Snoring Can Be A Sign OF Sleep Apnoea

Do you snore? Well, it’s time to get effective snoring treatment!

Snoring can be a potential sign of sleep apnoea, which is sometimes tough to diagnose and has serious health complications.

Sleep apnoea is a common disorder, but only one in four victims is diagnosed. Although it can affect people of all ages, it is more common in middle-aged men, according to studies. Sleep apnoea can cause daytime sleepiness that affect people’s work as well as social lives and more importantly, their ability to drive safely.

When your throat narrows or closes while you are sleeping, your breathing interrupts, causing sleep apnoea. This can lead to insufficient oxygen supply to the brain, making you wake up in the middle of the sleep. This usually happens regularly, affecting the sleep quality and causing excessive sleepiness during the day. The signs and symptoms are as follows:

• Snoring
• Breathlessness during sleep
• Restlessness
• Feeling weak
• Morning headaches
• Lack of concentration
• Fatigue
• Irritability

Obese or overweight men are vulnerable to snoring and sleep apnoea due to extra growth of tissues in throat or neck. Children also snore when they suffer from adenoids or enlarged tonsil. If left untreated, sleep apnoea can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Treating snoring and sleep apnoea

If you snore, you can use effective snoring medicines or products. However, if you are diagnosed with sleep apnoea, your doctor will advise continuous positive airways pressure. It is a kind of treatment in which you need to wear a mask across your nose and mouth, and a machine regulates the air pressure you inhale. This prevents the airways from collapsing while you are sleeping. This sleep apnoea treatment improves the quality of sleep and you are more likely to feel fresh after rising. This method of treatment also helps supress snoring.

Know How Your Pharmacist Can Help

Apart from dispensing medicines, pharmacist can do a lot more to help improve your health and wellbeing. It’s “Ask Your Pharmacist Week”, let’s discuss how pharmacists help people

Local pharmacies often provide a wide range of health services that we may not be aware of. For instance, pharmacists offer access to quitting smoking, alcohol support services and sexual health, and more importantly, they promote health and wellbeing. These kinds of services might save your time to visit a GP and help you follow healthy lifestyle.

In England, many of us are just a few yards away from a community pharmacy, which means we have a quick and easy access to a practicing pharmacist who can help us with common health issues. Pharmacists are expert in proper and safe use of medications. They can practise only after being registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council. A complete pharmacy is there to look after yourself, your medicinal needs and healthier lifestyle.

You do not need an appointment; you just need to pop in. They can help you with mild and common health issues and their treatment with over-the-counter medicines. Plus, you need not require visiting a GP. Pharmacists are trained healthcare experts, who can advise you on how to use over-the-counter and prescription medicines safely and effectively. Moreover, most of the pharmacies are open until late evening, which can help you when you feel sick and the local medical practitioner is unavailable.

If you are regularly prescribed medications for chronic health issues, your pharmacist can provide repeat dispensing services; this can decrease the frequency of visiting a GP. Usually, for chronic diseases, you get a medical prescription from your doctor up to a year and then you get them through your pharmacist without visiting your doctor every time.

In addition, your pharmacist can help you with special discussion on your treatment through “medicines use review”. If you experience any side effect, they can offer medical advice or ask you to see your doctor in serious cases.

Your pharmacist can help with common conditions and mild or minor injuries, such as common colds, cough, cystitis, aches and pain, skin rashes and small cuts or wounds. If you have any of these health issues, your pharmacist can provide you advices and medications. They may also help you explain how to take the medicines and how to use contraceptive pills and pregnancy kits.

In short, pharmacists help people to look after themselves and their families without visiting a GP all the time. There is always much more on offer not only at local pharmacy but also at online pharmacy than just medicines.

Pain Relief Medicines Used For Arthritis May Help Beat Depression

Arthritis medicines or anti-inflammatory medicines could help combat depression, according to new studies. It is found that anti-cytokine drugs used for treating inflammatory conditions like arthritis could have a great role in beating depression.

In autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, cytokines (proteins) are released by cells on the activation of immune system.

Experts opine that there could be a link between inflammation and symptoms of depression. Previous studies have revealed that people with depression have higher levels of cytokines.

Researchers analysed the study to evaluate the comparison between anti-cytokine drugs and placebo. After collecting the data, they found that there was slight improvement in depression in people who took anti-cytokine drugs. However, this improvement was not linked to amelioration in physical symptoms.

Experts are keen in assessing the effect of anti-cytokine medicines on people with mild to moderate depression and look whether they are safe and effective in treating the symptoms of depression.

It is important to emphasise that researchers were analysing specialised anti-inflammatory drugs such as Infliximab, and not broadly prescribed medicines such as Paracetamol and Ibuprofen. These over-the-counter pain relief medicines are not recommended for depression. Few studies looked at NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like Ibuprofen and found that they may have some effect on depression.  

  

It is an interesting fact that depression can be triggered by the inflammatory mediators (cytokines) in the blood. Many people with depression fail to get effective results from antidepressant drugs that alter certain brain chemicals. In such cases, anti-inflammatory drugs might offer some help to cope with depression.

Randomised controlled studies in approximately 2,400 people found that those under cytokine-modulatory drugs had mild to moderate improvement in the symptoms of depression, compared to people who were kept on placebo.

The conclusion

This finding suggests some beneficial paths for future studies into depression. However, this study is not strong enough to allow medical practitioners to start using anti-inflammatory drugs to treat depression.