Scientists explain why snoring is particularly dangerous for women.

Scientists who spoke at the annual meeting of the North American Radiology Society said so.

Our observations show that the mbad of the left ventricle increases in men and women suffering from snoring or apnea. On the other hand, the consequences of this increase were much more pronounced for the representatives of the weaker bad.

Adrian Kurt

University of Munich (Germany)

According to current estimates of the WHO, about 6% of adults and 2% of children suffer from apnea, a partial or complete halt of breathing, due to the fact that their airways are constrict or deform during sleep. In some cases, apnea can lead to fatigue, memory loss and other problems, but people never die of such problems.

In most cases, the development of apnea is accompanied by the fact that the victim begins to snore loudly at night and sometimes wakes up from lack of air. Scientists believe that today, the presence of snoring greatly increases the risk of developing a heart attack and other diseases of the circulatory system.

Kurt and his colleagues have verified the impact of snoring and apnea on the health of the different bades, following the lives of about five thousand British citizens. Half of them did not complain of sleep problems and the others suffered from simple snoring or its combination with apnea.

Scientists were interested in the impact of these problems on the functioning of their circulatory system and on the frequency with which the representatives of the three categories suffered from heart attacks, strokes and others. diseases of the heart and blood vessels.

It turned out that real differences existed between them and that they were much more pronounced in women than in men.

As a rule, the development of apnea or "simple" snoring has resulted in a marked increase in the size of the left ventricle of the heart, the main "motor" of the circulatory system.

Similarly, in snoring people, the volume of blood remaining in the ventricle during the next contraction has decreased.

It is interesting to note that similar problems in the work of the heart have been observed not only in people experiencing the presence of apnea, but also in many participants in the observations, who have simply complained of snoring and did not think that they lacked air during their sleep. This, according to Kurt, suggests that the frequency of apnea development in Britain and in other countries of the world is greatly underestimated.

"I would advise people who are snoring to ask their husbands or wives to see if their breathing is slightly interrupted while they are sleeping and if they try to swallow the air afterwards. If there is no certainty, it is worthwhile to pbad a more precise laboratory test. In any case, you can get rid of apnea, which you can often do by simply losing weight, "the scientist concludes.