HealthChat Men's Health
Snoring & Transistor Radios?
Anyone who lives with a snorer will know the frustrations
of sleep-disturbed nights. You cry out for rest but are
continually woken by what sounds at times like a freight
train rolling endlessly through your bedroom. One in seven
men is a profound snorer equating to an awful lot of tired
partners each morning.
The effects for snorers themselves can be equally unhealthy
with such disorders as hypertension being strongly linked
to this problem. However, there is a treatment which promises
to restore peace to your house at night-time and help to
repair any fraught marital relationships besides.
Known as somnoplasty, it utilises the same waves as power
transistor radios, believe it or not. In essence, ear, nose
and throat specialists (ENT for short) can use the heat
from radio frequency waves, or RF waves, to reduce the size
of the tissues in the back of the throat. It is these same
tissues which often resonate when we lie asleep resulting
in that irritating snoring as we breathe in and out.
The procedure usually only takes a few minutes to complete,
can be carried out under local anaesthetic, and patients
report very little if any pain. On the negative side, somnoplasty
is not a quick fix. Specialists warn that it may take up
to two months for snoring to actually stop totally and during
this time patients may require one or two more treatments.
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