Snoring Was Ruining My Marriage Here S How I Finally Healed Myself Sleep

I’m one of the 15 million who snore in the UK – that’s 41.5% of the adult population. In fact, I am one of the 25% of those 15 million who snore regularly and disturb their partners’ sleep. That is, if these snorers have partners, which seems a diminishing possibility given the misery they cause those taking part. Some nights in the past year or so, while the wife, daughter, cat and teddy bear are upstairs in a bed laughing about something or other, I – banished from the master bedroom – sadly go downstairs to the living room where I can I snore without bothering anyone. Can I have a boo-hoo? “There’s nothing more annoying than lying there trying to sleep and all you can do is tune in to your partner snoring next to you,” says Dr Ellie Cannon, GP and holder of my favorite job title, i.e. campaign ambassador for a leading anti. -nasal dilator snoring. I haven’t yet contacted the 3.75 million people who snore regularly to make this point, but it seems highly unlikely that they all sleep on sofa beds. No doubt many do not have this luxury. Probably millions of non-snorers, mostly women, suffer in silence. There they lie, red-eyed and outraged, while their snoring companions register on the Richter scale. The fact that I snore is more likely due to my gender. “Men are more likely to snore or have sleep apnea than women,” says Pavol Surda, a consultant ENT surgeon based at London Bridge Hospital. “This is because men have more space at the back of their throats as they tend to have larger airways. When we relax, our tongue falls back and fills this space, but the bigger the space, the more likely you are to snore. “Additionally, men tend to have a greater proportion of fat around the throat, soft palate and upper tongue, while women tend to have a greater fat deposit in the lower airway. This is likely dictated by testosterone levels. Studies have shown that women with an overproduction of male hormones are four times more likely to snore.” Estrogen and progesterone also provide protection against snoring and sleep apnea. Male hormones not so much. So, to recap: men are more likely to snore than women due to their thicker throats and larger holes in the back of their throats into which their tongues purr at night with potentially disturbing consequences for bed partners. Unless I’ve misinterpreted the data, heterosexual prenuptial agreements should therefore include clauses about optimal neck thickness in men. Subscribe to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights. But it’s not just my gender that matters when it comes to snoring. My wife has noticed that my snoring has gotten louder in recent years. Surda explains why: “As we age, our tongue and throat muscles begin to relax and weaken, which can restrict our airflow, causing us to snore.” I am now 59; In a few years my tongue and throat muscles will be, you might say, as helpless as a kitten in a tree. Which is grounds for divorce in my book. There’s another option: “You can do mouth and throat exercises to strengthen these muscles, which may help reduce your snoring.” Way ahead of you, doctor: I already play the clarinet, which makes me a terrible kisser. I diligently practiced some neck exercises I found online. I’ve been saying each vowel out loud for three minutes a few times a day as if I’m worshiping some invisible Henry Higgins. I placed the tip of my tongue behind my upper front teeth and, for three minutes a day, slide my tongue back. I closed my mouth and pursed my lips, holding the pose for 30 seconds. I have also opened my mouth and moved my lower jaw to the right and held the pose for 30 seconds and repeated the exercise on the left. I recommend not doing this on public transport. Again, with my mouth hanging open, I contracted the muscle in the back of my neck while looking in a mirror to see my gingivitis blow up and down. Who needs Netflix? All very entertaining. But despite these exercises, I was still snoring. Could anything cure me? My dad was snoring a lot. This may not mean that my snoring is hereditary. Once, he told me, he woke up on a train to find all the other passengers crouching at the other end of the compartment because of the incredible racket he was making. That, you might say, sounds fantastic, but you’ve never heard him snore. One night, while he was snoring in an armchair, my mother – enraged by the noise – crept up behind him with a pair of scissors. He cut Bobby Charlton’s comb, a long strand of hair that was over 12 inches long and, until it was (rightly) cut, was known to flap inappropriately in the Midlands breeze. He was furious, like the Black Country version of Samson in my mother’s Delilah. But, to be fair to my mother, you snuggle, you lose. Plus, when my dad was snoring in bed, my mother would get up in the night and crash in the spare room. He exiled himself, which seems unfair. Both my parents are dead, so I’ll never know if my dad’s snoring was accompanied by contractions, but mine sure is. He has cut sheets, creeped my wife out and makes me ashamed when I find out what I’m doing in the morning. What happens? “Snoring and sleep apnea can cause periodic limb movement during sleep (PLMS), which is involuntary twitching of the lower legs or ankles while you sleep,” says Surda. “This is because snoring can cause these movements as part of the arousal process, which is when there is a change in brain wave activity as we transition from a deep to a light sleep stage.” How sad: I remember when an arousal procedure at night meant something different. “There’s nothing more annoying than lying there trying to sleep and all you can do is tune in to your partner snoring next to you.” Photo: Lol Keegan/The Guardian Why, my wife wonders, don’t snorers wake themselves up? Why do they wake up everyone else nearby but not themselves? Is it because they are selfish? It is, isn’t it? “When we’re asleep, we can still hear, but our decision-making processes are different than when we’re awake, and our brain filters out sounds that aren’t important, allowing us to sleep through the background noise,” explains Surda. “People are woken up by particularly loud snoring, but this will only be for a brief moment before they return to deep sleep.” That way, I sound very selfish. The number of snoring victims – most, I suspect, women – has increased significantly since 1975 because, Surda points out, since that year the global level of obesity has almost tripled. “Generally speaking, we could say that our stressful, busy lifestyle, which can have a negative role in the quality of sleep, has made snoring more and more common. People who are stressed often rely on unhealthy lifestyles to cope, such as overeating. Obesity can mean we keep an increased level of fat in our throats, which narrows our airways and can lead to snoring.’ For a long time, I struggled to solve my snoring problem. Like millions of others, I’m not sure what to do. I’m not particularly overweight, I’m not unusually stressed, and I don’t have any trouble sleeping – I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, but I really want to get over it. That being said, I have rejected certain treatments. My brother-in-law wears a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine at night to reduce the impact of sleep apnea. But I’m not at all convinced that I have sleep apnea (a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts at night and whose symptoms include feeling tired after a good night’s sleep). Plus the Cpap machine costs nearly £500 and the acronym worries me. It’s a diagonal line from being a Crap machine, and nobody wants that. Plus, even though it provides much-needed nighttime oxygen, it looks ridiculous. I sleep happily through my snoring, unaware that the racket is giving my wife the nightcrawl Instead, I have experimented with many other treatments. The first involved sleeping on the side. “Sleeping on your back can make you snore, so lying on your side is always recommended for better sleep,” advises Surda. “Putting a pillow or wedge behind you can be a good cue for your body to stay in that position if you tend to move or roll a lot in your sleep.” Easier said than done: I’d start sleeping on my side, but within hours I’d be back on my back, despite the pillows, snoring loudly until my wife woke me up. Also, side-sleeping therapy became untenable when I faced another aging-related problem: last year, I had eye surgery for a retinal detachment that required me to sleep on my face. As a result, I spent several nights snoring loudly in bed. Not a good look. Or really good sound. On the plus side, my vision came back even if my snoring was, if anything, getting worse. On YouTube, there is a channel called Asian Zen Lullabies that promises not only to solve sleep problems, but also to prevent those who fall asleep to its soothing sounds from snoring. It didn’t work for me. But then again, I have no problem falling asleep, whether it’s a Napalm Death soundtrack or Radio 3’s Night Tracks. I’ve even recorded myself snoring and playing it before bed. It put me to sleep but stopped my snoring? Guess what. I also tried menthol strips that you put on the roof of the…