Pulsitile Tinnitus is a type of tinnitus that effects about 4% of people diagnosed with the condition. Tinnitus is a ringing or other type of noise that can be heard by the sufferer but not anyone else. In it’s mildest form it’s a nuisance but it can become a real problem often interfering with normal hearing.

Pulsatile Tinnitus is so called because the noise heard by the sufferer comes in waves or pulses often in time with their heartbeat. It is thought to be caused by sounds in the arteries, viens and occasionally tumors (benign or malignant).

As with any type of tinnitus it’s always best to visit your health professional to get a proper diagnosis and to discuss treatment options which include:

• Surgery
• Antidepressants
• Stress Reduction
• White noise generators
• Hypnosis
• Biofeedback

Occasionally the symptoms of tinnitus will diminish over time but the best thing to do is to avoid what caused it in the first place which is often loud noise over a prolonged period of time.

In a small way I can understand the suffering Tinnitus causes because I suffer from a very mild form. I hear a constant whistling sound from my left ear which isn’t noticeable unless it’s very quite like at bed time. I’ve discovered self hypnosis works very well for me and I’m able to ignore the symptoms most of the time.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Pulsatile Tinnitus – Ringing In The Ears

Diagnosing Sleep Apnea usually requires many visits to the doctor and sometimes an overnight stay in a sleep clinic. Expensive and disruptive to all concerned.

Now though a company in Manhatten has invented a device which can be used at home which is said to be able to diagnose Sleep Apnea without the patient having to leave the comfort of there own home.

The device is a portable wireless application which has been cleared by the FDA for diagnosing Sleep Apnea. It’s a just a headband that the user places over there forehead presses a button and the device then monitors your sleep patterns and reports any incidence of sleep apnea to a recording unit.

The data can then be analysed by a specialist to determin if you’ve had any sleep apniec events.

Sleep Apnea can be a serious health issue so anything that makes diagnosis easier and quicker has got to be good news for sufferers.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Apnea Home Diagnosis Kit

The latest research fro The University of Pennsylvania has shown that men with insomnia are more likely to die earlier than those who drift straight off to sleep.

Although it’s always been known that lack of sleep can be detrimental too your health this is the first study that has shown a direct link between quality of sleep and mortality.

Women it would appear are not as much at risk as men probably because fewer women suffer from this distressing condition.

This is another reason to take lack of sleep seriously and if a sufferer try and discover the cause and therefore find a solution.

Insomnia can be caused by a variety of reasons both physical and mental. Stress reduction, a change of diet and a more comfortable mattress are all things in the environment that can be easily looked at.

Bottom line if you suffer from insomnia get professional medical advice and you could live longer.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Men Who Have Insomnia Die Earlier

Stress can take its toll on the best of us. The demands of family, children and work can leave us feeling stressed and out of sorts and it can be difficult to reduce this stress whilst right in the middle of it.

We all know one of the best ways to relieve stress is to leave our normal environment giving our minds and bodies a chance to recover well away from all the normal triggers that would prompt the stress response.

If your anything like me when I’m on vacation after the first night I always sleep much better and wake up feeling refreshed and invigorated ready for my day ahead.

When we think of the type of  relaxing vacation we would like to take I’ll bet very few ever consider a Train Holiday. I know, I know train holidays don’t usually spring to mind when we think of relaxation but if you pick the right one it can.

For example how about a trip on the Orient Express? Five days of pampering, good eating, visiting historic locations and relaxation. The old adage “Let The Train Take The Strain” springs to mind and to top it all think of the great nights sleep you’ll get while listening to the gentle sound of the trains rails click clacking gently in the background.

So my advice is whether it’s a Train Holiday on the Orient Express or a couple of days at the beach take the time to relax, take a vacation and discover for yourself how much better you’ll sleep. You never know it may even help your snoring

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Like A Baby – Take A Train Vacation

It’s becoming more and more widely understood that the body is a series of interconnected systems, and that when something goes wrong with one of these systems, then this can cause further complications and side-effects in another. It’s also true that as Obstructive Sleep Apnea is more and more fully understood, and that knowledge permeates throughout the medical profession, more and more connections are being found with OSA and other, secondary conditions.

Here’s another such example of one thing leading to another- Sleep Apnea sufferers have recently been shown to also be prone to developing symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder (or ADD if you haven’t the patience!)

In a lot of ways, it stands to reason- if your quality of sleep is impaired or reduced, then you’re going to find it harder to concentrate.  OSA is one of the most common sleep disorders, but it’s not always looked for or considered as a cause when a patient is suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. There are new suggestions that ADD sufferers should be screened for Obstructive Sleep Apnea and for other sleep disorders, as there has been found to be a high incidence of ADD for OSA sufferers with no previous history of ADD. Now, it should be said that this isn’t a direct causal link yet, but it is a strong correlation, which seems to chime with the kind of mental effects one would expect from reduced quality of sleep.

Fortunately, however, all the indications are that for such sufferers, treatment is very effective. In tests,  a number of patients who had been presenting with medium level to extreme ADHD symptoms were shown to have a significant reduction in these symptoms 60% of the time when treated with a CPAP machine, one of the standard treatments for dealing with Sleep Apnea.

This is a good thing for treatment, and similarly for awareness- the reccomendation of Doctor Clifford Risk of the Marlboro Center for Sleep Disorders to other physicians is that “If they (a patient) have ADHD the doctor should be asking them how their sleep is, do you snore or have sleep apnea and/or do you have insomnia at night?” This increase of awareness, combined with recent improvements in the efficiency and the comfort of diagnosis, is a very good thing indeed for OSA sufferers.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Another Consequence Of Sleep Apnea- Attention Deficit Disorder?

Sleeping with someone who snores can be a nightmare. We all know it’s true. Everyone’s had that moment when we look across at our loved one as they sleep, and hear them start to snore! Of course, the fact that they’re fast asleep means that it can be virtually impossible to make them believe that there’s a problem!

Now, however, technology’s come out with a helpful solution. There’s a new Iphone App available from the Apple’s AppStore, which is designed for snorers or long-suffering partners. There are several features to the app, but the one which catches this writer’s eye is the fact that your Iphone can be set to listen out for someone’s snoring, and to play a pre-recorded sound to wake them up when it gets too loud. The option is there to use a number of preset tones, or to record a message of your choice. Whether or not this is a stream of abuse is entirely up to you!

This sounds good on the face of it, but the immediate problem I can see for long-suffering partners is that unless their partner’s sleeping with headphones in then this alarm isn’t going to get you any better sleep, at least in the short-term. Any alarm is going to wake the both of you! Of course, this may serve to give you some ammunition- after all, one can’t really argue that a machine is being unfair!

If winning arguments isn’t quite what you’re after,  then it can silently record sleeping patterns and snoring activity. This is one of the things a sleep lab would traditionally record, but now the processing power of handheld devices has improved to a level where it’s possible this to be done without all that expensive equipment. well, except the Iphone itself, but that’s a matter of opinion!

This information can be used for analysis and diagnosis purposes or, alternatively you can do the inevitable and post it to Facebook.  Now, personally, that’s just a little bit too much information for me, but once again this is all down to individual choice! Certainly, if it gives you a clean bill of snoring health, then that’s a very good way to stop a partner nagging you about your snoring!. It can also be a very good way to look objectively at whether or not you have an issue you need to address. If you look at the report and see patterns of high snoring activity develop, then you know you may have an issue to resolve.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Does Your Partner Snore In The Night?

Insomnia, and sleep deprivation in general, is a problem which can effect almost every aspect of our lives,  but is easy to overlook. After all, because we all suffer from lack of sleep, from time to time, and sometimes it’s just the way things are- there are times when despite being tired, you just have to knuckle down and get on with things.

I’m sure any parent will know exactly what I’m talking about when I write that! Chronic lack of sleep, however, is something which can have a major effect on a person’s health, and life. It can also take its toll in a vital area of human life- our relationships with those around us.

Consider how it feels to be tired and awake, either during the day or late at night. It’s not pleasant, and it has an effect on us that can’t be gainsaid or ignored. Simply put, it feels terrible. If you’re tired, it’s easy to become anxious, short-tempered or depressed. It’s harder to think clearly, and harder to put things in perspective. Simple tasks may feel all too difficult, and emotional issues which we could normally shrug off can be too hard to deal with.

If you’re often missing sleep, it’s all too easy to let this affected mood spill out and effect how you treat those around you, whether that’s strangers, work colleagues, or your nearest and dearest. They can end up on the receiving end of irritation, black moods, and a lack of energy or interest in them or what they have to say. Think about how that would feel if the person you loved was like this. I don’t think it’d be easy to cope with.

And here’s a way that tricky situation could be worse.  Imagine if the reason your loved one was in this state was because they could never get a good night’s sleep when they were with you. Imagine the resentments, and the strains on a loving relationship, that would create.

Now you’ve had a think about that (and become thoroughly depressed, no doubt!), do you still think that loud snoring is just a minor thing, a source of amusement?

Maybe it’s time you fixed things.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

A Few Thoughts On Sleep Deprivation And Its Effect On Relationships

Traditionally, the way to diagnose Sleep Apnea in a patient, or rather to confirm a diagnosis, has been for that patient to spend a night in a sleep lab. There, a complicated series of monitors and sensors would determine that OSA was indeed the issue- air pressure readings, heart-rate monitors and so on would be employed to confirm that the intermittent obstructions and interruptions to  breathing were actually occurring during sleep.

This was a time-consuming and, for some, inconvenient process. Recently, however, great strides have been made in home diagnosis. A recent study carried out by the Philadelphia VA Medical Center’s pulmonary, critical care and sleep section has determined that the new generation of portable sleep monitors can be relied upon just as much as the old-school lab approach.

The study showed that once a three-month period of Continuous positive airway pressure treatment had been carried out, there was no discernible difference  in the long-term prognosis of people diagnosed by either method.

This is good news for a number of reasons. Firstly, it means that it will now  be easier to diagnose for sleep apnea- all someone has to do is have the sleep monitor set up in their home. In terms of sheer man-hours, it means that those professionals treating sleep disorders will be able to do so on a more flexible and time-efficient manner. The quicker that a diagnosis can be achieved, the more time can then be spent on treating the condition.  There is also a consequent reduction in the amount of inconvenience to the lives of the patient.

This is a good thing for a number of reasons, not least of which is the face that it is now seen as less of a hassle by both physicians and patients. If you think you or your partner might suffer from this condition, there is now less and less of an excuse to get it checked out.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Apnea Is Getting Easier To Treat At Home

There’s a lot of stories about how snoring is a bad thing, but in the interests of balance, here’s a story about how snoring saved someone’s life!

This was a house fire in Omaha, US, where Kenneth Fox, a local police officer who answered a general distress call whilst out on a routine patrol found himself playing the role of hero. On hearing a passer-by say that a man was trapped in the basement, Fox entered the building (which by this point was filled with smoke) and then managed to locate the bedroom of the homeowner, 54 year-old Emmanuel Harvey.  He then kicked down the door, dragged the sleeping Harvey out, and pulled him to safety.

Just a normal tale of heroism and daring deeds, right?

Well, kind of. It’s the sort of quiet, ‘just-doing my job’ heroic action that any good police officer will do for the citizens they are charged to protect, but there’s a detail we maybe have to think about.

The house was filled with smoke. How did Fox locate Harvey in his room?

He followed the sound of Harvey’s snoring.

That’s right, this man was snoring so loud that he could be heard above a raging inferno. The fact that he was snoring that loudly meant the difference between life and death for this slumbering citizen.  That’s quite impressive levels of volume, to say the least!

So what is the point to this?

Let’s think for a second about how loud Harvey’s snoring would have to be. It was so loud it was heard through a door,  above the crackling of flames.  I wouldn’t want to put a decibel figure on it, but it’s got to be fairly high.

Now, ask yourself, if you were lying in bed next to someone who snored like that, would you be able to get to sleep?

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Life Saving Snoring!

We’ve dealt with Sleep Apnea, its symptoms, causes and treatment, extensively in previous articles here, but today we’re going to turn to a similar condition, which is starting to attract some clinical attention- Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome.

This is a medical condition which has only recently  been identified, and shares many common features with Sleep Apnea. It is primarily a narrowing of the upper breathing passages, leading to increased air pressure and difficulty in breathing during sleep. Like Sleep Apnea, it can be caused by factors such as obesity, or relaxation of the soft tissues in the throat, nose and mouth. Similarly, this can lead to interruptions to the sleeping cycle, and a reduction in the quality of sleep. As a result, a sufferer may find themselves afflicted by excessive daytime sleepiness, and a variety of other problems, such as high blood pressure and hypertension.

Where it differs from Sleep Apnea is that in UARS, the airways never completely close up. This means you don’t get the distinctive interruptions to breathing and choking sounds, followed by loud snores that a Sleep Apnea sufferer will display. This is all well and good for one’s partner, of course, but it does mean that UARS is something of a silent problem- a sufferer will tend to snore, but it can be overlooked as just ‘normal’ snoring.

If you are getting some of the problems described, then you find you may need to be treated in the same way- with a CPAP machine, by taking steps to lose weight, and to strengthen the tissues of the breathing passages.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

A Variation on Sleep Apnea- Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome