Snoring and Sleep Apnea

Snoring and Sleep Apnea: a comprehensive guide

Snoring is dangerous.

People who think snoring only affects people around them should change their view on snoring. Snoring is not a matter to be taken lightly. Everyone's body requires a fixed amount of oxygen. When things are normal, the body is able to obtain sufficient amounts of oxygen. However, when there is insufficient oxygen, the brain forces the respiratory muscles to breathe harder in order to prevent hypoxia. Therefore, when the oxygen amount inhaled becomes less, the respiratory muscle will become harder and snoring sound will become louder. The worst condition is the whole respiratory tract being blocked from not being able to breathe, leading to the occurrence of sleep apnea.

Among those who snore regularly, 2/3 will get obstructive sleep apnea, the respiratory tract will be completely blocked between snoring, causing no breathing at all for more than 10 seconds. During that time, the brain is unable to gain oxygen and blood also does not flow to the heart, will lead to following conditions:

Daytime sleepiness causes the inability to concentrate for a long period of time and so reduces work efficiency. Dozing off when driving and operating working machines cause car accidents, industrial safety problems and even death.
Occurring of angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, stroke and even sudden death when sleeping.
Although still young, yet has diabetes, hypertension, arrhythmia, heart or kidney disease.
Sudden or rapid memory loss, may also be related to early occurrence of dementia.
Decreased libido resulting in sexual dysfunction.
Frequent urination at night.
Have abnormal physical activities such as sleepwalking, talking in your sleep and getting nightmares.
Fall asleep within short periods of time such as during meetings or watching T.V.

A story of a sleep apnea patient who has no teeth

This is the report of a 70 year old male patient who accepted occlusive sleep apnea examination. 11 months ago, the patient was worried that he may have respiratory arrest while sleeping and wanted to know his sleeping state, so he accepted a 3 day 2 nights examination at the hospital. He was diagnosed with sleep apnea and the doctor recommended him to use n-CPP treatment. As he was unable to sleep well by wearing the equipment while sleeping, he gave up in the end. Like this, he escaped for about 1 year.

As he was still worried about his condition, he went to consult with the doctor again. The doctor changed his recommendation to using sleep print and introduced to him a dentist. Consequently, as he has a jaw with no teeth, he was also unable to wear the sleep print. He transferred to see Dr. Hosokawa in the end. Dr. Hosokawa recommended him to use Patakara. After 5 weeks of using Patakara by chance, he underwent the 3 day 2 nights examination again as recommended by the doctor 1 year ago. The examination result is shown in the after use diagram. The stop time of sleep apnea and blood oxygen content can be seen from the examination result, which showed that both conditions improved evidently.

Read about real life cases - Snoring

The reasons of snoring

The mouth and nose constitute 50% each in the general belief of reasons that cause snoring. However, from the results obtained from the patients that I recommended to use patakara, the main reason that caused me to think that it is snoring should be the oral cavity. In 2001, the news reported the research paper of Professor Kimu from the University of Southern Carolina. His research paper alleged that astronauts who will normally snore when on Earth do not snore at all when in space, as they are in a weightless environment. This article caused me to be more convinced that snoring originates from the oral cavity.

As the tongue and soft palate tissues are the only tissues inside the oral cavity and nose that will be affected by gravity and produce obvious moving tissues, on earth, where there is gravity, the root of the tongue will sink when lying on your back to sleep. In particular, the root of the tongue and soft palate tissues will sink up to the respiratory tract, causing the respiratory tract to become narrow. When the inhaled amount of air does not change and the passageway becomes narrow, the inhaled airflow speed will accelerate, which causes the sunken tongue and soft palate tissues to produce a vibrating sound. This is the sound of snoring.

Who snores more easily?

Obese people and people with short necks

Obese people will also have thicker necks. From appearance, one would think that they should have a wide respiratory tract. It is in fact the opposite. Obese people grow extra flesh in the soft palate and pharynx wall inside the upper respiratory tract, creating the respiratory tract to become narrow. Additionally, obese people require more oxygen amount so they need to breathe extremely hard. This increases the obstruction of the upper respiratory tract even more and also more likeliness to snore.

People who have a recessed and short chin

As the space for supporting the tongue is smaller for people who have a recessed and shorter chin, the tongue sinks easily causing the respiratory tract to become narrow, which causes snoring.

People with uvula that is too long

The soft palate is formed by the uvula and bow flap of both sides in the middle. The distance of the uvula being too long and the left right of the bow flap being too small causes people with narrow pharynx being more likely to snore.

People who have the habit of oral breathing and people who open their mouths while sleeping

The main reason of causing snoring is the respiratory tract becoming narrow. The severity of snoring is determined by the caliber size of the respiratory tract.

There are two reasons that cause the respiratory tract to become narrow

1. This is caused by oral breathing. As oral breathing causes the surface of the mucosa of the throat to continuously suffer from dry and cold air, it causes the surface of the overall mucosa of the throat to become dry, and then inflammation and swelling during long periods of sleeping time. The habit of oral breathing every night causes inflammation and swelling of the throat, causing the caliber of the respiratory tract to become narrow. The human mouth, throat, bronchus and lung mucosa are tissues that are extremely sensitive to dryness. Therefore, the inhaling of dry air will immediately cause inflammation. The inflammation of the mucosa near the throat causes the throat not being able to exert its original function of obstructing invasion of external bacteria.
2. Effects of gravity.

New treatment methods for snoring and sleep apnea

Patakara increases the strength of the mouth, tongue and throat muscles causing the throat also being able to maintain touching the palate during sleep. When the tongue can maintain touching the palate during sleep, it can naturally prevent the root of the tongue to sink up to the respiratory tract and ensure sufficient breathing amount. This is the same as sleep print. It forcibly pulls the root of the tongue forward to prevent sinking up to the respiratory tract. However, it does not have the problem of not being able to use Patakara due to having no teeth. It also does not affect sleep quality due to having to wear it. Patakara can also prevent the occurrence of aspiration pneumonia during sleep (food that should originally flow into the esophagus flowed into the respiratory tract causing pneumonia).

Snoring and sleep apnea will not immediately disappear after having used Patakara. This is because Patakara is a device that trains the oral muscles and muscles are unable to immediately become strong once it has been trained. You will at least have to patiently train up to the intensity status of the mouth being able to maintain being closed while sleeping.

Read about real life cases - Sleep Apnea

The three conditions of snoring and sleep apnea patients, and condition of the throat are as follows:

1. People with swollen throat caused by oral breathing
2. People with weak lip, tongue and throat muscles
3. People who have the combination of numbers 1 and 2

The effect of snoring treatment will vary for each individual. The show of order for the treatment effect of the above-mentioned 3 types of snoring reasons is as follows: the earliest show of effect is people with weak lip muscle (2). The second fastest show of effect is people with swollen throats (1). Following that is the combination of both (3). People with swollen throats may have oral breathed from childhood or after growing up, causing long-term inflammation around the mouth and the mucosal gradually becoming hypertrophic.

After changing the breathing method to nasal breathing under this circumstance, the air entered into the nasal cavity enters into the respiratory tract after heating and humidification. This type of warm and moist air has the function of restoring the injured throat mucosa.

After allowing the respiratory tract to be in contact with such air for a long time, it will gradually eliminate inflammation and swelling tissues. The time of show of effect requires about 3-6 months. In the case of the uvula being too long, it will require about 1 year.