A patient of mine had found that in recent years that he had started to snore at night more frequently and his wife was starting to get frustrated about it.

About 40% of adults snore and although it doesn’t seem like a major problem, actually in 40% of these people it is a warning sign to a much more serious problem called Obstructive Sleep Apnea. In sleep apnea, the person stops breathing momentarily which usually wakes the person up and in severe cases this could happen up to 100 times an hour. The persons body is basically fighting for oxygen and is definitely not getting a good night’s sleep.

Untreated, individuals with sleep apnea have a 15% higher mortality rate, are at increased risk of high blood pressure and high cholesterol and are 23% more likely to have a heart attack. Sleep is important to every facet of life and without enough rest it can even make it hard to lose weight.

Not all people that snore have sleep apnea and in this case after a detailed discussion we realized that his snoring was most likely due to putting on some weight in the last few years, in particular around the neck which causes more obstruction during sleep. In simple cases like this, we made him an appliance to wear at night that moves his bottom jaw forward and stops the snoring. If we were more concerned we would have sent him for a sleep study and continued therapy in conjunction with a sleep physician.

He was much happier and so was his wife and they could both have a much better night’s sleep.