So is the world’s loudest snorer a man – or a woman?

Spare some pity for the spouses of the world’s noisiest sleepers

THE official world record for the loudest snore is held by Kåre Walkert, who grunted and snored his way into the Guinness World Records in Sweden in 1993. his snore was recorded at 93 decibels — as loud as a lawn mower.

But a woman in Britain has beaten that record. Jenny Chapman was recorded snoring at a whopping 111.6 decibels — that’s noisier than a low-flying jet!

A decibel is the way we measure noise, the lower the decibel number, the quieter the noise — 20 decibels is as quiet as rustling leaves; 110 decibels is as loud as an ear-splitting chainsaw.

Jenny Chapman, a grandmother, admits she’s been a champion snorer for as long as she can remember.

Her husband says that sleeping in the same room as his wife is like sleeping in a zoo.

This is how he describes her different snores: ‘There’s one that’s like the roar of a lion, one that’s like the trumpet of an elephant, and sometimes she does that thing that orang-utans do.’

Perhaps it’s time someone invented the world’s most powerful ear plugs?

BUT even if you don’t snore and are sleeping soundly, your brain will be very active when you dream. Dreams are mysterious things. They are pictures and stories created by our minds while we’re sleeping.

Sometimes they’re fascinating, sometimes scary and sometimes just plain weird.

You have as many as seven dreams each night.

Scientists think that even babies growing in their mothers’ wombs might dream.

We forget nearly all of our dreams. We’re most likely to remember one if we wake up in the middle of it.

When you first go to bed your dreams might last just a few minutes but, towards the end of the night, you can dream for up to half an hour.

Several parts of your brain are active while you dream, but one area is especially busy.

It’s called the limbic system, and it controls your emotions, such as anger, sadness and happiness. This might be why we often dream about the times when we’ve had strong feelings.

So, the brain is very busy when we dream — but it’s busy in a different way from when we’re awake.

Scientists think that, during sleep, the brain is connecting the things we’ve learnt that day with everything else we’ve ever known. This could be why we can suddenly solve a difficult problem when we wake up.

The frontal lobe is the ‘sensible’ bit of the brain. This part is quieter while we dream, which could explain why our dreams can be so crazy.

Yesterday, by The Beatles, is one of the most successful songs ever written. And it started as a dream. Paul McCartney dreamt the melody, woke up and rushed to his piano before he forgot it.

Think what you might do with your dreams.

People have always been fascinated by dreams and their meanings.

The ancient egyptians believed that dreams were sent by the gods. They went to dream temples to ask for ones that would help them solve their problems.

But dream messages weren’t easy to understand. Some people even kept books of their dreams to figure out what they meant. Today, scientists try to better understand dreams by using a machine called an EEG.

It can measure what happens in the dreaming brain. Maybe one day someone will invent a dream-reading machine.

DREAMCATCHERS are thought to originally have been made by the Ojibwa people of Canada and the u.S.

They hang dreamcatchers above their beds and believe that dreams will get caught in the web.

Dreamcatchers let the good dreams slide down to the person sleeping below and trap the bad dreams, which get destroyed in the morning by sunlight.

The Bible has many examples of dreams telling people about the future. One famous story is about Joseph, who wore a colourful coat and could interpret dreams.

In ancient China, people used a book called Duke Of Zhou Interprets Dreams to see what their dreams meant.

If someone dreamt about a tiger or a snake it was considered lucky.