How to stop snoring keeping you awake
58 per cent of snorers in the UK are aged between 50 and 59
We all know and dread it. You’re just nodding off when suddenly your partner starts up. Rattle, wheeze, whistle, snort . . . You shove them in the back. They stop. Grateful, you sink back into the pillow, only to hear moments later... Rattle, honk, sigh, snort. Until, furious, you give up the fight and take the spare duvet to the sofa.
Snoring leaves you frazzled, whether it’s your partner’s cacophony or your own strangled breathing causing you to sleep lightly or even, periodically, wake up.
It can take many forms, but snoring is primarily caused by vibrations of the soft palate and other tissue in the mouth, nose and throat that become partially blocked at night.
Depending on the location of the blockage, you might be a nose snorer, a mouth snorer, a throat snorer, or even a tongue-base snorer (where your tongue drops to the back of your throat at night, causing an obstruction).
Many people have a ‘multifactorial’ problem that combines more than one loudly vibrating airway location.
You might inherit a propensity to snore, but things can get louder and more disruptive as we get older (when muscles become slack), gain weight (more pressure on our delicate tissues), enter the menopause (losing the hormones that helped protect us), and can be exacerbated on any given night by alcohol and smoking.
If it’s your partner’s racket keeping you awake, the quickest and cheapest solution is a pair of soft-foam earplugs to block the noise. But there are a number of other remedies that can help depending on what kind of snorer you, or your partner, might be.
Your problem could be nose-based if it’s not easy for you to breathe through your nose with your mouth closed. Try pressing one nostril closed and breathing through the other nostril.
Swap sides. If one or both your nostrils collapse slightly when you inhale deeply, you might benefit from trying nasal strips or nostril dilators. The former are thin strips of sticky tape that athletes use to hold their nostrils open (£4.95 from pharmacies or snoreband.co.uk). They can also help relieve nasal congestion caused by colds and allergies.
The dilators (try Mute, £16.99 from Boots) are tiny reusable plastic tubes that you insert into the nostril overnight to hold the space open.
If your snoring is caused by congestion and allergies such as hayfever, a seawater nasal spray (from pharmacies) can also help.
DO I HAVE SLEEP APNOEA?
If YOU aren’t sure whether or not you’ve got insomnia, but you regularly wake up in the morning feeling unrefreshed, or you feel exhausted during the day, sleep apnoea could be to blame.
It’s a very common condition that affects as much as a quarter of the adult population, where the tissues of the upper airway and the soft palate slump and droop when you are asleep, partially or totally blocking your supply of air. People often think that sleep apnoea is a form of snoring but, in fact, it’s quite different physiologically.
Most of us will experience it occasionally — probably much more frequently than we realise — often when we’ve got a cold or have had too much to drink. alcohol, cigarettes and even some sleeping pills can make things worse.
although most people assume sleep apnoea strikes mostly men, and usually gets worse with age as muscles slacken, it can affect women too, and at any age.
In both sexes, it’s made worse by weight gain, which puts more pressure on the wind pipe. The hormonal changes of menopause can also make women more susceptible.
Just like snoring, you rarely notice it in yourself — but that’s where the similarity ends. Sleep apnoea typically follows a pattern of shallow breathing accompanied by loud snoring, followed by, in some cases, a relatively brief moment where you stop breathing altogether as the airway is shut off.
after a few seconds, levels of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream start to build and oxygen drops. Thankfully, this chemical imbalance triggers a natural survival response whereby the diaphragm and chest muscles send a signal to the brain to wake up.
a surge of adrenaline is released and the heart kicks in with a super-strong beat that wakes you up, so tensing the muscles in the soft palate and re-opening the airway. The result will be a loud snort, gasp or choking noise as you grab for breath.
If you’ve got sleep apnoea, you may not even consciously notice these sudden awakenings, but they can affect your sleep — and your health. even if you have ‘mild’ apnoea, you could be waking up multiple times throughout the night. and studies show the drop in oxygen, followed by the huge surge of adrenaline that gets the heart beating very hard, can put a strain on your heart during the hours when it should be at rest.
Other symptoms that might indicate apnoea include morning headaches, a dry mouth or sore throat in the morning, increased blood pressure, unexplained weight gain, and/or episodes of heartburn.
WHAT CAN I DO TO ALLEVIATE IT?
UNFORTUNATELY, these symptoms can also explain a whole host of other illnesses, so have a chat with your GP before coming to any conclusions. even if a diagnosis is confirmed, your GP may not be able to help, but may put you on a waiting list to see a specialist, or prescribe a nasal spray suitable for long-term use, which can ease congestion and thereby encourage you to breathe through your nose rather than your mouth. The problem is gauging the severity of your apnoea. anything less than five events per hour of sleep is considered ‘normal’; more than five but fewer than 15 events per hour is ‘mild’; while more than 15 but fewer than 30 is ‘moderate’.
and you’ll only be seriously considered for NHS treatment if your apnoea is affecting your ability to function during the day. In many of these cases, a special breathing machine (called CPAP or ‘continuous positive airway pressure’ device) can be worn at night.
alternatively, studies have shown that singing lessons can help train the muscles of your throat (see singingforsnorers.com for self-help CDs). One 2006 study showed that regular playing of the didgeridoo also improved symptoms. Breathing exercises can also be useful.
If you’re overweight, slimming down may help relieve pressure on the airways, and in many cases of mild apnoea, a specially designed mouth guard (called a ‘mandibular advancement device’) might be worth a try.
If I could give them out to patients free on the NHS I would.
experiment with different types — they can vary in cost from £10 to up to £400 for a fully customised version (ask your dentist). Cheaper mouth guards need to be replaced regularly — at least as regularly as your toothbrush. Try the Stop Snoring mouthpiece (£44.99) from snorewizard.com.
These mouth guards are rather like a rubber gum shield, in that they cover your teeth, and you soften them to fit by immersing them briefly in boiling water.
The idea is you wear the guard at night and it shifts your lower jaw slightly forwards into an ‘underbite’ position. although this may feel odd (even painful) at first, the guard can hold your airway open and could reduce the number and severity of your apnoea episodes.
If you suspect you have sleep apnoea, I don’t recommend the more intense parts of my insomnia plan (stimulus control or sleep rescheduling) until you have it under control as the additional — though temporary — sleep deprivation could make life difficult for you.