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Sleep deprivation is acutely stressful and it can be deadly. It can disorientate; it can muddle your brain and cause you to become emotionally unstable; it can even kill you.

Yet millions of long suffering parents worldwide have a child who tortures them every night with a snoring racket that can rival the noise of a chainsaw in full swing.

But more importantly it’s not just you, the parents, who suffer sleepless nights when your child snores at this decibel level. For your child, their snoring can be an indication that they may be suffering from Obstructive Sleep Apnea (O.S.A.), a major health complication that can lead to a future lifetime of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and even early death.

Now O.S.A. is a real worry, so if you feel that this sounds all too familiar, for the sake of your child’s long term health, get it checked out. Admittedly, Sleep Apnea can disappear as your child matures, but it usually comes back to haunt them later in life.

Then you need do something to stop the racket. And the very first thing you need to do is make a careful examination of your child’s dietary and lifestyle habits. Now this actually applies to everyone who snores – child, teenager and adult, the common snorer or even someone with an upper respiratory tract abnormality.

Quite simply, ‘we are what we eat’. So to stop your child snoring, you need to ensure that they avoid all foods and drinks which can clog or irritate their sinuses, such as milk before bed, and all foods, drinks and medications (unless absolutely necessary) which cause a relaxation of the respiratory structures at the back of their throat when they are asleep, such as sedatives and cough syrups.

There are just so many foods which if avoided at night can help prevent your child’s nightly snoring racket – far too many to detail here – and so many simple lifestyle choices which you can introduce that have the power to stop your child’s snoring virtually overnight. Even minor lifestyle changes, such as raising the end of the bed up about four inches, can make all the difference.

Your child doesn’t have to look forward to a lifetime of snoring and potential ill health. You can do something about it and it’s far easier to do than you may think!

Dr Rick Donald is the author of Essential Stop Snoring Secrets. To find out more information about his book, visit http://www.stopmysnoringnow.com/stopsnoring.html

What causes sleep apnea?

Sleep apnea is usually caused by a blocked and narrowed airways when your sleep, which is similar to what causes snoring. Main reason for a blockage is due to overtly relaxed muscles in your throat muscles and your tongue. Tissue masses that are built up over the course of the day at the back of your mouth will also involuntarily cause your airways to be blocked. If the anatomy of your mouth, like your tongue and your tonsils are larger compared to your opening of windpipe, you might also find yourself struggling to breathe irregularly when sleeping.

Another common reason for sleep apnea and snoring is overweight. Those extra tissues around your neck area will thicken the wall of your windpipe, and thus causing it to be harder to keep it open during sleep.

What is the implication of sleep apnea?

Obstructive sleep apnea is defined by having breathing pauses throughout the night when you sleep, and this usually occur for more than once. You might not know it, but if you wake up feeling fatigue and tired, then these are the signs that you’re not well rested and unable to get to stage 4 REM sleep. If you have sleep apnea, your oxygen level might drop to dangerous low level and thus prompts your brain to interrupt your sleep – forcing you to tighten your airway muscles and opening your windpipe, to allow more oxygen to go through to improve breathing pattern.

This process is often represented with a loud snort or choke. Bear in mind that frequent drops in oxygen level will trigger stress hormones, these hormones are deadly as it increases your heart rate much like the feeling you go through when you’re under stress. Frequent increase in your heart rate puts you at risk for high blood pressure, heart attack or even stroke.

Although you should always immediately consult your doctor if you find yourself having sleep apnea, there are certain changes that you can try to see if it cures your snoring apnea.

Causes for snoring and snoring apnea can be consider somewhat similar. There are certain exercises that aim to tackle directly with this root cause. These exercise known as stop snoring exercises focus on strengthening all your muscles in your mouth area. Your jaw, tongue and tonsils can be strengthened when you sleep, so that it doesn’t hinder your normal breathing pattern.

These exercises also help increase your air intake during sleep by applying breathing techniques that singers use to warm up their throat. Other factor such as overly wide and fat necks cause you to literally struggle with breathing at night. By losing weight through regular and consistent exercise, and paying attention to your food intake can help with reducing your fatiness around the neck. Supressants such as alcohol, cigarettes are known to relax your muscles. Therefore avoid taking any of these, and better still give them up completely for better life style.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (or O.S.A. for short) is about as bad as it gets. People may joke about it, but O.S.A. is certainly no laughing matter because it can kill you. And according to the Mayo Clinic, up to 1 in 4 Americans suffer from this deadly health concern.

Now this is a really worrying statistic to say the least.

Unfortunately O.S.A. sufferers can be totally unaware of their condition until their sleeping partner or someone who sleeps within ear shot tells them. If this sounds like you, the only indicator that you may notice is feeling tired all the time during the day.

So what exactly is O.S.A.? It refers to a breathing complication where respiration totally stops during sleep for a period of 20 seconds or more. You can experience up to 300 of these apniac events each night. They severely reduce your body’s ability to oxygenate your blood, forcing your heart to pump harder than it should to maintain equilibrium.

Prolonged nightly apniac events can then cause an enlargement of your heart, with the probability of associated cardio-vascular disorders such as high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and irregular heart beat.

And what causes O.S.A.? It occurs when your tongue, uvula and/or soft palate collapse into the back of your throat when you sleep, blocking your airways so you can’t breath. As your airways narrow even further, you start to snore loudly, then your body violently gasps for air as breathing totally stops, and your nightly dice with death continues as the cycle repeats itself. No wonder O.S.A. sufferers wake feeling absolutely exhausted!

Most at risk are unfit, middle aged, overweight males who have a thick neck and pot belly. They often have a family history of the condition and may have a sluggish thyroid. Unfortunately, even if you don’t fit into this category you can still suffer from O.S.A., so if you have any concerns in this regard, check them out with your healthcare advisor.

Now the good news is that O.S.A. is a manageable condition. If you feel that you do suffer from this worrying health concern, have it checked out first to determine if you need to use a CPAP breathing machine, then look at your diet and lifestyle choices before you waste time and money on any other stop snoring treatments.

It’s important here to always remember that you are what you eat. Whilst it’s unlikely that dietary and lifestyle changes will totally cure your O.S.A., they certainly have the power to overcome some of the contributing factors that may be causing or worsening your Sleep Apnea so that its incidence and frequency reduces.

Dr Rick Donald is the author of ‘Essential Stop Snoring Secrets’. To find out more information about his book, visit http://www.stopmysnoringnow.com/stopsnoring.html