosed with sleep apnea also have GERD — such is brought about by
pressure changes as they snore, causing food particles and acid to be sucked
out of the stomach where they belong.
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