How to treat snoring at home: recommendations, methods, medications

Snoring causes a man and people around him a lot of discomfort and is a serious pathology. If the problem is neglected, over time it will negatively affect the functioning of almost all important systems of the body. Snoring is essentially short episodes of choking. Stopping breathing lasts on average from 15 to 20 seconds; throughout the night a man may not breathe for about 3-4 hours.

The familiar unpleasant sound occurs due to the passage of air flow through the narrowed airways, resulting in the contact of the walls of the throat and a kind of rattling. For some men, snoring occurs only in certain body positions. In the most complex and advanced cases, difficulty breathing is constantly observed.

Congenital diseases can lead to snoring, for example, narrow nasal passages, malocclusion, elongated uvula, and dysfunction of the thyroid gland. Smoking and a man's age play an important role. The older a man is, the higher the risk of snoring.

In addition to the unpleasant sound, snoring causes other problems:

• in the morning the man does not feel rested, often wakes up at night;
• the brain does not have time to recover;
• Chronic fatigue develops over time.

There is also a lack of oxygen in the blood. There is reliable information that nocturnal strokes and heart attacks occur in patients with apnea. There are even known episodes of death.

Typically, men with enlarged tonsils and polyps in the nasal passages are at risk. Obese men, deviated nasal septum, and those who have suffered facial injuries also snore.

So is it possible to cure snoring or will this problem accompany a man throughout his life? How effective are the proposed methods?

Definition of disease

Snoring is a breathing disorder that occurs during sleep and is accompanied by vibrations of the soft tissues of the pharynx as air passes through the respiratory tract.
According to statistics, more than thirty percent of adults suffer from snoring, and after sixty years of age, this problem is relevant for sixty percent of the population.

Men who snore often complain of daytime sleepiness. This can be explained by the fact that during sleep, snoring provokes frequent micro-awakenings of the brain, thereby disrupting sleep. And since both the brain and the body do not rest even at night, but continue to work, the brain tries to compensate for the lack of sleep, causing daytime sleepiness.

Snoring must be treated, especially in cases where the first symptoms of sleep apnea occur. Apnea is indicated by restless sleep, sweating, frequent urination at night, poor health, headaches and drowsiness in the morning, memory loss, and decreased concentration.

In order to diagnose snoring, a number of tests must be carried out. As a supplement, instrumental methods are used that make it possible to identify apnea syndrome, as well as methods for studying the functioning of the heart, blood vessels, and respiratory system during sleep.

If snoring occurs, you should contact a neurologist and otolaryngologist.

Snoring formation

Which doctor should I contact?

For apnea treatment to be effective, it is carried out under the supervision of a doctor. Which doctor treats snoring? If this symptom is present, a man should contact a somnologist and undergo the proposed examination. Uncomplicated snoring involves the use of all the techniques described above. In case of a complicated form of pathology, it is recommended to undergo a course of treatment with a CPAP machine.

The essence of the technique is simple. Air is supplied to the airways under low pressure, which prevents snoring. During therapy, the man’s quality of sleep improves, the patient sleeps well, and does not feel exhausted in the morning.

Some doctors are confident that CPAP therapy will become the only method of treating moderate to severe obstructive apnea. The effectiveness has been proven by a number of independent clinical trials, and has been practiced throughout the world for several decades.

Causes

In men who tend to snore, the walls of the pharynx have poor tone, so they sag during sleep and reduce the clearance of the airways. As a result, the inhaled air vibrates the soft tissues of the pharynx and causes them to vibrate and hit each other.

Another cause of snoring is anatomical narrowing of the airways.

The following factors can lead to weakening of the walls and narrowing of the airways:

1. Smoking, drinking alcohol.
2. Taking sedatives and sleeping pills.
3. Impaired breathing through the nose (deviated nasal septum, polyps, allergic rhinitis, and so on).
4. Small or slanted lower jaw, malocclusion.
5. Inflammatory diseases of the mouth, nose and pharynx of infectious origin (tonsillitis, acute respiratory infections, adenoiditis, and so on).
6. Natural aging of the body.
7. Lack of sleep, overwork.
8. Overweight.
9. Decreased production of thyroid hormones.

Traditional methods

You can be treated for snoring not only in the clinic, but also at home. For these purposes, sea buckthorn oil is used, and decoctions or infusions of medicinal plants that have tonic properties are taken.

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Sea buckthorn oil is evenly distributed over the mucous membrane, making it firm and elastic. As a result, sticking of the walls of the nasopharynx and intermittent breathing are prevented. If the causes of snoring are related to smoking, the traditional recommendation is to try to reduce the number of cigarettes you smoke.

A herbal mixture of two spoons of burdock, a spoon of elderberries, and cinquefoil root works against snoring. Ingredients:

• mix until mushy;
• measure out a tablespoon of the mixture;
• pour a glass of boiling water.

The product is infused for an hour, taken several times a day. Herbal tonics improve muscle tone and help maintain clear airways during sleep.

However, you shouldn’t really count on complete relief from snoring through such recipes, since they are not suitable for every man.

Possible complications

Even if snoring is not complicated by sleep apnea, it causes frequent micro-awakenings of the brain. Although such awakenings are not realized by a person, such a sleep disturbance leads to the fact that a person does not have time to rest during the night and feels tired and drowsy in the morning.

If snoring is accompanied by periodic pauses in breathing during sleep, a lack of oxygen occurs. With each apnea, the brain experiences hypoxia and sends signals to the body to wake up.

For people who do not have problems with snoring, sleep consists of two phases that successively replace each other. But with frequent forced awakenings, the brain does not reach the deep phase of sleep, when muscles relax and blood pressure decreases.

Apnea syndrome leads to increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, and in some cases, heart rhythm disturbances. In addition, intrathoracic pressure decreases. As a result, a “vacuum trap” is formed into which blood is sucked in, the heart is overloaded with its excess, and the limbs and internal organs, on the contrary, experience a lack of it.

With constant exposure to these factors, hypertension, arrhythmia, heart attack or stroke may develop. Against this background, men often have problems with potency.

Tennis balls and aromatherapy

The larynx closes when a person rolls over onto his back. Patients with sleep apnea are advised to fall asleep on their right or left side. Then the muscles will not prevent the air from escaping. And to prevent a person from turning over on his back, you can buy several tennis balls.

Accessories are sewn onto pajamas or a T-shirt. If the patient turns over onto his back, he will feel discomfort and return to his original position. You can also place several pillows or a blanket cushion under your body to raise your head above your chest. This method helps with heart problems, obesity and colds.

If snoring occurs due to inflammatory processes in the nasopharynx or stressful situations, tennis balls are supplemented with aromatherapy. Place a bowl of hot water on the bedside table and add essential oil. Lavender, chamomile, eucalyptus, pine or any citrus are suitable. You can tilt your head over boiling water and breathe in the fumes, or simply leave the container in the room until the morning.

Is the air in the bedroom hot and dry? Then you will need a humidifier that will spray water all night long. The liquid will protect the mucous membranes of the nasopharynx from drying out. And to reduce the likelihood of snoring, add thyme oil to the water.

Treatment

By medication

Snoring needs to be treated not only because it disturbs both the man himself and the people around him, but also because it poses a great danger.
Therefore, it is necessary to contact an otolaryngologist to determine the cause of snoring and select appropriate therapy. Treatment with medications can be effective in cases where snoring is associated with impaired nasal breathing. Allergic rhinitis and nasal congestion during infectious respiratory diseases can be eliminated with the help of drops that contain mometasone. These drops include the hormonal drug Nasonex.

To improve the tone of the muscles of the palate and larynx, you can use Slipex spray or Snorstop lozenges.

Herbal preparations (Asonor, Slipex) will not help cure snoring. But they significantly improve a person’s well-being during sleep.

It is recommended to take all these drugs for no longer than a month. Their effect lasts only during the treatment period. For a better effect, you can add special exercises (whistles, singing) to drug therapy.

There are also devices for the treatment of snoring that help improve airway patency. If the nasal passages are narrow, then it is quite difficult to breathe, so special nasal dilators are used. They are springy stickers that are placed on the wings of the nose.

There is one more device. It is similar to a boxing insert and is made individually for each person, so its cost is quite expensive. With the help of this device, the lower jaw moves slightly forward, resulting in increased airway patency.

In cases where snoring is accompanied by sleep apnea, only CPAP therapy can help. It aims to maintain positive pressure in the airways. The device allows you to normalize breathing and eliminate snoring.

It is worth noting that CPAP therapy can be inconvenient for a person, since you have to wear a mask while sleeping.

You can try to cure a mild form of snoring on your own. To do this you need:

1. Normalize weight.
2. Sleep on your side.
3. Stop smoking and drinking alcohol.
4. Sleep at least seven to eight hours.
5. Don't eat three hours before bedtime.

Folk remedies

In folk medicine there are a large number of remedies that will help cure mild forms of snoring. Let's look at the simplest and most effective:

• Take a few chopped cabbage leaves and add one tablespoon of honey. Take this remedy before bed. The course of treatment is at least a month.
• Drink at least one liter of distilled water every day. It removes excess mucus from the body.
• Place two drops of sea buckthorn oil into your nose before going to bed. Treatment lasts at least three weeks.
• Overweight men should fast once a week.
• Do special exercises that will tone the muscles of the pharynx, for example, by straining the root of the tongue, stretching the sound “I”.

Gymnastics for snoring

Clips and accessories for correcting malocclusion rarely help patients with weakened laryngeal muscles. They do not eliminate snoring, but only worsen the quality of sleep. Bracelets that react to loud sounds and shock their owners can cause heart disease and even a heart attack.

Instead of dangerous and useless devices, it is better to perform special gymnastics. It tones the larynx. Helps with age-related changes and weakening of muscles due to hormonal imbalances. But you need to do throat exercises regularly, otherwise there will be no effect.

Simple exercises to combat snoring:

1. The tip of the tongue touches the palate and tries to reach the tonsils. When it hits soft tissue, it should freeze for 10 seconds.
2. Open your mouth slightly, tense your lower jaw and say a drawn-out sound “I” until the air runs out. The muscles are then completely relaxed to rest for 10–20 seconds.
3. Stick out your tongue and place the tip on your chin. The organ should be tense, and the jaws, on the contrary, should be relaxed. Having reached the lowest point, freeze for half a minute.
4. Close one nostril with your finger, and slowly inhale air with the other free one until the lungs are full. Hold oxygen in the chest for 30 seconds. Close the second nostril and remove your finger from the first. Exhale smoothly through it without opening your mouth.
5. Take a pencil or an ordinary stick of the same diameter with your teeth. Squeeze forcefully, tensing your jaw and laryngeal muscles. Relax after 3 minutes.

It is recommended to ventilate the bedroom before going to bed. When the room is filled with oxygen, you need to do an exercise that tones the larynx and improves heart function. The patient gets out of bed and straightens his back. He presses his lips tightly, pulling his cheeks inward. And with the help of the nose he takes 6 short and quick breaths, accumulating air in the lungs.

Use your index finger and thumb to pinch your nostrils. He pulls his lips into a tube and exhales carbon dioxide forcefully, as if he had just run a kilometer distance. Beginners do 5 repetitions, gradually building up to 10.

Gymnastics is complemented by singing. A person does not need to have perfect hearing. The main thing is to scream as loud as possible. If the patient is embarrassed to sing, he is advised to recite poetry. Just do this with an expression so that all the muscles of the larynx and face tense.

Snoring warns of problems in the body. At the first symptoms, you should visit an otolaryngologist, therapist and endocrinologist. Find out what leads to larynx obstruction and apnea. Snoring is treated with diets, singing, essential oils and exercises. The main thing is not to neglect the problem, because it is fraught with heart rhythm disturbances, insomnia and death. But with a responsible approach, unpleasant and dangerous consequences can be avoided.

how can a woman stop snoring

Prevention

These simple preventive measures will help a man prevent snoring:

1. Reducing body weight to normal.
2. Stop smoking and drinking alcohol.
3. Avoid taking sleeping pills and tranquilizers as they relax the muscles of the throat.
4. Do special exercises to prevent or reduce snoring:

• Squeeze a wooden or plastic stick with your teeth and hold it for three to four minutes. Do the exercise before bed.
• Press your chin with your hand and move your lower jaw back and forth. Do the exercise thirty times in the morning and evening.
• Push your tongue forward and back to its maximum length. Hold for two seconds. Do the exercise thirty times in the morning and evening.

What is the danger of sore throat during pregnancy?

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Snoring in children

Much to our chagrin, snoring occurs not only in adults, but also in children. According to studies by ENT doctors, about 10-15% of children under the age of six snore in their sleep. If this occurs, you should immediately consult a doctor.

Often such deviations are not dangerous for children. But when a child stops breathing during sleep, this indicates the presence of apnea syndrome. An accurate diagnosis is made by an ENT doctor after a polysomnographic study. Only after this the doctor will be able to tell you how to treat snoring in a child. If you do not pay attention to the problem, then the baby’s active activity will decrease, and sleep disturbances (or insufficient duration) can lead to deterioration of attention. As a result, such children may lag behind in development.

The main factors influencing the occurrence of childhood rhenopathy:

• excessive enlargement of adenoids and polyps;
• problems with excess weight in a child;
• features in the structure of the skull (with displacement of the lower jaw);
• epilepsy.

Babies may snore in the first days after birth, and this is considered normal. This effect occurs due to the narrow nasal passages. In this case, doctors recommend clearing crusts from the nasal passages using cotton wool. This pathology should go away on its own within the first two months, but if no improvement is found, a doctor’s consultation is necessary.

conclusions

Men who suffer from snoring should pay attention to their problem, as it may indicate serious health problems. First of all, they should find out the cause of snoring and contact an otolaryngologist. The specialist will select the necessary treatment and give recommendations.

You can supplement the main treatment with folk remedies. But we should not forget about preventive measures; they will help alleviate snoring or prevent its occurrence in those who have not yet encountered this problem, but are predisposed to it.

Snoring in men and women

Almost every person has spent the night in the company of a snorer. At the same time, the person suffering from this disease, as a rule, does not hear the sounds it produces. He is not able to control snoring, because nothing depends on it, physiology is to blame for everything: the location of the uvula and the structure of the soft palate.

The uvula is located above the root of the tongue; during sleep it relaxes and comes into contact with the surrounding tissues, creating vibrations. For what reasons can snoring occur? There are many of them:

1. Anatomical feature of the structure of the nasopharynx.

2. Breathing problems caused by rhinitis, enlarged adenoids, congenital narrow nasal passage or deviated nasal septum.

3. After the age of 40, weakening of the muscles is possible, but congenital defects of the pharynx also occur.

4. Too long a uvula or an incorrect bite can affect the development of the disease.

5. Obesity leads to snoring due to the accumulation of fatty deposits in the neck and chin area.

6. Renchopathy appears quite often during pregnancy, especially if there is a cold. How to treat snoring in pregnant women should be discussed with your doctor. As a rule, rinsing the nose with saline solution is used.

7. Alcohol consumption can cause snoring in people for whom such characteristics have not been noticed before. This is due to the fact that during alcohol intoxication the human body is completely relaxed, including the muscles of the larynx.

8. Banal overwork leads to night snoring.

9. Allergic reactions can cause illness due to insufficient oxygen supply to the lungs.

The specific cause of rhenopathy must be diagnosed by a doctor. Therefore, you should not put off visiting a specialist and ask the question: “Where can I treat snoring?” To do this, you should go to the clinic to see an otolaryngologist and, after consultation, undergo proper treatment.

Details about surgery and medication

It turns out that traditional doctors have at least four types of operations that represent treatment for snoring, but we do not include in this list surgical actions to eliminate malocclusion, other defects of the larynx or nasopharynx, as the root causes of the disease. So, surgical treatment for snoring can be presented:

• Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, a surgical procedure in which the uvula and part of the soft palate (sometimes tonsils) are removed.

• Using the Pillar technique (or so-called plastic surgery of the soft palate).

• Complete radiofrequency ablation of the soft palate.
• And, of course, gentle uvulopalatoplasty.

In addition, snoring can be cured with the help of certain medications prescribed by the doctor. At the same time, we repeat once again that people looking for an answer to the question: how to stop snoring with the help of medications should undoubtedly look for such answers only in the office of a qualified doctor, only after giving up bad habits (we mean smoking) and after adjusting your lifestyle.

It is absolutely wrong to simply go to the pharmacy and buy this or that medication for self-treatment, in this way you can only harm your health.

Traditional medical science knows several groups of medicines that can quickly (but, unfortunately, not for long) get rid of snoring. These groups of drugs include:

• Substances that promote greater opening of the upper (in particular nasal) respiratory tract. As a rule, these are one or another vasoconstrictor drops in the nose, which work great against snoring, reducing tissue swelling.

• Means designed to stimulate full breathing. In this group of drugs against snoring, they are usually called: progesterone, acetazolamide, theophylline, etc. These medications can only be prescribed by an experienced doctor, in connection with the discovery of certain underlying causes of snoring.
• Substances designed to prevent drowsiness. Most often, these are certain amphetamines.
• Drugs that can suppress the rapid phase of our sleep, for example, a drug such as protriptyline.

Why is male snoring dangerous?

To understand how important timely and qualified treatment of snoring is, it is worth finding out what consequences it promises for a person. Snoring is most often a consequence of decreased muscle tone in the nasopharynx, which can cause other physiological disorders. In addition, you need to understand that snoring is most often a symptom of diseases such as:

• cardiovascular pathologies;
• neuroses, headaches, chronic fatigue;
• apnea and frequent pauses in breathing;
• respiratory diseases.

In medical practice, there have been cases when debilitating snoring and nocturnal respiratory arrests led to heart attacks and strokes, even death. Snoring causes absent-mindedness, chronic weakness, irritability, low concentration of memory and performance.

For many men, the big problem is what to do to rid themselves and those around them of debilitating snoring. Official medicine accepts only three methods of treatment - taking medications, using the device as an aid, and surgery. To increase the effectiveness of the main course of treatment, I recommend following the correct diet at home, as well as performing gymnastics for the nasopharyngeal muscles. Only an integrated approach can solve a problem such as snoring in men.

Medical supplies

Medical treatments mean:

• conservative therapy;
• surgical intervention.

Conservative therapy

Female snoring can be treated with medicinal and non-medicinal methods that alleviate the patient’s condition. Antidepressants, diuretics, respiratory and muscle tone stimulants are considered traditional medicine. Non-pharmacological means are devices that prevent tongue retraction due to an open mouth, such as cervical collars, mandibular braces.

Surgery

Surgical methods are used when respiratory function is impaired due to anatomical abnormalities. The most effective method of surgical intervention in the treatment of snoring is surgery to remove the uvula , part of the soft palate and tonsils (uvulopalatopharyngoplasty). In addition, resection of nasal septums, adhesions in the nasal cavity, and removal of polyps and adenoids are indicated.

Invasive techniques are also used: cryodestruction (exposure to cold on the uvula, palate and tonsils to reduce their size); laser and radiofrequency incisions on the soft palate (scars formed as a result of burns tighten the soft palate).

All these procedures are painful, and surgery requires hospitalization. Their use is necessary for serious complications caused by second and third degree rhonchopathy. The initial stage of snoring can be cured using traditional medicine.