Don’t snore your life away

Press, 27 November 1986, Page 17

Don’t snore your life away

If you live with someone who’s a top-of-the-line snorer, you don’t have to be told you have a problem.

But guess who else has a problem? That’s right: the snorer.

Snoring is a mild form of suffocation. All that honking and gasping you hear is audible proof that a snorer is being deprived of oxygen. And considering we spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping, this oxygen shortage “can eventually begin to take its toll,” reports “Men’s Health” newsletter. Research is now showing that heavy snorers may suffer not just adverse physical effects from their affliction (high blood pressure, morning headaches, chronic fatigue and even sexual impotence), but also mental setbacks such as memory lapses, personality changes and depression. Heavy snorers may even be choking off some of their intellectual capabilities, report researchers

from the University of Florida College of Medicine. In a recent study involving 46 middle-aged men, a link between heavy snoring and poor performance on intelligence tests the next morning was found. The findings parallel other studies done with mountain climbers showing that oxygen deprivation and compromised intellectual prowess (principally short-term memory and verbal skills) go hand in hand.

So what’s a snorer to do?

If a snorer is hall-of-fame material — meaning he or she suffers from a condition known as “sleep apnoea” in which breathing becomes so disrupted that the brain must periodically jolt the snorer awake — a visit to a specialist may be in order. For more mundane midnight rumblings, however, there are some less drastic modes of correction. Over 300 snoring

“cures” are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in fact — a testament to just how widespread (and how annoying) snoring can be. But before investing in a music box that mutters “roll over, darling,” you might want to try one or more of the following, says “Men’s Health.” These approaches have met with success in more than a few cases, doctors report.

• Losing weight. For the average snorer who is only slightly overweight, losing as little as 10 per cent of body weight can make a dramatic difference, says Dr Phillip Smith of the Sleep Disorders Centre of Johns Hopkins University Medical School. Excess flesh puts undue restrictions on the breathing apparataus.

• Avoiding central nervous system depressants. The brain “steers” the body during sleep like an automatic pilot, and a brain muddled with

alcohol, tranquillisers, sleeping pills or antihistamines cannot steer with adequate vigilance. In an experiment done recently by Dr Jay Block of the University of Florida College of Medicine, heavy snorers given two cocktails before bed suffered five times as many sleep apnoea episodes as they did when retiring sober.

® Prop up the head of your bed with some bricks. Propping up just your own head with an extra pillow won’t work because this bends the neck, kinking the windpipe and encouraging snoring even more. The trick is to elevate the entire forward end of your bed, says head and neck surgeon Dr David Fairbanks of George Washing University. This elevates the head while keeping the neck relatively straight. ® Try wearing a “snore ball.” Yes, the eighteenth century remedy can help in some cases, the experts say. You simply sew a marble (or something larger) into a pouch on the back of your pyjamas, the idea being that you’ll be more apt to sleep on your stomach, where snoring is less apt to occur. Pleasant dreams. Copyright Universal Press Syndicate