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If you experience difficulty sleeping, heavy breathing, loud snoring, or heavy drooling, you may have sleep apnea. Sleep apnea causes your breath to become shallow and thin during sleep. Some behaviors and conditions can increase your risk of sleep apnea. These include smoking, high blood pressure, and people at high risk for heart failure or stroke. Your doctor can determine if you have sleep apnea by running various sleep monitoring tests and learning about your sleep history. Drooling is also a symptom of a blocked airway. Visit an ear, nose, and throat doctor to find out if a blocked airway is affecting your ability to breathe through your nose while sleeping. If you are overweight, you have a heightened chance of experiencing sleep apnea. More than half of the 12 million people in the U.S. that experience sleep apnea are overweight. Alter your diet and exercise regularly to reach a healthy weight and decrease your neck girth for easier breathing. Sleep apnea is treated a number of different ways in addition to weight loss recommendations. Those diagnosed with sleep apnea should avoid alcohol, sleeping pills, and sleep deprivation. Simple nasal sprays and saline solution rinses can help clear nasal passages as well. Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is the first treatment that people who are suffering from sleep apnea undergo. CPAP outlines that patients must wear a mask that forces air through the nose and mouth while sleeping. The idea is to have the right amount of air pressure filtering through the air passages to prevent the upper airway tissues from collapsing as you sleep. These devices prevent the tongue from collapsing into the throat airway and can advance the lower jaw to open an airway further. People who have obstructive tissue such as a deviated septum, enlarged tonsils, or an over-sized tongue can be good candidates for various surgical procedures. Somnoplasty uses radio frequency to constrict the soft palate at the back of the throat and open the airway. 'Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty' (surgical procedure), or UPPP/UP3, can remove soft tissue in the back of the throat surgically to open the airway. Nasal surgery consists of several procedures that can fix obstructions or deformities like deviated septums. A tonsillectomy can remove oversized tonsils that are obstructing your airway. Mandibular/maxillary advancement surgery consists of moving the jawbone forward to create space in the throat. This is a rather intense procedure that is reserved for only the worst cases of sleep apnea.
Find out if you are experiencing sleep apnea. Find out if you are at risk for a blocked airway. Lose weight. Treat sleep apnea conservatively. Undergo mechanical therapy for sleep apnea. Use a mandibular advancement device. Resort to surgery.