WHETHER they have bunnies or bikes on, we all have socks and probably all have a favourite pair.
Whilst they mostly keep our feet warm, experts have said that some types could banish snoring and slash your risk of a silent killer illness.
GettyThe French experts have recruited 24 patients, and will test whether wearing compression socks during the day will help with sleep apnoea[/caption]
A clinical trial is currently underway in France in order to determine if compression socks can help people living with sleep apnoea.
Even though it’s one of the causes of snoring, sleep apnoea is also ironically dubbed a silent killer as it’s associated with an increased risk of heart issues and sudden death, experts at the BMJ state.
Many people might not know they have the condition, as one of the key symptoms is loud snoring – which is often only detected if you live with someone else.
The NHS states the condition is dangerous as it can stop you breathing in your sleep.
The French experts have recruited 24 patients, and will test whether wearing compression socks during the day and taking them off at night will reduce the number of disturbances caused by sleep apnoea, the Daily Mail reported.
In many cases of sleep apnoea, patients are treated with a mask they have to wear at night which helps pump air into the body – stopping them from gasping for breath mid snooze.
It helps keep the airway open, but many patients find them hard to use.
The French experts believe that the compression socks could help sufferers by reducing the amount of fluid that builds up in the lower legs during the day.
A previous study, published in 2011 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that compression socks do help people with the condition.
This one looked at 12 patients in France who had sleep apnoea with chronic venous insufficiency.
This can happen when the veins in your legs don’t allow blood to flow back up to your heart.
Normally, valves in your veins make the blood flow toward your heart, but when they don’t work properly, the blood can also flow backwards, causing the blood to pool in your legs.
Participants had a 36 per cent reduction in sleep apnoea per hour when they wore the socks compared to when they didn’t.
The experts said: “Compression stockings reduced daytime fluid accumulation in the legs, which in turn reduced the amount of fluid flowing into the neck at night.”
Another small study, on 22 patients in the US, found that wearing the socks at night could also help.
Patients who wore them in the day for two weeks said their symptoms of sleep apnoea decrease by 27 per cent, Dr T Douglas Bradley and colleagues report in Sleep Medicine.
Do you have sleep apnoea?
The NHS states that it can be hard to tell if you have sleep aponoea.
For this reason, guidance states it might be useful for you to ask someone to stay with you while you sleep so they can check for some of the below symptoms.
You might have sleep apnoea if:
breathing stopping and startingmaking gasping, snorting or choking noiseswaking up a lotloud snoring
During the day you may also feel very tired, find it hard to concentrate, have mood swings and have a headache when you wake up.
If you think you have sleep apnoea book in with your GP.
The condition has previously been linked to blood clots and a loss of brain power with age, experts at Uppsala University in Sweden said.