 Good morning. I am Dr. Chandrasekhar. I had the Department of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine Manipal Hospital's Malaysia. Today I am going to talk about a very common problem encountered in many families that is snoring. Snoring is a great annoyance for the spouses or who share the bedroom. You might have heard stories like spouses sleeping in the other room and other family members complaining about the loud snoring of some of the family members. So you would also heard stories, people traveling in train and flight, other passengers complaining and in fact there is a news report that person who snoring loudly was made to alight the train. See why do we snore? Normally when people are awake they don't snore. The snoring starts only when you sleep. What happens during the sleep is all the muscles in the body from head to toe relax as a consequence as we are breathing in and out the structures within the throat starts vibrating and this vibration causes the snoring. Is a snoring indication of a good sleep? Definitely no. Snoring underlines a serious medical condition called as obstructive sleep apnea. What is obstructive sleep apnea? That is because of the relaxed airways, upper airways and the lower airways during the sleep, the airway collapses during the sleep as a consequence oxygen doesn't get into the lung and without oxygen it can be harmful for the cardiovascular system, brain, lungs, etc. So the brain has essentially wakes up, opens the airway and again you start breathing and again it chokes. So this repetitive choking of the upper airway with the consequence decrease in the oxygen level and the brain wakes up. It is not actually waking up. We call it as in medical terms arousal. So this constellation symptom of snoring drop in the oxygen and arousal constitutes sleep apnea. So what are the health consequences? So it can people with sleep apnea are likely to have high blood pressure, obesity, irregular heart beats, atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension, stroke, etc. So it is actually snoring is a marker for underlying serious sleep disorders. How can it be treated? Yes we have definite treatment for that. First we need to establish whether you are only primarily snoring or snoring with sleep apnea. Accordingly we will do some sleep study, sleep studies is done. We establish there indeed it is a sleep apnea and we advise either a medical or a surgical option to treat sleep apnea. The gold standard to treat sleep apnea is what is called a sleep blower which keeps the airway open through a machine. So it is an external device. It is not a medicine. There is no medicine for sleep apnea. Only this machine can open the airway and keep the airway open. So the patient gives a good quality of sleep. The most common symptoms of sleep apnea are one is loud snoring, choking spells during the sleep, going to the loo in the night and when you wake up you do not feel fresh or unrefreshing sleep and daytime sleepiness like driving, watching TV or you are sitting and doing nothing at home. So all these are the symptoms of severe OSA. Yet if you have any of those symptoms consult a pulmonary specialist who has specialized in sleep apnea to diagnose and treat you. I hope this information was useful to you. If you have any queries, unanswered questions, you can send your comments on the question box. So we will answer to you as soon as possible.