Not getting enough sleep is a major health concern; sleep deprivation can affect your wellbeing with exhaustion, headaches and high blood pressure, and doing what you can to reduce these symptoms is essential. While you may not be getting your eight hours due to a seemingly insignificant problem, such as snoring, this is actually the most common symptom of a potentially serious wellness problem; obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA).
People joke about snoring, or see it as a minor annoyance, but the evidence proves that your health can suffer as a result of snoring. OSA affects over 18 million Americans, who repeatedly and unknowingly stop breathing during the night due to a complete or partial obstruction of their airway. Because your jaw, throat, and tongue muscles relax, this blocks the airway you use to breathe for a minute or longer, and can occur hundreds of times each night.
You’re likely to wake up when this happens – most people do – but you can still feel completely exhausted, and may experience other health problems. This includes acid reflux, frequent night-time urination, memory loss, stroke, depression, diabetes and even heart attacks. You’re at a higher risk of OSA if you’re over the age of 35, so it’s worth getting checked out if this applies to you. However, OSA can be expensive to diagnose and treat, and is not always covered.
To diagnose OSA, you will be required to spend the night in a sleep clinic, and the doctor will then analyse your data in order to prescribe one of several treatments. Unfortunately, this may involve painful surgery, or an uncomfortable CPAP device that force air through your nose and mouth while you sleep to keep your airways open. However, researchers at the Eastern Virginia Medical School’s Division of Sleep Medicine have found a comfortable, far less costly and invasive treatment option.
In their case study, published by in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, they concluded that wearing a simple chinstrap while you sleep can be an effective treatment for OSA. Created by MySnoringSolution, the chinstrap supports your lower jaw and tongue, and this prevents your airway from becoming obstructed. The material is high-tech, lightweight and comfortable, and thousands of users have reported better sleep, and better health overall because of it.
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