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Why Sleep Loss Can Make You Gain Belly Fat

Dieting and weight loss has surpassed baseball as America's national pastime. It's estimated that 2/3 of all Americans are officially overweight, and 1/3 are obese. Besides the routine bulges that you see on the outside, the presence of visceral fat (or belly fat)—not the flabby fat under the skin that you can grab—but the fat deep within your abdomen that's attached to your intestines, is thought to increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, colon cancer, and in women, breast cancer.

With all the news about the importance of belly fat as a risk factor for heart disease and other medical conditions, it's almost gotten to the point where the press and the lay public perceive belly fat as a cause of all these various medical condition, rather than just an association. The real question is, what causes belly fat to begin with?

The Link Between Stress and Belly Fat

Any type of stress, whether physiologic, or external, can cause dramatic changes in your physiology. The sympathetic nervous system, or the classic fight or flight response, is activated when you're under stress. This in turn diverts blood flow away from less essential body parts and organs, such as your gastrointestinal system, your reproductive organs, your skin and distant extremities. It’s like if you were being chased by a lion—every nerve and fiber of your being will be focused on getting away, not on digesting what you had for lunch.

Although you’re probably not being chased by a lion, any type of prolonged periods of stress which results in low blood flow to the intestines causes biochemical changes that lead to accumulation of belly fat. It's also thought that increased estrogens created by belly fat further suppress the natural progesterone levels in both men and in women, aggravating the vicious cycle even more.

Poor Circulation Can Cause Belly Fat

You don't need a serious medical condition to cause these rapid changes in intestinal blood flow. Even your emotional state, and the various life stresses that you experience every day can significantly affect the rate of blood flow to your stomach and your intestines.

Researchers have found that periods of low oxygen in the intestines can cause biochemical changes that lead to fat accumulation. Is this low oxygen level the result of the standard atherosclerosis that's seen with cardiovascular disease as we get older, or can there be something else? Is there anything else that can cause intestinal hypoxia?

How Your Jaw Size Can Affect Your Waist Size

As I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm, modern humans have difficulty breathing properly while sleeping at night, especially when on our backs and when in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation. This is from a slow but significant narrowing of our jaws, due to a major change in our diets and with the addition of other feeding tools, like infant bottles and pacifiers.

The smaller the jaws, the less room there is for the tongue, and the more likely it'll fall back during deep sleep, especially when lying flat and in deep sleep. Depending on how often this tongue collapse obstructs our breathing at night, we all fall somewhere along this continuum, where the end extreme is officially called obstructive sleep apnea. It's not surprising that periods of interrupted breathing, whether very brief or pauses of 10 to 30 seconds (apneas), is known to cause physiologic states of stress.

And this sustained form of stress can in turn, slow down our metabolic rate making it difficult to lose weight if not gain it.

Hormones and Weight Gain

In women, there is yet another major variable that can cause you to gain weight as you get older, and that's the role of diminishing progesterone, which begins during the late 30s and early 40s.

Progesterone is a major upper airway muscles stimulant, which essentially tenses or stiffens the tongue, especially when in deep sleep. This is why as the levels of progesterone diminish during perimenopausal age, women begin not to sleep as well as they did before the onset of menopause. A relative change in a woman's sleep-breathing status can then lead to neurologic symptoms, such as night sweats, hot flashes, weight gain, mood swings, and irritability. Not too surprisingly, these same symptoms can be seen even in young men who are moving up the sleep-breathing continuum. Lack of deep or efficient sleep is a major cause of physiologic stress.

Sleep Your Way to Weight Loss

A recent article in Glamour magazine profiled 7 women who where all slightly overweight, and asked them to do one thing for 4 weeks: sleep more. Without making any other changes, they all loss anywhere from 7 to 21 pounds. Sleeping longer is one way to restore health in our sleep deprived culture, but increasing sleep efficiency while you sleep is another way to increase your energy levels, improve your health, and lose weight more easily.

Not Only Your Breathing Problem

Not being able to breathe well at night while sleeping, and not sleeping long enough are important factors to address, but there are many other factors that also prevent you from achieving the quality sleep that you need: Eating late close to bedtime is a common modern ritual that occurs for a variety of different reasons. Gastric juices still lingering from your last meal (or snack) can be suctioned up into the throat, causing more swelling and inflammation, causing more obstructions and arousals. Drinking alcohol close to bedtime causes your throat muscles to relax more, leading to more frequent obstructions and arousals, as well as louder and more frequent snoring.

The Right Way to Lose Weight

Before you begin that new diet plan, or take advantage of your new gym membership, make sure that you're able to breathe properly at night. If your nose is stuffy for whatever reasons, do everything possible to straighten it out first. If you've had a stuffy nose for years or decades, you may not realize that your nasal breathing is compromised. Proper sleep and lowering your stress levels is critical to getting rid of that excess belly fat.

Ask Dr. Park Your Question About Sleep Apnea Surgery

Please join me as I host another Ask Dr. Park teletraining program on "What You MUST Know About Sleep Apnea Surgery." I get inundated with questions about surgery all the time, and I thought it was time I spoke my mind about this controversial subject. To ask me your question and to register for this event, click here.

 

 

 

Topic:  "What You MUST Know About Sleep Apnea Surgery"

Date:    Tuesday,  February 9th, 2010

Time:   8PM Eastern

 

Click here to register and receive the call-in details.

Breathing Lessons for Sleep Apnea Sufferers

Proper breathing is fundamental to good health and vitality. It’s also the most basic physiologic function that we must do to survive. Improper breathing can lead to illness, disease, and ultimately, death. Ancient Hindu cultures recognized this basic principle and developed very sophisticated breathing techniques that we now realize are scientifically sound when it comes to promoting optimal health, energy and life balance. These breathing concepts have spread across various continents to different cultures, but the basic fundamental principles remain the same.

What Most Holistic Doctors Already Know

Breathing means spirit in many languages (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Sanscrit), but not in English. In Latin, the word for breath and the word for soul are the masculine and feminine roots of the same root. In Greek, the two words are the same.

Breathing is a natural physiologic function which continues, regardless of whether or not you notice it. It’s controlled by two parts of the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is the classic fight-or-flight half that’s needed if you’re in a fight or running from a tiger. The parasympathetic nervous system is the relaxation half, promoting sleep, digestion and reproduction.

Inhalation is activated by the sympathetic nervous system and exhalation is activated by the parasympathetic part. When you slow down your breathing, your heart rate slows down. If you take a little longer exhaling relative to inhaling, then you’re spending more time activating your parasympathetic nervous system. This is the physiologic reason why breathing techniques such as the relaxing breath is literally relaxing. These same concepts also apply to singing, humming or whistling. Notice that when you sing, you’re spending up to 10 to 20 times longer exhaling relative to inhaling. By activating your vagus (parasympathetic) nerve, this is why you feel good when you sing.

What Some Doctors Don’t Know

We all take it for granted that the physical air passageways that we breathe through is more than sufficient as conduits for air to travel into and out of our lungs. However, our upper air passageways are dynamically changing all the time, depending on your head position, weather status, allergies, emotions, moods, stress levels and even what you just had for lunch. Your nose is exquisitely sensitive to pressure or humidity changes, swelling or shrinking your internal nasal turbinates to significant degrees. Air passing through the nasal cavity is being filtered, humidified, and warmed before passing into the lungs. Any temporary or permanent blockage to proper breathing in this area can prevent optimal airflow into the lungs.

In addition, the nose and sinus cavities make a gas called nitric oxide, which has two important beneficial properties. The first property is that nitric oxide is antimicrobial, both in the nose as well as in the lungs. This gas, when inhaled even in small amounts into the lungs, can increase oxygen absorption up to 20%. Not breathing through your nose for whatever reason has potentially detrimental effects on your health.

What Most Doctors Don’t Know

Everyone in the Western, alternative and complementary fields of healing naturally assume that we are able to breathe properly at night. We now know that there are certain medical conditions such as sleep apnea where you have complete obstruction and repeated bouts of oxygen deprivation. Most practitioners still think that this typically occurs in some people who are overweight, snore, and have big necks. But now we know that even young, thin women who don’t snore can have significant obstructive sleep apnea. Even more, many people who don’t officially meet the criteria for obstructive sleep apnea still can have significant breathing pauses but wake up too quickly to be classified as an apnea. These are the patients that are commonly diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia.

However, the bigger issue is that by definition, all modern humans are susceptible to breathing problems at night for the following reason: Due to jaw narrowing and dental crowding from a radical change in our diets, our tongues take up relatively too much space, and as a result, we’re more susceptible to obstructing the airway when sleeping on our backs (supine) and in deep sleep due to muscle relaxation. In his classic nutritional text, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Weston Price documented these physical changes. Our ability to talk also positioned our voice boxes below the tongue, which can aggravate this process.

Many modern humans can’t sleep on our backs anymore since the tongue and voice box falls back the most in the back position. As a result, we compensate by sleeping only on our sides or stomachs. The problem is that it’s not good enough. A simple cold or an allergy attack, or with even 5 to 10 pounds of weight gain, can cause more frequent obstructions occur, leading to less efficient sleep.

Less efficient sleep leads to a physiologic stress response that can cause or aggravate a number of various medical conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, cold hands, digestive problems, high blood pressure, etc. What I describe in my sleep-breathing paradigm is that all modern humans are on a continuum, where the one extreme end is called obstructive sleep apnea. The rest of us are lower down, but we creep up during various life stages, such as puberty, pregnancy, and menopause. A simple cold, by causing nasal congestion in a young, healthy woman, can cause her to toss and turn at night, due to repeated tongue collapse. Once the cold improves, sleep improves as well.

What We All Must Know

Breathing should never be taken for granted. We must do everything to make sure that proper breathing occurs not only during the day, but also at night. Many younger, thinner patients who complain of being tired all the time will also be found to have hypothyroidism, anemia, cold hands and feet, low blood pressure, anxiety, depression, or other various disorders. Later in life, as they slowly gain weight, they move up the continuum, and eventually will go into obstructive sleep apnea.

Almost invariably, one or both parents will snore and have known or unknown cardiovascular disease. If you see a high-arched hard palate, an extra small mouth or a recessed jaw, or scalloping on the side of the tongue, ask about sleep position, fatigue issues, and sleep. You’ll be surprised how often all these features come together to explain your chronic fatigue and various health problems.

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To hear Dr. Park’s interview with master Yoga teacher and Feldenkrais expert on the proper principles of breathing for better health and better sleep, click here.

5 Things You MUST Know About Sleep Apnea Surgery

Sleep apnea surgery is one of the most controversial subjects in sleep medicine. There are heated debates within the sleep community as well as in online forums and support groups. Sleep apnea surgery is definitely not for everyone, for some, it can be a life-changing experience. Here are 5 important issues that you must be aware of before considering any form of sleep apnea surgery:

1. Does sleep apnea surgery work?

Yes, but only when done properly. Just like with CPAP or dental devices, if you don't use it properly or use it at all, it won't work.

One of the most common misconceptions about sleep apnea surgery is the relatively low success rate of the uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) procedure, which is often quoted at 40%. But performing this operation is like bypassing only one blocked heart vessel when you have 3 other vessels that are blocked. For some strange reason, ENTs are overly obsessed with the soft palate, since this is where snoring usually comes from and we have the most research and procedures for the soft palate.

We now know that if you address the entire upper airway together (nose, soft palate, tongue), then your success rates are much better, approaching 80%. Why only 80%? There's only so much you can do with the soft tissues within the small space within smaller jaws (which is the main anatomic reason for sleep apnea). The more aggressive you are, the higher the success rate, but the more chance of pain and complications.

If you go to the next level and enlarge your jaws (upper and lower), then success rates can reach 90 to 95%.

To put things into perspective, if you bypassed everything with a tracheotomy (placing a breathing tube below your voice box), then you'll have a 100% "cure", but obviously, this is not a very practical option.

One question you must ask then, is, what's the meaning of success? In surgery, one common definition is that the final AHI (apnea hypopnea index) on a formal sleep study drops greater than 50% of the original and the final number has to be less than 20. One of the main criticisms of sleep apnea surgery is that even if "successful", you may still have mild sleep apnea. Surgeons will argue that it's better than not using CPAP at all.

2. Not All Surgeries Are The Same

There are probably dozens of procedures for sleep apnea from various nasal, soft palate and tongue operations to skeletal framework procedures. These can range from minimally invasive to major surgery. The problem is that by definition, they'll all work to a certain degree. For example, procedures for a stuffy nose have been shown to "cure" sleep apnea in 10% of patients. But for the most part, none of these options by themselves have very good success rates.

The key is to examine the upper airway for each individual and figure out where the obstruction is and take care of it simultaneously. Most people have more than one area of obstruction. Surgeons at Stanford have about a 75 to 80% success rate with soft palate and tongue base procedures. This is called multi-level surgery for sleep apnea. You have to look at the airway from the tip of the nose all the way to the voice box.

3. There's No Cure for Sleep Apnea

Unless we all undergo tracheotomies, there's no way to prevent breathing pauses at night. Modern humans' upper airway anatomy is thought to be predisposed to breathing problems at night, which only gets worse as we age. I talk about why this problem has gotten much worse in recent years in my book, Sleep, Interrupted. All of us are on a continuum, where various factors (anatomy, age, weight, inflammation, etc.) contribute to forces that make our tongues and palates to collapse. The older we get, we'll either gain weight, which narrows our breathing passageways, or our throat tissues will sag and collapse easier.

Surgery will shift the line of this continuum downwards, but it won't bring it down completely. This is why it's important to incorporate a healthy diet and lifestyle and exercise regimen into any sleep apnea treatment regimen.

For most people, lowering the numbers significantly will make you feel much better. But sometimes, the numbers will go down dramatically, but you may not feel any better. This just goes to show that there may be other issues besides sleep apnea that have to be addressed. You've had sleep apnea for years or decades. Just by fixing your sleep apnea won't immediately fix problems that can arise from sleep apnea, such as hormonal problems, weight gain, or memory problems and brain fog.

4. Surgery is the Last Resort, But Don't Rule It Out

Admittedly, there are many people who rush to surgery prematurely, but there are also many others that aren't even offered surgery due to misconceptions by physicians. There are also many patients that are turned off by all the conflicting information that's available on the internet.

Before you even think about surgery, make sure you've tried or considered all the other options thoroughly. Most people who fail CPAP do so because of poor counseling, support and follow-up by the medical system. Just like everything else with life, your chances of success depends on which doctors you see. The follow-up and support offered by your CPAP equipment vendor can also play an important role in whether or not you'll benefit from CPAP. The same issues also apply with dental devices for sleep apnea.

This is why it's important to educate yourself about all the treatment options, and not to give up too easily. Too many people give up at this point, and don't consider any further treatments. Surround yourself with a group of trusted doctors and professionals that forms a team. Use their expertise and guidance to find a way to make things work. If nothing works for you, don't rule out surgery just for the sake of avoiding surgery. Learn and educate yourself about surgery before rejecting it.

5. How to Find the Right Surgeon

Finding the right surgeon for your sleep apnea condition can be challenging. Everyone claims to specialize in snoring and sleep apnea surgery. Who are you to believe?

First of all, find someone who's comfortable performing a wide range of procedures in all the three areas of the upper airway (nose, soft palate and tongue). Are they familiar with the minimally invasive procedures as well as the standard options? No everyone will be an expert at all the procedures, but it's important to know about all the other options as well as well as to make appropriate referrals when necessary.

There are a variety of "minimally invasive" procedures out there, especially for the soft palate, but these procedures have to be offered very selectively. Even if successful initially, is your surgeon prepared for relapsed that are likely years later? Is the goal of surgery only to cover up the snoring, or will it treat the underlying anatomic causes?

If your surgeon recommends palatal surgery "just to see," without addressing the entire upper airway from the nose to the tongue, go for a second opinion. If you do decide to undergo a palatal procedure (with or without tonsillectomy), be prepared for a 60% failure rate, which means that the tongue needed to be addressed as well. Sometimes, more needs to be done to the soft palate or the nose has to be addressed. Everyone is different, and the treatment recommendations have to be tailored to the individual.

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For a more detailed free report on The Truth About Sleep Apnea Surgery, click here.

Free Shipping on Sleep, Interrupted

Here's Your Answer To a Healthy New Year…

To help you get off to a great start on your New Year's resolution to get healthy this year, I'm offering FREE shipping to anywhere in the US if you purchase Sleep, Interrupted from now until 1/9/10.

5 Quick And Easy Ways To Get Better Sleep Fast

 

In our over-stressed, over-weight, sleep-deprived society, there’s a tendency for experts to offer you the latest, greatest, high-tech, and usually expensive advice when you want to get better sleep. From the new Zeo (which measures your brain waves while you sleep), to $3,000 mattresses with reclining features and NASA engineered memory foam, there’s an unlimited number of gadgets and devices that promise to give you a better nights’ sleep.

But before you consider these expensive options, try the following 5 quick and easy tips to help you sleep better for free, or at a relatively low cost.

Tip #1: Avoid Acid Reflux

Acid reflux is a major cause of poor sleep, especially if you eat just before going to bed. If you have a sleep-breathing problem, this condition becomes even worse, since stomach juices are actively being suctioned up into your throat every time you stop breathing. In sleep apnea patients, vacuum forces are created in the throat with each obstruction, which forces normal stomach juices into the throat.

Two of the most common ways of treating this condition is to either take acid reflux medications, or sleep inclined, with your upper body angled up. Before you invest in an expensive adjustable bed that can incline your body upwards, just stop eating close to bedtime. Make sure you stop eating at least 3-4 hours before you go to bed. This way, even if you do stop breathing, you won’t have as much stomach juices that can come up into your throat (which also includes bile, digestive enzymes, and bacteria).

Take Power Naps

There are tons of research studies that tout the benefits of taking short naps in the mid to late afternoon. Our bodies naturally have sleepy tendencies during this time, so why not take advantage of it? It’s been shown that not only will you have more energy for the remainder of the day, but your chances of heart disease and dying early can be lowered if you nap regularly.

If you have a sleep-breathing problem, like obstructive sleep apnea, make sure you don’t sleep longer than 30 to 45 minutes. Sleep-deprived people tend to go into REM sleep earlier than the 90 to 120 minutes it normally takes to reach REM sleep. This is when your muscles relax the most and you’ll be more likely to have obstructive events.

Take Breathing Lessons

Deep breathing exercises have been shown scientifically to calm your nervous system. Thy is why people who engage in yoga, tai chi, or any other discipline that teaches proper breathing techniques feel so much more relaxed.

If you don’t have time or the funds to take classes on a regular basis, make it a point to take 4-5 slow deep breaths every 1-2 hours, especially when you’re transitioning from one activity to another, or if you’re feeling stressed. You can also make it a habit to meditate on your deep breathing anytime you’re waiting on the phone, standing inline, walking somewhere.

Take A Media Vacation

Modern humans are inundated with too much information. Too much news coming from too many sources can lead to information overload, not to mention anxiety-provoking states that keep your mind racing before you go to sleep at night. Turn off the TV, don’t read the paper, check email only once a day, and limit surfing the internet. Think of it as a cleansing that empties your mind of needless clutter. The world will go on without you if you don’t know what’s going on.

Undergo Natural Phototherapy

Rather than investing in bright light boxes or suntan sessions, expose yourself to more sunlight. Early morning sunlight is the best time since it’s not as intense, and exposing your eyes to light at this time helps to strengthen your sleep clock. This is also the best time to exercise outdoors, if you have the time.

If you’re already supplementing with vitamin D and calcium, exposing yourself to more natural sunlight can help to optimize theses supplements’ beneficial effects. Don’t worry too much about skin cancer, since sleeping better can help to fight off cancer.

These 5 tips are some of the many free or inexpensive ways that you can get better sleep. Without laying the foundations for these fundamental sleep habits, sleeping pills, beds, pillows, and gadgets won’t ultimately help you sleep better in the long run.

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Click here to find out the secrets of using ancient Chinese herbal medicine to get better sleep quickly and easily from , Dr. Maoshing Ni (AKA: “Dr. Wow” from Sex and the City).

Attention All Mouth Breathers – 5 Important Reasons Why You Must Breathe Through Your Nose

If you’re a chronic mouth breather because of a stuffy nose, you’re not alone. As the weather chills and allergies and colds abound, and nasal congestion becomes a common trend, mouth breathing inevitably follows-especially when you’re sleeping. I’m sure you’ve seen many passengers asleep on the subways and trains, head and pitched back, mouth wide open, and snoring louder than a diesel engine. Mouth breathing can surely ruin your social image, but that’s nothing compared to the havoc it can wreak on your health.

 

5 Potent Benefits of Breathing through Your nose

One of the most important reasons to breathe through your nose is because of a gas called nitric oxide that’s made by your nose and sinus mucous membranes. This gas is produced in small amounts, but when inhaled into the lungs, it significantly enhances your lung’s capacity to absorb oxygen, increasing oxygen absorption in your lungs by 10-25%. Nitric oxide also can kill bacteria, viruses and other germs. This is why you often hear fitness and yoga instructors emphasize inhaling and exhaling through your nose during workouts.

Also, if you can’t breathe well through your nose, your sense of smell will suffer and therefore your sense of taste, since your smell and taste buds are connected. This can lead to disturbances in your appetite and satiation levels, wreaking havoc on those struggling with weight issues.

Your nose also has vital nervous system connections to your lungs and heart. Not breathing well through your nose can alter your heart rate and blood pressure, as well as increase your stress responses.

Your nose makes about 2 pints of mucous every day. If your nose isn’t working properly and mucous isn’t cleared, the stagnant mucous can lead to infections such as sinusitis or ear infections, not to mention bad breath.

Lastly, not breathing well through your nose can aggravate snoring or obstructive sleep apnea. Nasal congestion alone doesn’t cause obstructive sleep apnea, but it can definitely aggravate it. If your palate and tongue structures are predisposed to falling back easily due to sleeping on your back and muscle relaxation in deep sleep, then having a stuffy nose can aggravate further collapse downstream. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea can lead to chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack and stroke.

Knowing all these benefits of breathing through your nose, however, doesn’t help much if you don’t know why you’re not able to do so.  To stop mouth breathing, the first thing you must do is to figure out what’s blocking up your nose.

What Can Stop Up Your Nose

Nasal congestion is something everyone experiences now and again. Yet, if you’re trying to prevent this from happening it’s important to explore the various reasons behind why and when this occurs.

Here are five of the most common reasons for a stuffy nose:

"I Have a Deviated Septum"

By definition everyone has a slightly crooked (deviated) nasal septum. There are various reasons for having a deviated septum, including trauma, but the most common reason is no reason at all. It’s just the way your nose developed. What’s more important than how deviated your septum is is what’s happening in front of an around your septum.

Wings in Your Nose

Turbinates are wing-like structures that attach to the sidewalls of the nasal cavity, opposite the midline nasal septum. They normally smooth, warm, humidify, and filter the air that you breathe, but they also become enlarged and produce mucous when inflamed. Turbinates also swell and shrink alternating from side to side, which is a normal neurologic process called the nasal cycle.

Is It An Infection or Allergies?

If you have allergies, a cold or any kind of infection, then your turbinates will swell up, clogging your nose with lots of mucous production. Contrary to popular belief, the color of the mucous has no relation to bacterial vs. viral infections.

Flimsy Nostrils

Once you have inflammation and swelling inside your nose, for some people, depending on the configuration of your nose, your nostrils can literally cave in as you inhale. Different noses have differently shaped nostrils with various nostril thicknesses. The more narrow your nose, the more likely your nostrils can cave in. People who undergo cosmetic rhinoplasty are more at risk years later, since narrowing the nose can weaken the support structures of the nose.

A Nervous Nose?

Some people’s noses are extra sensitive, especially to weather changes, like temperature, humidity, and pressure changes. Certain chemicals, scents and odors can set off a reaction as well. Many people mistakenly think this reaction is an allergy, but it’s really your nasal nervous system over-reacting to the weather or to odors. One of the most common reasons is from poor quality sleep, which causes a low-grade stress response, which can heighten your senses.

It’s All Under Your Nose

A chronically stuffy nose doesn’t happen by itself. Usually it’s part of a bigger picture, where the entire upper and lower jaws are more narrow and constricted, in addition to more narrow nasal cavities. I’ve described this process in my book, Sleep Interrupted, where due to modern human’s eating soft, mushy, processed foods, our jaws are much more narrow than normal, with dental crowding. Bottle-feeding, which is another modern, Western phenomenon, is also thought to aggravate this problem.

If you have a stuffy nose, it can also aggravate soft palate and tongue collapse when in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation. With more obstruction, more stomach juices are suctioned up into the throat and nose, causing more swelling and more nasal congestion. All this from smaller and more narrow jaws.
 

CPAP Success Secrets Revealed

5 Surprising Facts About Maxillomandibular Advancement Surgery Revealed

Expert Interview with Dr. Kasey Li

Dr. Park Interviews world renown expert on maxillomandibular advancement surgery, Dr. Kasey Li. During this 60 minute call, Dr. Li shares his wealth of experience and knowledge about this procedure.

 

 

Discover:

• The real truth about sleep apnea surgery and if the MMA procedure is right for you
• How to avoid the #1 mistake many sleep apnea patients make when undergoing surgery
• The one thing you must consider prior to having any surgery for sleep apnea, including the MMA procedure
• The do’s and don’ts of finding the right surgeon

Buy your copy of this audio recording today, available in two easy-to-access formats:

The 5 Dangers of Benign Snoring

Snoring is so common these days that it’s synonymous with sleep. In the movies or on TV, a sleeping person is depicted with snoring sounds. Even in the comics, the ZZZZZZZZs that you see coming from the sleeper may signify snoring.

 

Within the sleep community, we often use the term benign snoring to mean snoring without any sleep apnea. We see it as the least important form of obstructed breathing, without any medical consequences. Every time I see this in our medical journals or in the media, I get mildly annoyed, since there’s so much information to show that snoring is never benign.

 

Snoring itself is usually caused by vibrations from the soft palate. Think of a reed in a wind instrument, or a flag flapping in strong winds making lots of noise. In the human throat, any degree of abnormal narrowing of the throat promotes vibrations of the free edge of the soft palate. The loudest recorded snore was found in a British woman whose sound levels reached 113 dB, which is louder than a low-flying jet. There are other areas in the throat that vibrate and make sounds, but they’re probably a secondary effect of the soft palate vibrations.

 

Here are 5 reasons why snoring is never benign:

 

1. If you snore, you have a 35% chance of having obstructive sleep apnea, which is a potentially serious medical condition where you stop breathing multiple times every hour, leading to oxygen deprivation, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. The best way to diagnose sleep apnea is to undergo a formal overnight sleep study. If you stop breathing at least 5 times every hour, with each episode lasting 10 seconds or longer, then you’re told you have sleep apnea. But what if you stop breathing 15 times every hour, but you wake up after 1-5 seconds for each episode? Then you’re told you don’t have sleep apnea, with no clear explanation why you’re so tired all the time.

 

2. It’s been shown experimentally in rabbits that artificially applying vibrations to the carotid artery causes thickening of the carotid artery walls, similar to what we see in humans with plaques.

 

3. Snoring without sleep apnea has been shown to increase your chances of being involved in a car accident.

 

4. Not only is snoring potentially dangerous for your own health, it also disrupts your bed-partner’s sleep quality, health, and relationships. There have been reports of bed-partners becoming deaf in one ear.

 

5. By not taking snoring seriously, it’s likely that you’ll delay diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea. Many people try various over-the-counter anti-snore aids with mixed results. Most end up giving up until the problem gets worse.

 

If you or your loved one snores, take it seriously and get it checked out by a sleep physician or an ear, nose and throat doctor. Even if you’re found not to have sleep apnea, treat the snoring. Just because the sleep study doesn’t say you have sleep apnea doesn’t mean that you don’t have a sleep-breathing problem.

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Copyright © 2008 Doctor Steven Y. Park, MD | New York, NY | Integrative Solutions for Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome, and Snoring · Design by Fervent