What are the Symptoms of Snoring and Sleep Apnoea?
Symptoms can often go unnoticed for a long time because they are not specific during the day, and at night, the sleeper may not even realise that he or she is waking up to resume breathing. Symptoms can be mild, moderate, or severe, and may include:
- Daytime sleepiness and fatigue
- Difficulty concentrating
- Poor memory
- Personality changes
- Depression
- Morning headaches
- Dry mouth when you wake up
- Sore or dry throat
- Frequent night-time urination
- Waking several times during the night
- Unexplained heart or respiratory failure
- Chest retraction (sunken chest) – seen in children suffering from sleep apnoea
- Irritability
- Excessive perspiring during sleep
- Reduced libido
- Rapid weight gain
Treatment for Sleep Apnoea and Snoring
Diagnosis and Treatments
What can be done about it?
- Isolate the cause of your problem. Then ensure that this is treatable at this clinic and if not refer you to the appropriate people. You will not be left to your own devices.
- The effect of the problem on your sleep is noted and often measured at home with a simple device that you can use over-night yourself. Home use is more comfortable for many people than going into a hospital for a sleep study. The hospital study will tell what is happening in your brain, but the home study is often simpler and quicker.
Non Invasive
Our treatment is non-surgical and completely under your control.
What methods can be used?
- Opening the airway can be achieved by a number of methods.. There is no single method that will apply to everybody.
- Often you will see an advert that states this will ‘cure’ you’re snoring. While many will help, most will help only a few. Sometimes you will have to use two of three methods such as medication, a change of sleeping position, a mouth-device and weight loss.
- Let’s look at the various methods.
- Mouth devices. These are plastic and essentially hold the jaw open and forward and therefore unblock the airway. These are worn at night and are completely reversible (you can removed them)
- Medications. Most effective are nose sprays that reduce swelling inside the nose allowing better nose breathing. (Nose breathing is much better for you than mouth breathing).
- Surgery. By cutting away various parts of the throat, tongue or roof of the mouth, it is possible to increase the airway. However more than half of these painful surgeries don’t work. I feel that with a 95% success rate of the correctly chosen mouth device surgery is a last resort.
