subject: Snoring Remedies - What You Must Tell Your Doctor [print this page] Ideally, every family doctor must ask his or her patients if they are experiencing any form sleeping problems like snoring. Unfortunately, the reality is really far from this.
My suggestion is to be proactive and tell your physician about your snoring problems if any. For him to have a better and faster medical evaluation, I suggest you prepare the following information listed below and solicit the help of your family members particularly your partner. Remember, snoring not only affects you but also your loved ones.
Snoring frequency. Ask the help of your partner or family member to check if you're snoring on most nights or only under specific instances or situations. Some people only snore when they had too much alcohol consumption or when they are taking medication like sleeping pills, tranquilizers or antihistamine.
Daytime sleepiness. Snoring hinders your body from getting the right level of oxygen in your blood. The negative impact is that your body cannot function fully well the following morning. Failure to do so results in lack of focus, mood swing or slight depression, morning headaches, tiredness and even low sex drive. List down all the regular problems you're experiencing and it might be attributed to your snoring problems.
Loudness. Snoring can be loud enough to wake up the whole family in the house and sometimes only your partner. Ask your family members for their honest assessment to give you an accurate measure of your loudness.
History of snoring. Try to remember the first time someone complained about your loud snoring and relate it to changes or circumstances that happened to you. It might be because you've gained weight or started taking medications. This will give your family doctor a starting point. If you're not sure, better not to present this info for it might cause more problems.
Breathing problems. Is your snoring associated with breathing problems such as snorting or gasping? Do you stop breathing a some point? If yes, this is an indicator that you might have sleep apnea as well and will need immediate treatment.
Sleeping position. Do you snore only when on your back or in any type of position? There's something called "positional snoring" and it happens when people snore only when they are sleeping on their back. A simple nudge or a bit of adjustment in sleeping position is enough to correct this snoring problem.
Snoring Log. Most sleep disorder clinics ask patients to provide detailed information about your sleeping habits as well as your daytime performance. As mentioned above be proactive and ask your partner to help keep a logbook of your snoring. The basic idea is for them to monitor your snoring in several nights. Ask them to check if loudness increases over time and if there are some signs of sleep apnea or breathing problems.
