My dad was a big snorer. This may not mean that my snoring is inherited. Once, he told me, he awoke on a train to find all the other passengers cowering at the other end of the compartment because of the incredible racket he was making. This, you may say, sounds fanciful, but you never heard him snore. One night, while he snored in an armchair, my mother – furious at the noise – crept behind him with a pair of scissors. She cut off his Bobby Charlton comb-over, a long thread of hair that measured more than 12 inches and, until it was (rightly) nipped, had been known to flap unbecomingly in the Midlands breeze. He was furious, like Black Country version of Samson to my mother’s Delilah. But, to be fair to my mother, you snooze, you lose. What’s more, when my dad snored in bed, it was my mother who would get up in the night and crash in the spare room. She self-banished, which seems unfair.
Both my parents are dead, so I will never know if my dad’s snoring was accompanied by twitching, but mine certainly is. It has lacerated sheets, creeped out my wife and makes me feel ashamed when in the morning I learn what I’ve been doing. What is going on? “Snoring and sleep apnea can cause periodic limb movement during sleep (PLMS), which is involuntary twitching of the lower legs or ankles while you’re asleep,” Surda says. “This is because snoring can cause these movements as part of the arousal process, which is when there is a change in brainwave activity as we shift from a deep to light sleep stage.” How sad: I remember when a night-time arousal process meant something different.
Why, my wife wonders, don’t snorers wake themselves up? Why do they wake everybody else up nearby but not themselves? Is it because they’re selfish? It is, isn’t it? “When we sleep, we can still hear, but our decision-making processes are different from when we are awake and our brain filters out sounds that aren’t important, letting us sleep through background noise,” Surda explains. “People do wake up from particularly loud snores, but this will only be for a brief moment before going back to a deep sleep.” Put that way, I sound quite the selfish clod.
The number of snoring victims – most, I suspect, women – has risen considerably since 1975 because, Surda points out, since that year the worldwide level of obesity has nearly tripled. “Generally speaking, it might be said that our stressful, busy lifestyles, which can have a negative on the quality of sleep, have made snoring more and more common. Stressed people often rely on unhealthy lifestyles to cope, such as overeating. Obesity can mean that we hold an increased level of fat in our neck, which restricts our airways and can lead to snoring.”
For a long time, I’ve struggled to sort out my snoring problem. Like millions of others, I’m not sure what to do. I’m not especially overweight, not unusually stressed and I have no problem sleeping – I’m not sure what’s wrong with me but I really want to overcome the problem. That said, I’ve balked at some remedies. My brother-in-law wears a continuous positive airway pressure (Cpap) machine at night to reduce the impact of his sleep apnoea. But I am not at all convinced I have sleep apnoea (a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts at night and whose symptoms include feeling tired after a good night’s sleep). Moreover, the Cpap machine costs nearly £500 and the acronym worries me. It’s one diagonal line from being a Crap machine, and nobody wants that. Plus, even though it supplies much-needed nocturnal oxygen, it looks ridiculous.
Instead, I’ve experimented with lots of other remedies. The first involved sleeping on my side. “Sleeping on your back can cause you to snore, and so laying on your side is
always advised for a better night’s sleep,” counsels Surda. “Laying a pillow or wedge behind you can be a good prompt for your body to remain in that position, if you tend to move or roll over a lot in your sleep.” Easier said than done: I would start sleeping on my side, but within a few hours be on my back again, pillows notwithstanding, snoring loudly until my wife shook me awake. Also, the sleeping-on-the-side remedy became untenable when I had another problem associated with getting older: last year, I had an eye operation for a detached retina that required I sleep face down. As a result I spent several nights snoring loudly into the mattress. Not a good look. Or indeed a good sound. On the plus side, my eyesight recovered even if my snoring, if anything, got worse.
On YouTube, there is a channel called Asian Zen Lullabies that promises not just to solve sleep problems but also to stop those who fall asleep to its soothing sounds from snoring. It didn’t work for me. But then again, I have no trouble falling asleep, be it to a soundtrack of Napalm Death or Radio 3’s Night Tracks. I’ve even recorded myself snoring and played that back at bedtime. It put me right to sleep, but did it stop me snoring? Have a guess.
I also tried menthol strips that you place on the roof of your mouth before you fall asleep. The idea is they dissolve as you doze, open up the air passageways and stop one snoring. But for the minty fresh breath, I might just as well have poured the money down the toilet.
I tried £18.50 plastic nostril inserts, carefully adjusting them in my nose last thing at night, and washing the mucus from them each morning. These nasal dilators are hailed by Cannon for reducing the incidence of snoring by 75%. Sadly, I’m in the incorrigible 25% and my wife is very much not among the 73% of users’ partners who reported a reduction in snoring severity. Nor did the £19.95 Rhynil anti-snoring throat spray work for me, despite boasting astringent properties from some rare leaves that purportedly help reduce palatal flutter.
I even filled in a questionnaire by the British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Association. No, I don’t smoke. Yes, my BMI is higher post-lockdown, but whose isn’t? I scarcely drink alcohol. I exercise regularly. Yes, I do have a beard. Hold on. What has a beard got to do with it? The only answer I’ve been able to find is that some snoring men grow beards to conceal weak or double chins. Both of these anatomical variants increases the odds of having sleep apnoea. My beard, more like George Michael stubble than Darwin’s, was not grown to hide these shortcomings.
The findings of this questionnaire? I don’t have nasal abnormalities, I don’t grind my teeth and I sometimes sleep with my mouth slightly open. I should lose a little weight. Plus, finally, a diagnosis. “Your snoring is most likely caused by a vibration at the base of the tongue and mouth breathing during sleep.” The solution? Purchasing a Tomed SomnoGuard 3 for £47.99. “This new version of the simple one-piece boil and bite Mandibular Advancement Device (MAD) … ” goes the blurb. What now?
And yet I bought one, put it in boiled water like a sachet of cod and parsley sauce from the 1970s, then placed it in my mouth, like a boxer before the bell rings. Then I moved my lower jaw 5mm forwards as instructed, bit down hard and pressed the plastic firmly against my teeth to create a custom-moulded fit. The aim? To move the jaw forward to open up partially closed airways and stop me snoring. The result? In the mirror, I looked more neanderthal than ever. Oh yes, and I still snore.