Does Snoring Trigger Heart Diseases?

It can be really difficult sleeping with someone who snores a lot. But, it may be more harmful to the snorer's health than just being a plain disturbing sound. Producing a loud sound while breathing during sleep classifies as snoring. It is caused due to blockage in the throat causing constriction in your wind pipe. The snoring sound is produced when the uvula or the soft palate sticks against the back of your throat and creates obstruction in the pharynx. Did you know? A person whose neck circumference is bigger than 16 inches, is more likely to snore. Shorter and over-weight women snore more than their counterparts. Snoring sounds measure between 50 to 100 decibels. Snoring may occur due to allergies, cold, sleeping position, alcohol, smoking, nasal and sinus problems. Recent researches have been aimed at investigating the link between snoring and heart diseases.

Snoring and Heart Attack Risks

Snoring disrupts your body's natural cardiac rhythm while you are sleeping. It creates a state of hypertension in the body due to the lack of oxygen and the body immunity decreases. We sleep for about one-third part of our lives. Thirty minutes of snoring cuts the supply of oxygen to your brain for ten seconds. This can create several health disorders in the long term. It increases the risk of carotid atherosclerosis that causes blockage in carotid arteries. Narrower arteries reduce blood flow in the body and the heart starts pumping faster to elevate oxygen level in the body. If you snore at night, it can increase your risk of getting a heart stroke by 67%. It has been observed that snoring increasing the chances of a heart attack by 34% in loud snorers. Unfortunately, snoring and heart diseases work hand in hand. If you have one, you will soon get the other. It also leads to enlargement of the heart, as it is a muscle. Allow me to add another piece of information to these facts, the tendency to suffer a heart attack, stroke or heart burn is the highest between 3 A.M. To 5 A.M. Snoring also causes other health issues which, in some cases, can be taken as the pointers to heart health.

Prevention is Better than Cure

Although light snorers are at no significant risk of heart diseases, it is advisable that you take appropriate steps to stop snoring now before it gets worse.

Do not sleep on your back.
Avoid alcohol consumption before bed time.
Cut down on smoking.
Weight loss, in case of snoring in obese people.
Rest your head on a higher elevation than the level of the rest of your body.
Use Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device to reduce snoring.
Practice meditation to strengthen the respiratory system and improve blood circulation.
Keep your nose clean before you are off to sleep.

Snoring is mainly common in overweight and obese people. Also, men are more likely to snore than women. As we speak, one billion world population snores regularly. It is also widely observed among pregnant women. It conversely increases the rate of heart diseases, high cholesterol and diabetes among them. Female snorers are twice more likely to suffer from a heart attack or a heart stroke than women who do not snore at all. Aging speeds up the process of muscles collapsing over time, causing the path of air flow to become narrower. This is in turn will worsen snoring. So if you are hoping your spouse will stop snoring automatically someday, forget about it. It will just keep getting worse unless you use a natural snoring treatment to cure it. An alarming fact noted in the researches was that heavy snorers are at a risk of death within a month of the first heart attack. If you are a chronic snorer, do get yourself checked against sleep apnea and heart diseases as they are closely related. Always remember, every health disorder has a cause-effect relationship with your entire body, which is an entity constituting organs and many systems. Neglecting the smaller problems lead to bigger ones. So, stay healthy!
By Urvashi Pokharna

Posted in: Diseases and Conditions