Snoring is more than an annoyance; it can be a symptom of a serious sleep or breathing disorder. Dr. Hartmut Schneider, a researcher at John Hopkins, has devoted his life to finding diagnostic tools and treatments for sleep apnea.
The German-born scientist first entered the field of sleep medicine 25 years ago as a medical student. "Sleep apnea was not questioned or considered serious at that time," Schneider says. "I was lucky my university had the first academic sleep center in Germany. I was the first resident to walk in the lab and ask about it."
That curiosity fueled a passion to change internal medicine by shining spotlight on the darker side of each day’s 24 hours. "My goal is to establish sleep medicine as a major part of general medical thinking," Schneider says. "It's not just the awake person the doctor should care about; they should also know how the patient might sleep, or how sleep might affect the disease the patient has."
Schneider uses an example to explain the correlation between sleep apnea and other medical conditions. "High blood pressure," he says, "is commonly treated with beta blockers to inhibit the nervous system from elevating blood pressure. With sleep apnea, the opposite is happening. Snoring activates the nervous system and counteracts the medication. Without knowing that, the physician might think the drug isn't working or the patient is not using it."
Schneider has been instrumental in developing an open-system nasal canella to assist with sleep breathing. The canella benefits are twofold: it delivers warm humidified air, which is good for patients with Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease, and it can be used on children.
"Our invention of using a nasal canella instead of a mask to relieve snoring or assist breathing is most effective in children who have minor forms of snoring," Schneider explains. "Snoring in children is always something that needs to be addressed. Snoring in adults is often harmless, but in children it can impact growth development." From birth through age 14, the brain is growing. Even brief periods of oxygen deprivation negatively affect brain development.
The nasal canella is FDA-approved. "But as with all technology," Schneider says, "it takes time before the insurance companies will cover it." Still, the canella is considered a medical breakthrough and several companies are now replicating it.
Schneider is part of a small community of researchers, limited to roughly 100 around the world, who specialize in sleep medicine. He's driven by an ambition to help people on a larger scale by promoting awareness within the medical community about the complexities and impact of sleep disorders on whole-body health.
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