Snoring

Snoring is on the short-list of problems that cause sexual partners to sleep in separate bedrooms. Unless the snorer has sleep apnea, he or she is unlikely to be impacted by it, except for wondering why his or her partner is so cranky about it.

My own worst encounter with snoring wasn't in the bedroom. It happened when I fell asleep in a graduate school class. The professor was having trouble talking over my snoring and needed to wake me up.

Snoring is an acoustical nastiness that happens when your breath collides against tissue that's inside your nose or throat. It mostly happens during sleep, because muscle tone in the throat decreases after the sandman pays a visit. The air rushing past the sagging tissue causes vibrations that can make your sleeping self sound like a drowning donkey.

Another culprit might be a blockage in your nasal pathway. This could be from a broken nose, a chronic allergy, infection, or structural defect. It can either be the sole source of your snoring (called nasal-based snoring), or it can cause you to breathe through your mouth, which when it comes to snoring, is opening a can of worms.

Your tongue can also be involved, but you don't have to be sleeping for your tongue to get you in trouble. Being overweight, drinking, smoking, and taking drugs are at the top of a long list of aggravators.

Hopefully, you are starting to get the idea that snoring can have an array of different causes. Until you determine the specific cause or combination of causes, you will have better luck milking an elk than finding a cure.

You might also have sleep apnea--which is at the Mayday end of the snoring continuum. This is when your breathing stops for more than ten seconds at a time. When that happens, the sensors in your brain suddenly say, "Oops, looks like we're dying!" and they generate a snort that sounds like feeding time at the pig farm. This can happen hundreds of times each night--periods of dead silence followed by sinister snorts.

Sleep apnea is always a sign of danger and needs evaluation by a sleep specialist. It can be a forewarning of heart problems, high blood pressure, and diabetes. It can also cause extreme fatigue and depression because it interferes with REM or dream sleep. Treatment might include a special type of mouth piece or a device that blows air into the sleeping lungs, as well as dire warnings to lose weight, start exercising, and stop smoking and drinking.

As for snoring "cures," there are all sorts of people who are happy to take your money. There are also physicians who will hack up the back of your throat in the name of curing the problem, even though there are few studies on the safety or long-term effectiveness of these procedures.

Why not get a voice-activated tape recorder and a mic to put on the headboard or wall above your head? Also, get a clock that speaks the hour. This will activate the recorder so you can learn what part of the night your snoring occurs. Conventional snorers will often start sawing logs as soon as they fall asleep, while snorers with sleep apnea tend to build steam later in the night, although some will snore all night long. Sleep experts can get important clues about the cause of your snoring based upon its pitch, frequency and timing. The tape recording will help both them and you.

Your healthplan might require that you see a family physician first. Make sure they check things like high blood pressure, swollen tonsils, allergies and diabetes. Then, ask that they refer you to someone who specializes in sleep disorders.

Once a sleep specialist is able to pinpoint the cause of your snoring, research the heck out of it. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you agree to any surgeries or throat injections without getting a second opinion by a specialist who doesn't work with the first one. And spend lots of time on snoring forums reading the posts of people who have had the various procedures.

One snoring "aid" that impressed me was exercises for strengthening the muscle tone in the throat. These were designed by a singing instructor in England. Why not give this a try before letting a doctor cut up the back of your throat or inject funky substances into it? I suggest reading everything on this woman's website: www.singingforsnorers.com (This assumes that things like sleep apnea, nasal blockages, and infected tonsils have been ruled out, although having sleep apnea should be a rallying cry to do all you can to improve the tone in your neck muscles.)

RESOURCES

For sleep apnea, the be-all, end-all resource is
Sleep.Net

For a wonderfully-complete listing of medical articles on sleep apnea, try:
Sleep Solutions

A good site for snoring information, as long as you ignore the ads, is
British Snoring

To order the specially-designed vocal exercises to help decrease snoring, go to
www.singingforsnorers.com