If somebody has polyps in the nose, we may have to do surgery to remove them. If somebody has an elongation of their palate or their uvula , then we can do an operation to shrink that down and tighten it up. Snoring is due to a variety of conditions that lead to vibration of tissues. But the most common is an elongation of the palate and uvula. And then in a small number of people, it's just a generalized narrowing, maybe too large of a tongue or too much fat in the neck, just in everything being small and vibrating against one another.
Weight loss works best for people who recently gained weight and developed snoring.
They never snored before, they put on 20 pounds, they started snoring. That's a perfect person to put on a diet. Yes, there's actually been remarkable advances in treating snoring over the last fifteen years. The first surgery that was developed for snoring was an operation done in the operating room under anesthesia, where we trim the lower edge of the palate and remove the uvula. About six years ago, a laser surgery was developed which lowered the price dramatically because it could now be done in the office under a local anesthesia-still very effective, but still fairly painful.