What is Snoring?

Before talking about how to prevent snoring & sleep apnea, let’s see what they are one by one. As long as you sleep alone, your snoring may not bother anyone. Also, you may not even know you are snoring.

But after marriage, or when you sleep in the same room with another roommate in a hostel, your snoring disturbs the other person’s sleep. And, that’s where, perhaps for the first time, you discover that you snore.

You may feel embarrassed when that person informs that your snoring at night is a nuisance to him or her. Sometimes if the other person in the room with you is a close friend of yours, he teases you, ‘you roar like a tiger at night’.

But this is not really something to be laughed off. There is a serious side to this that we don’t know about. Left untreated, snoring may progress into sleep apnea, high blood pressure or cardiovascular complaints. Snoring worsens with age, gender, obesity, alcohol intake, cigarette smoking and nasal obstruction.

Snoring occurs when a large volume of air passes through a narrow space, causing turbulence in the soft palate, nose or back of the throat. There are two factors at play here: the first is that the snorer is breathing too noisily and heavily during sleep; the second is that their upper airways may be narrow due to nasal congestion or structural issues.

On the other hand, people who breathe heavily at night may experience a range of symptoms such as snoring, sleep apnea, sleep disturbances, insomnia, needing to use the toilet frequently, and waking up tired with a dry mouth, sore throat and stuffy nose.

By learning to unblock the nose, switching to nasal breathing, and normalizing breathing volume, breathing will become quiet, calm, and still during sleep, and both types of snoring will cease. Let’s talk about it in the future.

What is Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea (derived from the Greek ‘apnoia,’ meaning “without breath.” It’s pronounced AP-nee-uh.) is a breathing disorder that usually affects people while they sleep, without them realizing it. The most common symptom is noisy, heavy Snoring is often considered funny, but sleep apnea is not a joke. Sleep apnea is a potentially fatal disorder that can often lead to heart problems, strokes, and death.

Top 10 Symptoms of Sleep Apnea

1. Loud, irregular snoring, snorts, gasps, and other unusual breathing sounds during sleep.
2. Long pauses in breathing during sleep.
3. Excessive daytime sleepiness.
4. Fatigue.
5. Obesity.
6. Changes in alertness, memory.
7. Changes in mood, personality, or behavior.
8. Impotence.
9. Morning headaches.
10. Bed-wetting.

Untreated Sleep Apnea Can Cause 12 Serious Medical Problems

1. Twenty times greater risk of heart attack.
2. Three times greater risk of stroke.
3. Fifteen times higher risk of automobile wrecks and workplace accidents.
4. Irregular heartbeat.
5. Increased risk of heart failure.
6. High blood pressure.
7. Excessive sleepiness.
8. Impotence.
9. Uncontrollable weight gain.
10. Psychological symptoms, such as irritability and depression.
11. Deterioration of memory, alertness, and coordination.
12. Death.

Prevent Snoring & Sleep Apnea

Good breathing is quiet, good breathing is calm, good breathing is invisible and good breathing is in and out through our nose. Did you see a word ‘through our nose’? Some breathe through the mouth, not the nose. So if we first learn how to breathe through the nose properly, we will be able to reduce or avoid this problem to a large extent.

7 Easy Steps to Prevent Snoring and Sleep Apnea

01. Measure Your Relative Breathing Volume

Buteyko developed a measure called Control Pause (CP) to measure relative exhalation volume. Quite simply, it is the length of time you can comfortably hold your breath after an exhalation. All you need is a stopwatch or a watch with a second hand to measure your control pause.

1. Take a small, quiet breath in, and a small, quiet breath out.
2. Hold your nose with your fingers to prevent air from entering your lungs.
3. Count how many seconds until you feel the first signs of air hunger.
4. At the first sign of air hunger, you can feel the first involuntary movements of your respiratory muscles. Your stomach may rumble. The area will shrink around your neck.
5. At the end of the breath, your breath should calm down.
6. Release your nose and breathe through it.

02. Breathe Through Your Nose Day and Night

Acquiring to breathe steadily through the nose is the first step to addressing over-breathing. The nose performs a number of very important functions:

• Warms and humidifies incoming air.
• Eliminates a significant amount of germs and bacteria.
• Results in more regular breathing (disordered breathing disrupts blood gases, which can play a role in experiencing stress).
• Improves blood oxygen uptake.

On the other hand, mouth breathing contributes to a variety of common symptoms and conditions:

• Dry mouth results in increased acidity in the mouth, which can lead to cavities and gum disease.
• Contributes to dehydration.
• Proven to significantly increase the occurrence and severity of apneas.

03. Unblock Your Nose

To unblock your nose, try the following exercise:

• Take a normal, silent breath in through your nose.
• Allow a normal, silent breath out through your nose.
• Hold your nose with your fingers to prevent air from entering or escaping.
• Nod your head up and down or sway your body until you feel a medium to-strong need for air.
• Hold your breath for as long as you comfortably can.
• Let go and breathe in through your nose.
• Calm your breath immediately.
• Wait for one minute and repeat five or six times until your nose is completely free.

04. Reduce Breathing Volume

Reduce breathing volume to create a need for air. Relax your chest, relax your stomach, let your breathing to reduce, slow down and calm.

This is like a kind of meditation. When you reduce the amount of breath you consume, the breath center of the brain recognizes that the amount of breath the body receives has decreased. Then the brain adjusts the body in such a way that it can be maintained with less breath.

When we gradually get used to this in our body, our body will be able to function even with a very light and subtle breath.

05. Don’t Eat Heavy Meals and Avoid Overeating

Sometimes when we eat a lot, we find it difficult to breathe spontaneously. A heavy meal is any type of food that fills up our stomachs beyond what we can handle. Large hamburgers, more buns and floury foods, fried rice, biryani and anything else can be termed as heavy meals.

Also, you should have an understanding of how much food you should eat at a time. Otherwise, if you eat too much, you can’t breathe easily, you can’t sleep easily, and you may also feel acid reflux in your throat. So when it becomes difficult to breathe through the nose, the body works to breathe through your mouth unconsciously during sleep.

06. Cure Cold and Phlegm

When we have a cold and phlegm, our throat and airways become blocked and breathing becomes difficult. So if there is such a situation, methods such as inhaling hot water steam, taking a hot bath, drinking hot water, and consuming Vitamin C can be used. It can make your cold feel better and make it easier to breathe.

07. Reduce Obesity

One of every three adults is obese. Obesity increases the odds of having obstructive sleep apnea. Sleep apnea contributes to the Metabolic Syndrome, a deadly combination of obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to deal with obesity, we’ve already written an article on how to lose your weight and obesity naturally. To read that article, click on this link.