The Link Between Allergies, Nasal Congestion, & Sleep Problems
June 22, 2011
Allergies are commonly blamed for poor sleep. But does it really? Researchers from Japan found that allergies alone are not enough to cause sleep disturbances, but a combination of allergies and nasal congestion lead to increased reports of sleep difficulty.
This finding isn’t surprising, since any degree of nasal congestion can aggravate your soft palate or tongue to fall back more easily when you’re in deep sleep. Even if you’re completely normal, you’re more likely to toss and turn when your nose is stuffed up from a cold.
This also implies that the more narrow your jaws, the more susceptible you’ll be to any form of irritation or inflammation in the nose which can lead to nasal congestion. The more narrow the space between your upper molars, the less space there will be in your nasal cavity, and the more likely your septum will buckle (deviated nasal septum). Plus, the angle between your nasal septum and your nostrils will be more narrow, which makes it easier to cave in with even a little bit of internal nasal congestion.
If you suffer from allergies, and you have nasal congestion, it’s important to treat the congestion as well. Simple steps you can take include using Breathe Rite strips, nasal saline irrigation, and avoiding eating or drinking alcohol close to bedtime. If you must take an over-the-counter antihistamine, make sure that it includes the letter ” -D”, which stands for decongestant. Usually, it’ll have a variation of pseudoephedrine (the generic name for Sudafed). If pseudoephedrine makes you hyper or jittery, you can always use oxymetazoline (Afrin) very sparingly (not more than 3 days).
If these conservative options are not enough, then prescription medications can be used. As a last resort, surgery can sometimes help.
Do allergies cause you to sleep poorly?
Ask Dr. Park: How To Clear Your Stuffy Nose (5/10/11)
April 27, 2011
In this Ask Dr. Park teleseminar, I answer your questions about how to clear your stuffy nose. Here are some topics I’ll cover:
- How to clear your stuffy nose
- The real reason why allergies can ruin your sleep
- The truth about septoplasty and what you must know before any nasal surgery
- Turbinates: The forgotten nasal structure
- Why your sinus pain and headache may not be an infection
- Do Breathe Right Strips work?
- Nasal saline irrigation: Helpful or hurtful?
- Nasal problems with CPAP
Click here to order the MP3 recording ($17)
Are You Allergic To New York (or LA, or Atlanta)?
October 21, 2010
My wife Kathy tells me that while she was growing up in LA, she was miserable. Her family and social life was great, but she was constantly sick, suffering from headaches, and was generally physically sick most of the time. She thought this was normal until she moved to NY for graduate school and she then felt that the fog finally lifted. She felt so much better, with much more mental clarity and energy than ever before.
Her parents had a similar but opposite effect: My father-in-law had similar issues as with Kathy, including chronic nasal, sinus and allergy issues. His nose was runny all the time. My mother-in-law was fine. Then after retirement, they moved to Atlanta, and the problems reversed: my father-in law felt much better and my mother-in-law began to suffer. Once they came back a few years later, the problems reversed again.
Your first reaction may be that LA and Atlanta have very different pollens, of that LA is notorious for smog. But how do you explain my in-laws’ complete reversal in symptoms? One major aggravator of chronic nasal and sinus problems is the weather—your nose or sinuses can over-react to pressure, temperature, and humidity changes. You can even over-react to chemicals, scents, odors, or perfumes. What you may think as an allergy may not be an allergy at all.
Having a stuffy nose can aggravate sleep-breathing problems in the following way: Due to a vacuum effect that’s created downstream in the throat, the tongue can fall back and obstruct your breathing more often. This is why you’ll toss and turn more whenever you have a cold. You can imagine if your nose is stuffy for weeks to months, your sleep quality will be significantly diminished, and you won’t feel that well.
In retrospect, I have many patients that tell me that their sinus problems started only after moving to NY.
Are you “allergic” to certain cities? Please enter your answer in the comment area below.
UARS: The Hidden Sleep Condition
August 21, 2010
You’ve gained some weight over the years and you’re just not sleeping well. Your husband says you’ve begun snoring. You know that your father has obstructive sleep apnea and is doing well with CPAP. You mention this to your doctor and she orders a sleep study. The sleep study comes back completely normal. Now what?
The Real Reason for Your Chronic Fatigue
Before you begin searching for other reasons for your chronic fatigue, don’t rule out a sleep-breathing problem too quickly, even if you don’t have obstructive sleep apnea. In fact, a sleep-breathing problem can cause if not aggravate conditions such as hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, insomnia, and even irritable bowel syndrome.
Sleep doctors have defined obstructive sleep apnea as having at least 5 apneas or hypopneas every hour on average. An apnea means you stop breathing completely for 10 seconds or longer. Hypopneas are similar 10 second or longer pauses but with restricted airflow. But what what happens if you stop breathing 25 times every hour but each episode lasts only a few seconds?
In the early 1990s, Dr. Christian Guilleminault of Stanford University looked at young, thin men and women who were tired all the time, no matter how long they slept. These people were found not to have obstructive sleep apnea after undergoing formal sleep studies. However when they placed thin pressure catheters in their chest and throat, they found the they had frequent episodes of partial obstruction which led to subtle, but significant limitation of nasal airflow, along with very negative vacuum pressures in the throat. Most of these minor episodes were not apneas or hypopneas, but still lead to an arousal—from deep to light sleep. What was happening was multiple partial obstructions and arousals that were not severe enough to be called apneas or hypopneas, but enough to wreak havoc on deep sleep quality.
It’s been shown that even very subtle levels of restricted breathing can lead to deep brain stimulation and arousals that prevents your ability to stay in deep sleep. These reflex signals to the brain can be so weak that it doesn’t even reach the outer layers of the brain where standard scalp electrodes can pick up these disturbances.
Blame It On Your Parents (And Your Jaws)
The fundamental problem in UARS is due to smaller upper airway anatomy, caused by having smaller jaws and dental crowding. The smaller the space behind the tongue, the more likely you’ll obstruct while breathing when on your back (due to gravity, the tongue can fall back), and when in deeper levels of sleep (when your muscles relax). This is why most people with UARS can’t, or prefer not to sleep on their backs. The problem is that you can still have breathing problems despite sleeping on your side or stomach, just not as bad as being on your back.
Lack of sleep and especially lack of deep sleep has been found to cause a whole host of physiologic changes. In general this happens due to chronic overstimulation of your sympathetic nervous system. This is the fight-or-flight half of your involuntary nervous system. Since your body thinks it’s under attack, it heightens your nervous system, making you en garde, edgy, hypersensitive or overreact to normal situations. This also leads to diversion of blood flow, energy and resources away from less essential body parts and organs, such as your digestive system, reproductive organs, skin, hands, feet, and other “end organs.”
Due to this “hypersensitivity,” the nose and sinuses can be overly sensitive, reacting to stimulants such as weather changes, chemicals, scents, and even allergies. Chronic stress that results from sleep deprivation also can heighten your immune system.
Is It Hormones or Your Breathing?
A number of other studies point out that UARS patients are more prone to have cold hands or feet, hypothyroidism, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, chronic fatigue, and various other “somatic” syndromes. I see this all the time in my practice. In fact, a recent study even showed that chronic long-term sleep deprivation caused significant lowering of the TSH and T4 levels, with women being much more susceptible to this effect compared with men.
With time, as people age, and especially as they gain weight, most people will progress into true obstructive sleep apnea. You’ll find that most younger, thinner people with UARS will have one or two parents with significant obstructive sleep apnea.
Now that you’re convinced that you may have this condition, what can you do about it? For the most part, it’s treated just like obstructive sleep apnea. You should start with all the conservative options first, such as weight loss (if you’re overweight), diet, exercise, improving your nasal breathing, and not eating late. If these options don’t work, then all the formal options for treating obstructive sleep apnea are possible including CPAP, oral appliances, and even surgery.
Unfortunately, if you don’t officially have a sleep apnea diagnosis based on a sleep study, then insurances generally won’t cover any of the treatments. The irony is that our health care system won’t treat or prevent diseases in the early stages, and would rather wait until it’s much more severe before covering for medical services.
If you think you may have upper airway resistance syndrome, you may be disappointed to find that the medical community in general will not be responsive to your queries. With a few exceptions, many sleep doctors are not convinced that UARS is even a legitimate condition, and would rather lump it into the spectrum of snoring to obstructive sleep apnea. Time after time, whenever I see patients who are told they don’t have obstructive sleep apnea and I treat the upper airway narrowing and inflammation, patients almost always feel better. Your best option is to continue to educate yourself and be persistent. Your first priority should be to be able to breathe better so that you can sleep better.
No Packing Septoplasty: Is It Possible?
July 8, 2010
When I was 6 years old, I was broke my nose while trying to see how far I could jump off a swing. After my nose was reset in the operating room, my nose was completely stuffed. I do remember it being very uncomfortable and did have trouble sleeping. During my one week post-op visit, I was shocked when my surgeon puled out 3-4 feet of gauze packs from each nostril.
When patients hear about a septoplasty procedure, one of the first things that come to mind is the miserable feeling of having your nose packed for a few days after the procedure and the extreme discomfort and pain when the packs have to be removed.
When I first began in private practice about 12 years ago, I did what I was taught to do by more senior surgeons during training: I packed the nose routinely after a septoplasty procedure. The reason for using packing is to prevent blood from accumulating between the two layers of the mucous membrane. If the blood supply to the remaining septum is disrupted, then the entire cartilaginous septum can literally melt away, and your nasal tip can droop later on. I've even seen a few septal hematomas after nasal packings were removed during residency training. Ever since I began avoiding using any sort of nasal packing, I've yet to see a septal hematoma.
Besides the discomfort issue, the other main reason for doing this is that I realized that blocking your nose even to a small degree can aggravate apneas. Studies have shown that nasal congestion can significantly increase your rate of obstructions and arousals.
What's my technique? I use a small needle and a quilting suture to go back and forth from one side to the other. This quilting suture is what keeps the mucous membrane layer pressed together. I don't even use splints or silastic sheets. It takes some extra time to do, but it's well worth it for the patient's sake. I'm not the first one to use this technique, and I'm sure that there may be other surgeons that do this, but so far, I haven't personally met any.
If you underwent a septoplasty procedure in the past, what was your experience? Was your nose packed?
The Biggest Ear Problems for Sleep Apnea Sufferers
June 10, 2010
If you have obstructive sleep apnea, chances are, you’re likely to have some sort of an ear problem. There are a number of reasons why you’re going to be prone to various ear problems, but in many cases, the problem is not actually coming from the ear. To better manage your ear issues, you first have to understand your ear anatomy, and the different types of inflammation caused by sleep apnea. In the last part of this article, I’ll go over some tips to help you solve many of your ear-related issues.
What You Must Know About Ear Anatomy
The ear drum is a thin membrane that separates the middle ear cavity from the outer ear canal. Sounds waves vibrate the ear drum, which connects via a sophisticated lever and piston amplifier system that transmits sound waves to the inner ear. Normally, the middle ear cavity should have the same pressure as the outer ear canal. This is made possible by the function of the eustachian tube, which connects your middle ear cavity to the back of your nose. Whenever you swallow or yawn, your palatal and throat muscles open up the eustachian tube temporarily, equalizing pressure between the middle ear and the nose. You can think of the middle ear as a sinus—an out-pouching from the nose into an adjacent pocket of bone or soft tissue.
Whenever you go up an elevator or descend during a flight, the atmospheric pressure either goes up or down, and this creates either positive or negative pressure in your middle ear. With very slight pressure changes, you’ll feels a bit of fullness and hearing loss, but with severe pressure changes, you may even have pain and discomfort. If you keep swallowing, then you’ll keep popping open your ears. As a result, you’ll feel anything from fullness, hearing loss, popping, clicking, buzzing, or even ringing. This is why it’s recommended that you chew gum during descents in flights, or give the baby a bottle to feed.
Causes Of Inflammation
However, if you have any degree of inflammation in your nose, then additional swelling can prevent proper equilibration of air between your middle ear and nose. A number of different causes can aggravate swelling, including viral colds, allergies, weather changes, and even acid reflux.
You’re probably very familiar with the effects that a simple cold or allergy can have on your nose and ears. In most cases, you’ll have a few days of discomfort. But in certain situations, your cold or allergy may go away, but your ears will continue to be stuffed for days or weeks. Sometimes, the vacuum pressures that are created can cause fluid to accumulate, giving you what’s called serous otitis media. Rarely, this fluid can get infected and turn into the classic bacterial infection or otitis media. Fortunately, not too many people have true bacterial infections—most never make it past the vacuum pressure or clear fluid stages.
A Vicious Cycle
If you don’t have obstructive sleep apnea, the entire process can come and go within a few days to weeks. However, if you have sleep apnea, due to the additional inflammation that’s created, a simple ear or sinus problems can linger for weeks, and sometimes even months for the following reason: Any additional inflammation in the nose or throat causes swelling which can aggravate more frequent obstructions, leading to stomach juices to come up into the throat and nose, including in the area of the eustachian tubes. Furthermore, frequent obstructions and arousals leads to an imbalance of your involuntary nervous system, where your nose is going to be overly sensitive, especially to weather changes (pressure, temperature, and humidity changes). This is called chronic or non-allergic rhinitis.
For some people using a CPAP machine can blow air into the middle ears, through positive pressure. This can be a frustrating issue that’s difficult to cure completely.
Solutions For Your Ear Problems
So if you have obstructive sleep apnea and are prone to ear problems, what can you do? The first thing to make sure of is that you’re treating your sleep apnea condition optimally. If your CPAP pressure is too low, or your dental device is undercalibrated, or your UPPP procedure was only partially effective, then you’ll still have residual obstructive sleep apnea and are still feeling the effects of intermittent obstructions and arousals.
Second, make sure that your nasal breathing is optimal. By definition, your nasal passageways will be either narrowed, inflamed, or both. Having a chronically stuffy nose can create more of a vacuum effect downstream, which allows the tongue to fall back more often when in deep sleep, due to muscle relaxation. If you’re using CPAP, then it’s likely that your pressures may be too high, which can make it uncomfortable, and even blow air into your ears. Whether through vigorous saline irrigation, allergy avoidance, medications, or surgery, it’s important to make sure you’re able to breathe well through your nose.
Lastly, it’s important to lower inflammation in your throat by making sure you’re not eating within 3-4 hours of bedtime. Having even 2-3 apnea or hypopnea episodes per hour, although acceptable, can still suction up juices into your throat. Since you’re going to suction up normal stomach juices anyway, it’s important to keep the acidity and juice volume as low as possible. The same rule applies to alcohol, since not only does it produce more stomach acid, it also relaxes your tongue and throat muscles, causing you to stop breathing more often.
Ear problems are an inevitable part of having obstructive sleep apnea. By knowing what can cause ear problems and how you can deal with it, you can minimize the discomfort to a point where it’s tolerable or minimal.
Ask Dr. Park: How to Unstuff Your Stuffy Nose
May 6, 2010
In this Ask Dr. Park teleseminar, I answer one of the most common questions I get in general, which is, "How can I breathe better through my nose?"
In this 60 minute live teleseminar, I'll reveal:
- The one thing that most doctors miss
- Why not breathing through your nose can drop your oxygen intake by 20%
- Myths and truths about septoplasty
- How nasal saline can be helpful AND harmful
- How your nose affects snoring and obstructive sleep apnea
- And much more.
Click here to purchase the 65 minute mp3 download.
What You Can Do About Your Stuffy Nose
March 25, 2010
Although many people assume that big nosed people naturally breathe better, there's nothing further from the truth. The shape and size of your nose is mostly cosmetic. How well you breathe actually depends on what your internal breathing passageways look like. And for many sleep apnea sufferers, a stuffy nose can make or break their treatment therapy.
Yet, opening up the nose through medical therapy or even surgery has been found to “cure” sleep apnea in only 10% of people. Patients will definitely feel and breathe better, but it’s unlikely that their sleep apnea is addressed definitively. However, I have seen many of the people in the “10%” group derive significant benefits from clearing up their nasal congestion. Besides breathing better for the first time in years, opening up the nose can allow the person to tolerate and benefit from other treatment options for OSA besides CPAP.
Why Is My Nose Stuffy?
Problem #1: Deviated Nasal Septum
One of the more common reasons for a stuffy nose is due to a deviated nasal septum. A “septum” is a term that describes a structure that acts as a wall or separator between two cavities. Your heart has one too. No one has a perfectly flat or straight septum.
All septums, by definition, have slight irregularities or curvatures. A major reason for a crooked septum, unbeknownst to many people, even other doctors, is because your jaw never developed fully. Most people with sleep apnea have narrow upper jaws, which pushes up the roof of your mouth into your nasal cavity, which causes your septum to buckle.
If medical options don't help you to breathe better through your nose, then you may be a candidate for a septoplasty. To get a much more detailed explanation about this procedure see the accompanying article, Myth and Truths About Septoplasty.
Problem #2. Flimsy Nostrils
In some people, the space between the nasal septum and the soft part of both nostrils is either too narrow to begin with, or they collapse partially or completely during inspiration. In many cases, this can be seen years after reduction rhinoplasty, where the nose was made smaller or narrowed for cosmetic reasons. Occasionally, people can have naturally thin and floppy nostrils.
Another common reason for flimsy nostrils is due to a narrow upper jaw. The width of your nose follows the width of your jaw. If the angle between the midline septum and the nostril sidewall is more narrow than normal, then it’s more likely to collapse with any degree of internal nasal congestion. It’s not surprising that people with sleep-breathing disorders will typically have narrower jaws, and thus more susceptible to nostril collapse. Certain ethnicities are also more prone to this phenomenon than others.
One way that you can easily tell if you have this problem is to perform the Cottle maneuver: Place both index fingers on your face just beside your nostrils. While pressing firmly against your face and simultaneously pulling the skin next to the nostril apart towards the outer corners of your eyes, breathe in quickly. Then let go and breathe in again. If there is a major improvement in your quality of breathing while performing this maneuver, then you have what’s called nasal valve collapse.
The simplest way of correcting nasal valve collapse is by using nasal dilator strips, or Breathe-Rite® strips. If you do the Cottle maneuver and there is no significant difference in your breathing, don’t waste money buying these strips. If you perceive an improvement in your breathing, you can continue using the strips at night while you sleep. For some people, these “strips” are not strong enough to hold up the nostrils, or may cause irritation to the skin.
To find out if your nasal valve collapse is from weak or flimsy cartilages or is aggravated by internal nasal congestion, you can spray nasal saline (which is a mild decongestant) into your nose. If your nostrils doesn’t collapse as much, then you need to address your internal nasal congestion first. A stronger over-the-counter medication that you can use is oxymetazoline, which is a topical spray decongestant. There are many brand name and generic versions that are sold that contain this ingredient. It’s very important that you don’t use this medication for more than two to three days—otherwise, you may get addicted to it.
Problem #3: Wings in Your Nose
Another common source of nasal congestion is from swelling of your nasal turbinates, which are the wing-like structures on the side-walls of the nasal cavity opposite the septum. Turbinates are comprised of bone on the inside and mucous membrane on the out- side. The area just underneath the mucous membrane is filled with blood vessels which can swell significantly. As the turbinates swell due to allergies, colds, or weather changes, the air passageways narrow further, especially if you have a mildly deviated nasal septum, and particularly if you have nasal valve collapse.
One of the most common misunderstandings that I see by both doctors and patients alike is that they think that swollen turbinates are polyps. The nasal turbinates can swell so much that you can sometimes see the reddish-pink, fleshy grape-like mass through your nostrils. Once decongested, they shrink dramatically and the air passageways open up again.
If you suffer from sinusitis, this can cause nasal congestion and inflammation combined with post-nasal drip, sinus pressure, and pain. Put simply, pure misery. Sinus infections typically follow either a routine cold or allergy attack; they cause both swelling and blockage of the sinus passageways, leading to negative pressure initially and, if allowed to progress, can turn into a full-blown sinus infection, with yellow-green discharge, fever and severe facial pain. Your teeth can also hurt since the roots of the upper molars jut up into the floor of the maxillary sinuses. Similarly, dental pain can sometimes feel like sinus pain.
Fortunately, most cases of sinus congestion will eventually go away. The body has a remarkable ability to take care of these issues without any intervention. Sometimes bacterial infections occur, and with proper conservative treatment using saline and decongestants, the infection gradually resolves. Rarely, you may need an antibiotic to control stubborn bacterial infections.
Problem #5: Poor Sleep
As you can see from the above discussion, there are a number of various reasons for having a stuffy nose. But the most common reason for nasal congestion that I see routinely is due to inefficient breathing and poor sleep. This is why sleep apnea sufferers, more often than not, suffer relentlessly from nasal congestion.
Without a doubt, structural reasons like allergies or nasal polyps can definitely block your nose and these issues must be dealt with appropriately. But in general, it’s the inflammation that’s created by a combination of your hypersensitive nasal nervous system and possible stomach acid regurgitation into the nose from multiple obstructions and arousals, that causes nasal congestion. Without addressing this underlying source of inflammation, correcting a deviated nasal septum or treating for nasal allergies will only provide a temporary solution.
7 Simple Ways To Get Rid of Your Snoring For Good
February 5, 2010
If your spouse or bed-partner snores and keeps you up at night, then you're not alone. Most people snore at least occasionally, while about 25% snore all the time. Snoring is a major problem that not only can affect your relationship, but your health as well (snorer and snoree).
Snoring may be a sign that you have obstructive sleep apnea, a condition where you literally stop breathing repeatedly while sleeping. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea can cause or aggravate depression, anxiety, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, and stroke.
Even if you don't have sleep apnea officially, studies have shown that snorers have a much higher risk for relationship problems, car accidents, and cognitive impairment.
One important thing to note is that you don't have to snore to have sleep apnea. Even young, thin women who don't snore can have significant sleep apnea.
Here's a checklist of the 7 “musts” of snoring cessation. Try these simple strategies before you resort to more invasive and expensive options:
1. Don't eat within 3-4 hours of bedtime.
If you snore, chances are, you'll stop breathing once in a while. When you do stop breathing, you'll create a vacuum effect in your throat which suctions up your normal stomach juices into your throat, causing you to wake up partially or fully. This also causes more swelling and inflammation which narrows your throat and nose even further. This leads to less efficient sleep, leading to weight gain, which narrows your throat even further.
2. Don't drink alcohol within 3-4 hours of bedtime.
Alcohol is a strong muscle relaxant, so it will make your throat muscles more slack and more apt to collapse and obstruct. And any obstruction around your airway as you sleep means more snoring.
3. Don't sleep on your back.
Due to gravity, everyone's tongues can fall back when on our backs. This narrows the space behind the tongue and along with muscle relaxation during deep sleep, you'll snore more and stop breathing more often. The traditional recommendation for pinning a tennis ball to the back of your pajama shirt ma work for a few people, but there are a lot more sophisticated ways to keep you off your back.
4. Clear up your nose.
Make sure that you're able to breathe properly through your nose, since having a stuffy nose will create a slight vacuum effect in your throat, aggravating partial to total collapse of the soft palate and the tongue. Whether through over-the-counter remedies, prescription medications, or with surgery, get this taken care of first. Unfortunately, this works only sometimes and in many cases, nothing changes. Regardless, if you need further treatment, you need to be able to breathe through your nose for the other options to work. It's been shown that definitively optimizing nasal breathing through surgery cures obstructive sleep apnea in only 10% of cases.
An interesting study published about 10 years ago showed that when given a nasal decongestant as well as a medicine that helps to empty the stomach faster, about 80% of snoring was significantly improved.
5. Lose weight.
Needless to say, this is easier said than done. One of the reasons why you may be overweight is because you don't sleep well. Less efficient sleep promotes weight gain, which not only cause you to expand on the outside, but also narrow in on the inside of your upper airways. But how about some of you who are not overweight, or even very skinny? Snoring and sleep-breathing problems occur due to a structural narrowing of the entire upper airway, from the tip of your nose to your voice box.
6. Try any of the various over-the-counter anti-snore gadgets, devices, and pills.
But don't expect dramatic results. Yes, sometimes, it'll help with your snoring, but even if it works, the effects don't usually last. The reason why you snore is due to your jaw anatomy and additional inflammation. Covering it up with any of these options is only a temporary solution. A study showed that compared with controls, the throat spray, nasal dilator strips, and anti-snore pillow was not any better.
7. Seek medical help.
If all the above don't work, it's time to see an ear, nose and throat doctor. A comprehensive exam is needed to find out which areas of your upper airway (from the tip of the nose to the voice box). We know that for most people it's the soft palate that flutters, making the annoying, chainsaw sounds. Usually, snorers will have a combination of areas that contribute to snoring, with the tongue being the most common culprit, due to having small jaws.
In most cases, a sleep study is needed to check to see if you have obstructive sleep apnea. If you do have sleep apnea, then treating this condition will help your snoring. Even if you don't have obstructive sleep apnea, all the different treatment options for sleep apnea can be used. As I mentioned in Step #4, you must first optimize nasal breathing and then deal with your tongue. The timing for eating and drinking alcohol is something that you should continue for a lifetime.
Unfortunately, things only tend to get worse as you age. The soft tissues in your throat tend to sag and collapse, especially after decades of repeated strong inspiration. This is why it's important to get your snoring taken care of, first using the conservative steps outlined in his article, and later by seeing a physician that can help you with this condition.
Health Consequences of Routine Medical Procedures
January 28, 2010
The New York Times recently ran an exposé on the lack of quality control systems that have lead to a surprisingly high number of radiation overdoses, in some cases leading to death. This reminded me of what they used to do in the 1950s to 60s, where they used x-rays to treat everything from pimples to large tonsils to ringworm. Many women's ovaries were irradiated for depression. What they did in the past may seem barbaric by today's standards, but I'm confident that many of the things we do today may seem barbaric to future generations.
There are two procedures that are still being routinely performed that have negative consequences years, if not decades later, and these are rhinoplasty, and dental extractions for orthodontic work. I see at least 4-5 patients a week that come to see me for routine problems, only to find that their "routine" procedure 10 to 25 years ago probably aggravated their current condition.
During routine rhinoplasty, especially when you're trying to narrow a wide tip, surgeons by definition have to weaken or remove a portion of the support structures (or cartilages) that keep the nostrils open. Current surgical methods take this into consideration to compensate for this fact, but many surgeons are still weakening the lower lateral cartilages without strengthening the remaining structures. This leads to flimsy nostrils that cave in with every inspiration.
As a result of this weakening, patients will have stuffy noses, unrelieved by allergy medications or decongestants. Medicines won't work for structural problems. Sometimes, someone with this condition accidentally tries a Breathe Rite nasal dilator strip, and swears by how wonderful it is.
Dental extractions are still being performed as part of routine orthodontic treatment. If there's too little space for the teeth, then it's logical that removing a few teeth can create enough space for the remaining teeth, right? What's missed entirely is that the jaw's too small. The teeth, especially the molars, act as support structures for the soft tissues of the throat. Once removed, the space behind the tongue collapses, leading to significantly lessened quality of sleep. Even simple orthodontic adjustments can have a major impact on sleep quality, since the space that that the tongue is contained in can change dramatically.
Fortunately, forward-thinking dentists are recognizing the fact that the position of your teeth and size of your jaws have a major impact on your breathing, and your health. Some of these dentists have leapfrogged ahead of the medical profession in terms of understanding the holistic implications of proper facial form and function.
Did you have rhinoplasty years ago, only to have continued nasal congestion, or did you undergo dental extractions before undergoing braces? If so, please describe your experience below.
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