Problematic snoring. When a person goes to sleep, all the muscles in their body relax, including the muscles that hold the airway open when awake. In some people, the airway is narrow enough that the flow of air causes the airway to vibrate. The vibration causes the noise of snoring. With some people, the noise is loud enough to be heard throughout the entire house.

Snoring is a shared problem. Sometimes irritability and bad temper arising from the chronic fatigue experienced by many snorers can have an impact on relationships. Additionaly, people who share a bed with a snorer can become short-tempered and frustrated with having their own sleep disturbed while their bed-partner snores away beside them. A medical study in Sweden investigating wives of snoring men found the women suffered symptoms of sleep disturbance such as poor short term memory and difficulty concentrating on tasks. As a group they performed lower than expected on cognitive tests. When the husbands were treated for snoring the wives were re-tested after a few months and found to have normal resuts.

SENSCIO
providing New Zealand doctors and patients with



analysis & treatment services for
SLEEP APNOEA

Sleep Apnoea. Some people snore so badly the airway is sucked shut. They continue to sleep even though they are struggling to breathe, until the need to breathe overcomes the need to sleep (which it ALWAYS will at some point) and they come out of deep sleep into a lighter sleep. In most cases they don't wake right up, but the change from deep sleep to light sleep is enough to allow the muscle tone to return so the airway can pop open again, often with a loud gasp. This can happen hundreds of times a night, and is known as Obstructive Sleep Apneoa.

Sleepiness. Daytime sleepiness is the most common and debilitating complication of sleep disturbance arising from problematic snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea. The same amount of sleep disturbance will affect different people in different ways. The severity of daytime sleepiness is unrelated to the number of times a snorer "stops breathing" during the night. Some people who snore but do not experience airway collapse, can nonetheless be just as tired during the day as someone else whose airway collapses hundreds of times a night. Treatment can provide a full refreshing sleep straight away, with immediate improvement in daytime energy.

Senscio works in close association with the doctors and allied health professionals of The Sleep Well Clinic to provide testing and consultation services for people with symptoms of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. More...