I don't know if you have ever encountered such a situation: when you are tossing and turning in bed, someone snores beside you like thunder and seems to sleep very sweet. In the past, people always thought that snoring, that is, snoring, was a sign of good sleep quality. But you know what? Snoring is sometimes a disease!
The back of the mouth is different from other parts of the human body. Although there is a chamber, there is no bone to support its formation. It is mainly through the surrounding muscles to adjust and maintain the size of the chamber. When sleeping, especially when sleeping deeply, the muscles of the whole body relax. Due to gravity factors, it will cause the backward movement of tissue structures such as the root of the tongue and uvula (commonly known as "little tongue"), making the cavity of the throat smaller. When breathing through the nose, if the airflow is not smooth and forced to use oral breathing, the inhaled airflow will vibrate the soft palate above the back of the mouth, resulting in a snoring sound, which is commonly known as "snoring".
So, is snoring a disease? If you snore only occasionally, it may be because people don't put their heads in the right position when they sleep, which makes the nose difficult to breathe. Generally, help them correct their posture, and snoring will stop. However, if this happens frequently, even if the head position during sleep is adjusted, it still can not be relieved, it needs to be noted that this may be a manifestation of sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea refers to a respiratory arrest that lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes when you fall asleep. If this phenomenon occurs frequently, it will reduce the oxygen content in the body, resulting in a series of problems such as feeling sleepy during the day, inattention, slower reaction speed, reduced vision and so on. If children snore frequently, it may affect their growth and development, such as abnormal cognitive function, impaired attention, decreased memory, abnormal psychological behavior, decreased IQ, etc. Because many other diseases can also cause these problems, many people do not know that they are actually tired of snoring while sleeping, or simply ignore these problems.
As early as 1836, there was such a character in the biography of Pickwick written by Dickens: a little fat boy with purple complexion, swollen body and strange personality. He spent most of the day eating and sleeping. It was usually difficult to wake him up from his morbid sleep, and sleep often made loud snores. This is the earliest known description of sleep apnea. If you have such a person around you, you might as well let him go to the hospital.