Considering Somnoplasty to Solve Snoring Problem?

If you think you’ve exhausted every avenue of potential snoring solutions besides surgery, you may find yourself wondering if it’s really worth it to go through with all the time, money, and most likely pain.

But there are new types of surgery to help cure snoring, one of the most popular of which – and safe and easy – is somnoplasty.

The benefits of somnoplasty will be discussed below, but first let us review the other types of snoring treatments out there – all of which you may want to try before thinking about surgery.

Changing Sleeping Positions

Snoring may be exacerbated or even caused by sleeping on one’s back, which leaves the windpipe under pressure of the overlying musculature. Sleeping on one’s side may solve this problem.

Exercise

Simple muscular exercise can often prevent or treat a developing or chronic snoring problem.
By strengthening jaw, tongue, and throat muscles, you can sometimes prevent your respiratory muscles from constricting and obstructing the flow of air into the lungs, which causes snoring.

Also, obese people have been shown to be at an increased risk for snoring, so doing exercise to lose a few pounds may also help.

Helpful Products

There are many products out there, including special sleeping pillows, nasal strips and clips, and chin straps which all aim in some way or another to alleviate pressure or free up blockages in the airways.

Surgery and Somnoplasty

Sometimes, though, a snoring problem may be down to an anatomical issue that is difficult to reverse without surgery. Often the problem lies in obstruction due to the uvula, a tissue which hangs down at the back of the throat.

Certain laser surgeries can shrink parts of the uvula, thus removing the problem.
Somnoplasty takes a less radical approach, employing radio frequency waves to burn very small areas of the uvula or other problematic tissues, which will then be healed by the body. The targeted tissues, however, will not return.

Somnoplasty takes place in an out-patient setting, and usually in under 45 minutes. Patients have reported it to be surprisingly painless. So if nothing else works, and surgery seems to be the right option, somnoplasty may be your answer.