Of all the snoring solutions that people try, the single thing that works best is one thing that people don’t like to hear. Lose weight. There is also a medical solution we will discuss below, but if you really want to know how to get rid of snoring, the single best thing you can do, outside of seeking medical treatment, is to lose some weight. If you are more than 20 pounds overweight, it is likely that you suffer at least slightly from snoring, even if you don’t realize it, because excess weight is one of the main causes of snoring. If you are more than 40 pounds overweight, you are in danger of experiencing sleep apnea. The excess weight of the flesh and fat that gathers around your neck when you are overweight collapses into itself when you lay down, causing pressure on your airway. This pressure causes the sides of your airway to press together, and the air that travels through makes it flap together, which is what causes the rumbling sound of snoring. It’s simply air fighting its way in and out of your air passages. To illustrate what is happening, you can think of filling a balloon up with air. The balloon can be thought of as your lungs. If you fill it up and then release it without tying a knot, it makes a very fast paced “raspberry” sound (like blowing air out between your pressed-together lips). This is caused by the lip of the balloon flapping together in a manner similar to what is going on inside your neck, although it happens much faster with the balloon because the balloon is under much greater pressure—your lungs never get as inflated as a balloon! Following this example, you can see that losing weight would put less pressure on your airway, and you would therefore breathe more easily. Fortunately, losing weight is not the ONLY answer. There are other steps you can take.
People have tried all sorts of things to stop snoring. These snoring solutions sometimes offer slight relief, but they never really fix the problem. The only known CURE for snoring is to use a device that was invented to prevent sleep apnea (sleep apnea is basically snoring that has become so bad that the air actually stops flowing—you stop breathing in your sleep, which is not only dangerous, it also prevents you from getting quality sleep, so you will always feel tired). This device is called a CPAP Machine. It requires a doctor’s prescription because it is a piece of professional medical equipment that needs to be calibrated exactly to your needs. To understand what a CPAP machine (or Constant Positive Air Pressure) machine does, we can once again think of your lungs as a balloon. The CPAP Machine attaches to your face, creating a seal. This can be a mask that fits over your nose and mouth, or it can be just a device that attaches to your nostrils. It is held on with a piece of CPAP headgear that straps around your head, or sometimes it is held in place with a mouthpiece. The mask is connected to a tube through which air flows, and the other end of the hose is attached to the machine. The machine blows a steady, gentle stream of air into your nostrils. This airflow causes your airway to inflate very slightly, causing the air passages to open up so that air can flow through them. Think of blowing a balloon up to the point where it simply inflates to its normal shape, but before you have to blow hard to stretch the rubber. The narrow opening is held open by the air that is trapped inside, and that is what is happening inside your neck—your flesh no longer flaps together, so you breathe easier all night long, which allows you to get QUALITY, deep REM sleep, which is the sleep that makes you feel rested.
If you have felt tired for years, even after getting eight or ten hours of sleep, you may be experiencing sleep apnea without even knowing it! Your body struggles to get into the deepest stage of sleep, but at the moment that you enter that stage, the muscles of your neck relax fully, and your airway collapses in on itself, and you stop breathing. This leads to a lack of oxygen, which causes your body to go into emergency mode and you suddenly start breathing again, but you are no longer in the deep stage of sleep that your body needs. This goes on and on throughout the night, never waking you up, but preventing you from ever experiencing quality sleep. A CPAP Machine will inflate your airway just enough to keep it open so that you can achieve the sleep you need.
The process of being diagnosed with sleep apnea or another sleep disorder involves spending a night at a sleep clinic. There, you will be hooked up to many different instruments that will monitor various bodily signals such as pulse, respiration, oxygenation, and brain waves. The goal is to monitor your sleep and see if you are ever achieving the deepest levels of sleep. A doctor will review the results and come up with a diagnosis and prescribe a CPAP machine if it is necessary. If you DO need a CPAP, you will need to spend one more night at the clinic to do what is called a titration. This simply means that they are going to have you sleep with a CPAP machine and adjust it periodically through the night until they find the exact amount of airflow that is necessary to prevent any apneas, and that allows you to achieve the level of sleep you need. The good news is that this entire process is usually covered by insurance. If you have no insurance, the cost of the testing is usually between $1,000 and $1,500 per night. To save you some money (or if you really don’t like the idea of spending two nights in a strange place) it is sometimes possible to do what is called a “split” night. This means that they will do the testing in the first half of the night, and if they are able to get enough results to make a diagnosis, they will wake you up and attach the CPAP and do the titration on the same night, so you only have to pay for one night. However, there is no way to tell in advance if this will be possible, because some cases are hard to diagnose, and they may not be able to gather enough info in the first half of the night to make a diagnosis. In this case, unfortunately, you will have no choice but to come back for a second night.
Many people are shocked to learn that they have been having sleep apnea episodes. They assume that their always being tired is due to changes brought on by aging or stress. And the weight/sleep apnea cycle is self-sustaining. If you need to lose weight, you need to exercise, but if you wake up tired and spend every day exhausted, how are you supposed to exercise? A CPAP machine may not only allow you to sleep properly so that you no longer feel tired, it may allow you to feel rested enough to actually get out and exercise and lose that weight! Out of all the myriad “snoring solutions” that exist, the CPAP machine is the only one that is medically proven, so do yourself a favor and skip the snoring pillows and the nasal strips and the snoring mouthpiece and all the other things that are not really going to fix the problem—talk to your doctor about your tiredness and your snoring, and see if you can get scheduled for a sleep study!
