A loud snore is no friend! Is a ventilator useful to get rid of snoring?

I saw some netizens saying that the elderly in their family slept well after buying a ventilator, but it was quite uncomfortable to watch as a bystander. Some netizens also thought that ventilators were a waste of money. So what is the truth?

As a person who snores every day when sleeping, after my personal comparison and exploration, I believe that ventilator may be the most feasible way for ordinary people to solve the snoring problem.

Today I will use my personal experience to talk about my snoring.

01. It was finally my turn to snore

Actually, I didn’t snore at first (it seems like this is nonsense, after all, most people didn’t snore when they were young), but my father snored frequently. At that time, the big kang in the north, listening to my father’s snoring seemed to be a standard of sleeping. At that time, I even thought that it might be a basic process for men to grow up, just like having an Adam’s apple. Of course, some people even say “snoring means a good sleep”.

When I went to college, it was much quieter, and it seemed that no one snored much. But when I was doing my doctorate, things were different. Many people started snoring, and I was no exception.

Of course, you can simply attribute it to snoring due to age and growth, but I think this conclusion is problematic. After all, many people’s snoring has nothing to do with age. Moreover, at this time, we have begun to engage in scientific research, and therefore have another intuitive discovery: obesity.

Although many people like to describe researchers as "thin" in books or food works, after all, many people think that doing research is hard, staying up late and working hard, but in fact, from my observation, the image of being thin may be a stereotype in the past. Now a considerable proportion or even most researchers actually have an overweight BMI, or in layman's terms, fat. I am no exception. My weight began to rise as I studied for my doctorate, and snoring began to appear as if it was positively correlated.

I think this is normal. After all, as a biology student, I know very well that one of the important reasons why people snore is that the accumulation of fat in the pharynx makes the airway relatively narrow, and snoring occurs due to poor airflow. In addition, when people are tired, their nerves' control over related parts becomes weaker, and the vibration amplitude of related tissues becomes larger, so snoring begins to occur.

Of course, this is not the only reason for snoring. People with rhinitis and pharyngitis, or those with unreasonable sleeping habits, such as an uncomfortable pillow height that causes airway compression, will snore. In any case, it is the changes in the airway that fundamentally trigger the sound.

In fact, I was still not too worried at that time until I became aware of "sleep apnea syndrome."

02. Severe snoring - sleep apnea

Because I was still studying at that time, I didn't pay much attention to snoring. After all, it didn't feel that serious, and it didn't seem to be an abnormal phenomenon. Until a business trip after work, the situation changed.

I remember that I was on a business trip and we were all staying in a dormitory. At that time, a colleague was embarrassed to say that he snored a lot and asked everyone to bear with him. I thought to myself, this is too much worry. However, it turned out that I was the joke. Because when I woke up the next day, everyone reported that I was the "hidden" snorer. I snored the most at night, and I made many people sleep poorly. Although I was embarrassed, there was a sentence that made me very alert, because a colleague said that several times I felt that I was "out of breath". Although it was a joke, it was very shocking to me because I realized that the problem was a bit serious. It was sleep apnea syndrome.

I was a little skeptical, so I asked several people and they all said similar things. So I downloaded a sleep monitoring app, but the results were not optimistic: I was snoring intermittently during my sleep, basically without stopping from the time I fell asleep to the time I woke up.

What particularly alerted me was that I had obvious breath holding during my sleep, with as many as 28 episodes.

Sleep apnea syndrome, which is what many people describe as "shortness of breath" when snoring is severe, actually has another medical term: sleep apnea syndrome. As the name suggests, it means that the respiratory tract is severely blocked during sleep, resulting in interrupted breathing, and the air flow is very low at this time.

Sleep apnea is not a good thing. Some people may think that heavy snoring will cause them to wake up suddenly, which is what many people joke about, "snoring wakes you up." In fact, if you think about it, it may not be the case, because it is actually because you lack oxygen during sleep, so your body must quickly adjust to make you change your sleeping position. In other words, you are awakened by lack of oxygen. Moreover, this is not just a problem that affects sleep, but a more serious problem. People rely on oxygen to survive. Once there is a lack of oxygen, problems will occur in various parts of the human body. For example, apnea can easily lead to pulmonary embolism and pulmonary hypertension. Similarly, for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, repeated lack of oxygen can lead to increased blood pressure, insufficient brain oxygen supply, weakened heart function, and in severe cases, suffocation may occur. In addition, it will also affect our metabolism.

Of course, even if it is not so serious, snoring does not mean that you sleep well or soundly. I believe that people who have experienced snoring must know that frequent snoring actually means poor sleep quality, and they often wake up groggy and in a bad mood the next day.

Because of this, once I realized I had a severe case of sleep apnea, I decided to seek formal help.

03. Solving sleep breathing problems is a complex process

I didn't do too many tests at the time. After the sleep monitoring report came out, I got a few suggestions: weight loss, ventilator and surgery. At that time, I also generally understood these strategies seriously.

The first is to lose weight . I believe you have noticed that obese people are more likely to snore. This has also been observed clinically, that is, obesity itself is highly correlated with sleep apnea syndrome.

In fact, this is easy to understand. After all, obesity is often in multiple parts of the body. If it occurs in the pharynx, it will directly lead to airway narrowing or occlusion, and snoring will occur.

Because of this, weight loss is the preferred option for sleep apnea syndrome.

2. Surgery . Since airway stenosis is the core factor causing sleep apnea syndrome, surgery on the relevant parts can naturally alleviate the symptoms to a certain extent.

3. Ventilator is also an option. It can supplement ventilation through auxiliary means to alleviate the lack of ventilation during sleep and avoid causing other problems.

I thought about it briefly, and the first choice was to lose weight, so I started a vigorous weight loss process. However, I still underestimated the difficulty of losing weight. During this period, I really tried a lot of methods, of course, exercise, dieting, ketogenic diet, meal replacement, and even diet pills. But after a year or two of trying, I finally gave in and gave up.

Because losing weight is too difficult, it is simply against human nature. After losing weight, I lost interest in life, I had no energy, it was completely meaningless, so much so that I wondered if I would get depressed if I continued to lose weight. Moreover, persistence is a rare quality for me. In short, I failed to lose weight.

The thought of surgery actually just flashed through my mind. After all, in my opinion, surgery is something that should not be done unless it is necessary. Especially compared to sleep apnea, the risk of possible sequelae of surgery far outweighs the benefits, so I don’t even consider it.

04. How to choose a ventilator?

So, I finally decided to buy a CPAP machine. Although it is a bit expensive, I can still afford it. Of course, this is when I wear a CPAP machine. I still snore without it. On the other hand, my sleep quality has improved significantly, including my mental state after waking up.

However, in the process of using the ventilator, there are some personal experiences to share with you, so that you can make reference when choosing a ventilator:

1. The ventilator should be smarter . The intelligence here does not mean that there are any apps or something like that, but that it should be smarter in sensing the sleep process.

Everyone's sleep actually fluctuates greatly. It is not simply divided into light sleep and deep sleep, but mixed with each other. For example, this is my two sleep monitorings:

It can be seen that deep sleep, light sleep and wakefulness are distributed very inconsistently, and snoring is also very different.

Therefore, the ventilator we choose must be able to intelligently perform targeted interventions based on our sleep, so that it can be more targeted.

Of course, what is even smarter is that there is now a diagnosis for sleep apnea. Sleep apnea syndrome is divided into three categories: obstructive sleep apnea, central sleep apnea and mixed sleep apnea. Each category is different. Therefore, if sleep apnea can be diagnosed more specifically, then the treatment of sleep apnea will naturally be more effective.

2. Humidification is necessary . People who snore frequently will definitely feel dry and bitter mouth when they wake up the next day. This is because sometimes when snoring is severe and they have to open their mouths to breathe, it is easy for water to evaporate excessively, resulting in dry mouth.

When using ventilator assistance, humidification is very necessary to replenish water in time and avoid dry mouth problems.

3. It is best to have heating . Although we usually breathe at room temperature and don’t feel much. But after using the ventilator, humidification is very necessary. The ventilation volume of the ventilator is very high. In this case, if the ventilator cannot be heated, you will obviously feel very cold air entering the nasal cavity, which will make people feel very uncomfortable.

4. It is best to sleep in a quiet environment. I believe everyone knows that you need to sleep in a quiet environment, but the ventilator is a machine after all. If the sound of the ventilator is too loud, then snoring will be solved, but the quality of sleep will be reduced due to the noise, which is not worth the loss. Therefore, if the sound of the ventilator can be reduced and made as quiet as possible, then in fact, there will be less interference with sleep.

Finally, although the ventilator can temporarily solve the snoring problem, in the future I may still have to lose weight as much as possible. However, I feel that this is a long-term project and cannot be rushed.