How Dangerous Your Snoring Could Be

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This patch can diagnose a serious condition right in your own bed.

Snoring all night might not just be keeping your partner awake—it might be signaling something serious about your health.

Excessive snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea, a serious condition where you actually stop breathing in your sleep.

It’s been linked to problems like morning headache, daytime sleepiness, and much more serious issues like high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack.

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The gold standard of diagnosing sleep apnea is a sleep study, usually a polysomnogram.

This test records brain activity, heart rate oxygen levels, and snoring, among other signs.

It’s painless, but you’ll have to go to a sleep lab to get it done.

Some doctors offer home-based monitors, but they are difficult to use and tend to disrupt your sleep.

Now, a new device may bridge the gap between accurate diagnosis and convenience: Scientists have developed a one-ounce, adhesive patch that can confidently identify sleep apnea, according to preliminary research presented at SLEEP 2017, the annual meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

After testing the device on 174 people with sleep apnea, the researchers discovered 87 percent agreement on sleep apnea diagnosis from the patch and traditional in-lab polysomnography tests.

A separate study looking at how well patients were able to use the device on their own found that 38 out of 39 people got successful readings from it, according to a press release.

This skin-adhesive patch measures nasal pressure, blood oxygen saturation, pulse rate, any respiratory struggles, sleep time, and body position.

The results from this study will be used in petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval for the device.

In the meantime, if you think you’re suffering from sleep apnea—you snore, fall asleep easily in places outside your bed, wake up with a headachy or scratchy throat, or feel tired all the time—talk with your doctor.

Until this device is approved, a sleep study may be your best bet to ID’ing sleep apnea.