Do you constantly wake up at night, wishing you could go back to sleep?

Does your partner often say you kept them awake all night?

Is there a family history of snoring?

Did you have gestational diabetes, high blood pressure or metabolic trouble with your last baby?

Do you have high blood pressure, or have you had a heart attack or stroke?

Lifestyle changes

Watch your weight: Slim people can get OSA, but in the majority of cases, losing 10 per cent of your weight is the best solution.

Avoid excess alcohol: Being under the influence causes your muscles to relax more than normal.

Change position: Sleeping on your side, rather than your back, may fix the problem.

Snoring treatments

Dental devices: These are only suitable for mild cases of OSA. They work by thrusting the jaw forward to a position that prevents the snore reflex. They're custom-made appliances and require specialist administration.

Surgical procedure: In this case, the excess tissue is surgically removed from the palate. This was once a common treatment, but it's not effective in the long term.

Breathing devices: Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines work by keeping the throat open using air pressure. CPAP is considered the gold standard and is the most effective treatment available.

Are you a snore bore?

Snoring can be more than just a nuisance for your partner - it may indicate a serious health problem.

If you've ever been kept awake at night by the heavy breathing, rumbling and snorting of a snoring partner, you know just how frustrating it can be.

While the noisy sleeper may be driving you mad by disrupting your night's sleep, spare a thought for them - not only is their sleep also being disrupted, they could be at risk of some serious problems. Obstructive sleep apnoea is a significant medical illness that's often associated with chronic snoring.

What causes snoring?

Snoring happens because the muscles that hold the throat open when you inhale relax when you go to sleep. In some, this results in partial closure of the airway and causes the soft tissues, such as the palate, to vibrate.

Sometimes, instead of a partial closure causing the snore, the soft tissue completely closes over and the airway becomes obstructed. When this happens it causes an obstructive apnoea. If a person has this frequently throughout the night, they could have a disorder known as sleep disordered breathing (SDB) or obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA).

Sleep apnoea issues

Your airway can become blocked when your throat muscles and tongue relax during sleep. This can completely close off the airway and breathing may stop altogether. When this happens, the brain is notified by myriad messages and it sends an urgent reminder to breathe immediately, causing the snorer to gasp for air. This can happen as many as five to 30 times an hour, disturbing sleep without waking the snorer. Some of the symptoms to watch out for are:

Daytime drowsiness

Fatigue

Poor ability to concentrate

Irritability

Car and work accidents

Prolonged suffering from OSA may result in higher blood pressure and may also lead to enlargement of the heart, which brings with it higher risks of heart attack and stroke.

The choking or shutdown of the airway means the body doesn't receive the oxygen it needs, which causes a stress reaction. This means every time a person has an obstructive apnoea they experience a flood of stress hormones, their blood pressure increases and there's an acute inflammatory response.

The inflammatory system is a key player in heart disease and stroke, and can cause damage to the delicate lining of blood vessels and increase the blood's tendency to clot. Overweight, middle-aged men are typically the most likely ones to suffer OSA, but new research says they're not alone. Pregnancy and sleep apnoea

As with many other health concerns, being pregnant puts sleep apnoea into a much more serious category.

Snoring is not just restricted to men. During pregnancy, nearly 50 per cent of women snore during their third trimester. This can be caused by several factors, a common one being due to oestrogen thickening the lining of the airway and blocking the free flow of air. More importantly, about one in five women experience obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) during the third trimester. This mostly resolves itself after the birth, but new research indicates women with OSA during pregnancy may have:

Three times the incidence of gestational diabetes.

Six times the incidence of high blood pressure.

Three times more likelihood of having a baby that's small for its gestational age.

Leading sleep researcher Dr Carmel Harrington says these complications may be caused by the decrease in oxygen. The breathing shutdown prevents a free flow of blood to the foetus that causes chaos in the developing metabolic system. She recommends pregnant women:

Watch their weight before and after pregnancy.

Always sleep on their side to stop the diaphragm pushing into the chest.

Avoid all sleeping tablets and alcohol.

Women and OSA

Research indicates about one in 20 women suffer from OSA after menopause. This is probably due to an increase in weight. Much of the fat, which was appropriately stored in the buttocks and legs during reproductive life, becomes fat around the organs with an increase in waist size. This alone increases the risk of sleep apnoea. But about 90 per cent of women with OSA don't know they have it. Despite this, Dr Harrington says the sooner OSA is diagnosed the better as it's now known there may be direct links between OSA and the development of high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes and coronary artery disease.

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