Snoring is often considered a simple nighttime inconvenience, but it can be a sign of more serious health problems, such as obstructive sleep apnea. Filipe Magalhães Ramos, otorhinolaryngologistwarns of the associated risks, which range from fatigue and irritability to hypertension, diabetes and increased cardiovascular risk. Recognizing and treating the problem is essential to protect health and quality of life.
Commonly referred to as snoring, roncopathy may have different causes: enlarged tonsils, deviated nasal septum, elongated palate, muscular hypotonia, which normally progresses over time, obesity, alcohol, tobacco, among others.
Snoring may represent the tip of the iceberg of a more worrying condition: obstructive sleep apnea. Both share an underlying mechanism and many of the risk factors, and the distinction is not in the time of the noise produced, but in the existence of stops in breathing.
This condition disrupts, to varying degrees, the quality of sleepwhich has consequences for the quality of life of those affected.
Depending on the seriousness of the situation, it may result in achanges mood, anxiety, increased blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and even sudden death. It is not to be neglected that consequences on personal and social life.
On the one hand, the discomfort experienced by those who share a room with someone who snores leads to the decision to sleep in separate rooms, with predictable consequences for couples’ lives.
Furthermore, there are abundant reports of the inability to create barriers to the spread of noise, which penetrates even closed doors.
There are also greater risk of having road or work accidentsfor example, due to drowsiness of drivers and machine operators.
However, Most people do not recognize snoring as a sign of a health problemassuming that fatigue, drowsiness, headaches or irritability are due to the normal constraints of modern life.
Interest in the study and investigation of this condition is relatively recent and follows the knowledge about the impact of good sleep hygiene on health and longevity. In fact, the Quality sleep is, today, one of the three pillars of health, along with nutrition and physical exercise.
O The study of obesity, which has increased significantly in recent times, also brought some contributions. There are studies that also report cwaves environmental factors such as air pollution and recurrence of heat waves as factors that cause inflammation and congestion of the nose and throatfragmenting sleep and interrupting desirable cycles.
Fortunately, this problem has a solution. It is advisable to value these disturbances, both for their social consequences and for the risks they entail. You should consult your doctor, who will most likely advise you to visit a specialist, so that a diagnosis can be made and appropriate intervention proposed.
Article authored by Filipe Magalhães Ramos, otolaryngologist
