It’s been widely known that sleep plays a vital role in mental processes. A good night’s sleep will obviously make you sharper, more refreshed and alert. If you or your partner snores, the interruptions this causes can lead to problems, lapses and concentration and so on. But did you know that sleep is vital in the formation of memory, especially in the young?

Here’s a quote from Rebecca C. Spencer, who is professor of psychology at Amherst’s University of Massachusetts; “When you sleep, the brain replays the ‘movie’ from your day…we believe this is how sleep improves memory. As we grow old, that movie…(is) interrupted more frequently.” This difference means that in the young, the benefits of getting a decent night’s sleep can be enormous.

What do these interruptions mean? It means that we are less able to retain information learned, less able to form decent long-term memories from new experiences.  This has been understood for a while, but research led by professor Spencer is starting to suggest that even shifts from one type of sleep to another can cause a problem.

What’s this got to do with snoring? Well, it’s been noted that disturbances, such as external noise, can trigger your defence mechanisms, shifting you out of one sleep stage to another, and towards, but not necessarily all the way to consciousness. In other words, if your partner is a heavy snorer, then you may be being deprived of this vital ‘replay’ of the day’s events by their snoring, even without being woken up fully.

Just another reason to get them to sort it out? You bet!

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

The Effects Of Sleep On Memory Formation

A study undertaken at the University of Chicago has found a way to diagnose Sleep Apnea in children, through an analysis of their urine.

This was a study conducted on 90 children who had been referred with suspected breathing disorders during sleep, and 30 children who did not snore, who acted as controls in the study.

Through electrophoresis, it was established children with Obstructive Sleep Apnea have a distinctive protein ‘tag’ in their urine, which can be detected by screening.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Apnea – A New Diagnosis

So, the scientific consensus continues to pile up around snoring and Sleep Apnea, giving more and more weight to the view that you really shouldn’t just ignore your snoring, or your partner’s snoring.

The November’s Journal of the American College of Cardiology brings with it new findings about the risk of nocturnal cardiac arrhythmia in patients who have respiratory problems when during sleep. Particularly, patients were most found to be at risk after elongated pauses in breathing, which is of course the major feature of Sleep Apnea.

I don’t wish to be too alarmist- the results seem to show that there isn’t too high a risk, citing just 1 extra case of arrhythmia per 40,000 respiratory issues. If you’re suffering from Sleep Apnea, don’t worry yourself sick! It is, however, enough of a number to be statistically significant, and has been described by Dr Susan Redline, one of the co-investigators in the study, as suggesting that “people with arrhythmias may have unrecognised or untreated sleep apnea, which may be contributing to their heart rhythm disturbances.”

The study concluded that the chances of a patient developing nocturnal arrhythmia (which can mean such issues such as atrial fibrillation or tachycardia) were increased 18-fold, if respiratory disturbances were present. As part of the conclusions to their study, the authors advised that people need to be tested more frequently for conditions like sleep apnea, especially in cases where the patient is at an increased risk of cardiac illness.

The thing to take from this is that if you are a snorer, or your partner is, you need to treat it as something more than just an irritation or distraction.  It’s easy to just write a partner’s snoring off as ‘just one of those things’ but the truth is that in some cases, it really isn’t.

The good thing, of course, is that this is entirely curable. The more we learn about Sleep Apnea, and other respiratory disorders, the more we know how to treat them.  Simple aids can be used to correct the problem at source, which leads to a whole lot of benefit for both the sufferer and those around them.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

More Evidence For The Connections Between Sleep Apnea and Health Issues