Snoring And Weight Loss
August 29th, 2010 Filed Under snoring
One of the first things that your doctor will prescribe to help you quit snoring if you are overweight is weight loss. There is a good solid reason for this. When you gain weight and your body begins to store fat and every part of your body stores fat including your throat. Fatty tissue in the neck and muscles of your airway get flabbier. The more flabby the muscles in your airway are the more likely they are to vibrate when you breath in when sleeping causing you to snore.
By losing weight you will be losing some of that flabbiness in your throat and less vibration means less or at least quieter snoring. While in many cases losing weight may cure your snoring all together in other cases weight loss needs to be combined with other options.
In some cases, while losing weight may remove the excess fat in your neck and muscles it will not tone those muscles. Doing throat toning exercise as you lose weight will strengthen your throat muscles and help stop them from vibrating.
Losing weight is no easy task, but it has many other healthy benefits besides stopping your snoring. It can add to your general overall health and allow for more restful sleep. Which in turn, believe it or not, can actually help you to diet successfully. Studies have shown, that snoring disrupts most peoples sleep, even though they may not be aware of it.
When sleep is disrupted it often results in sleep deprivation which can cause hormonal imbalances in your body. One of those imbalances is an increase in ghrelin which increases appetite. So as strange as it sounds, disrupted sleep may actually make you feel hungrier. The more restful your sleep, the more likely it is that your ghrelin levels will return to normal and the less hungry you will feel which will make sticking to that diet far easier.
Keep in mind however, that being overweight may not be the only cause of your snoring. It may well be the major cause or it may simply be that being overweight has simply exacerbated other causes that already existed.
Either way reducing that weight will help you to live a longer and healthier life and will also help you stop snoring even if you have to combine that weight loss with other anti-snoring aids and treatments. The less fatty tissue in your throat, the more toned your throat muscles are, the more effective other treatments can be.
Studies have shown that weight loss alone is most often effective for people who did not have a history of snoring until they had sudden weight gain. In people that experience their first bouts of snoring after gaining weight, the weight is usually the cause of the snoring and so losing that weight often solves the problem. In some cases gaining as little as ten pounds may turn a non snorer into a snorer practically overnight.
In other people, who have been overweight for a long period of time and have had no snoring problem and then suddenly begin snoring, weight is less likely to be the cause of the snoring unless there has been additional weight gain just before the snoring began. In such cases while losing weight is still a good idea your doctor should consider other causes and offer other treatment ideas to coincide with your weight loss.
In the final analysis being overweight carries a number of health risks and can cause a number of problems and snoring may simply be one of the problems. Losing weight to stop snoring in order to save your marriage or your partner’s sanity may be just the reason you need to start that diet and exercise program but, stopping snoring is just one of the benefits you will reap by getting down to a healthier weight.
Mail this post