If you or your partner suffer from a snoring problem, there’s a lot of things that can be done. In our last post we talked about a few lifestyle solutions, namely slimming down, giving up smoking, and avoiding alcohol and sedatives. Those will help, but sometimes you have to look at doing something directly to resolve the issue.

A good option is to try and change the way you sleep. This is because snoring is often to do with posture. If you sleep on your back, you’re far more likely to snore, due to the position of your head, and the tilting of the airwaves. There’s a lot you can do to resolve this. Now, it’s not as simple as lying down on your side when you go to bed, but that can help. One classic solution is to take a tennis ball and sew it into a small pocket in the back of a shirt. Someone wearing this will then find sleeping on their back uncomfortable, and if they move onto their back during sleep, this discomfort should make them stay out of this sleeping position.

That’s the theory. It’s a simple step, and one which doesn’t involve seeing a specialist, or forking out for medical treatment. But does it work?

It has to be said that this method is often surprisingly effective. The only problem with this approach is that sometimes, the discomfort can actually wake the sleeper up. If you’re trying to do something about your snoring to help you and your partner get a good night’s sleep, I can tell you now that if one person in the bed’s woken up, the second often is too. It can also feel a little odd, and a little uncomfortable, to sleep with an object like a tennis ball attached to your clothing.

This is why for some people an anti-snoring pillow can actually be a better idea. A pillow can be shaped from memory foam, and angled so that the sleeper is cradled in the correct position throughout the night. It’s actually working in the opposite way to the tennis ball- if you’re lying on a shaped pillow, it’s made more comfortable to be sleeping the right way, instead of being made less comfortable than sleeping in the wrong way.

That’s a big difference, and why a more positive solution can often be the best one for you.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

The Tennis Ball Method- A Direct Approach To a Snoring Problem

There’s no definite, one-step solution to stopping snoring. What works for one person may not work for another.  What’s more, some people’s snoring may be caused by an underlying condition. If this is the case, then you’re better off seeing a doctor.

All is not lost, however-here’s three simple tips that you can try yourself, to combat your snoring problem.

Here’s the big first tip; why not lose weight? A lot of people who snore, do so because their breathing passages are constricted due to a build-up of fatty deposits- think of it as the same as one’s arteries being congested. The simple truth is that the more fat you’ve got, the more places the body needs to store it.  Slimming down by even 10 percent will help you solve this problem.

The next one- avoid alcohol, or sedatives like sleeping pills. This is because these act as muscle relaxants, which can help you to actually get to sleep, but will tend to make the soft tissues of the throat relax. This will then lead to closure of the airwaves, and an increased likelihood of snoring. It also reduces the quality of the sleep you actually get- somewhat counter-productive if you’re using sleeping pills, or alcohol, to try and get the sleep you need. What you need, is natural sleep.

The last tip is to stop smoking.  Apart from all the other associated health benefits of giving up, smoking can often cause a person’s upper airways to become inflamed and swollen, which again leads to this narrowing effect, and an increased likelihood of snoring. If you give up, or even cut down, you’ll find that this effect goes away. Just another reason to quit, eh?

In fact, all three tips I’ve mentioned here have something in common- they’re all common-sense tips to living well in general. This is because very often, snoring is a symptom of something else. If you are living a healthy lifestyle and avoiding bad, damaging habits, then you will find that your snoring problem will lessen over time. It’s all about taking care of yourself. Isn’t it time you did that?

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

A Few Self-Help Steps To Help You Stop Snoring.

Sleep is vital. It’s the time we spend repairing and re-energising our bodies, it’s where our minds lay down our memories and subconsciously process the issues we deal with in our day-to-day lives. The quality of sleep we get can seriously effect everything from our physical health and energy levels, to our emotional well-being.

I’m guessing you knew that already. Did you also know that the way you sleep can tell a lot about your personality? Recent research has suggested that there are four typical sleeping positions, and depending upon which one you typically adopt, a lot can be revealed about your personality.

First up is the rather grandly named ‘Royal Position’ where the sleeper lies on their back with their arms spread out to their sides, wide-open as if inviting an embrace. This position is supposed to denote confidence, and a self-involved nature.

There is also the Prone position, which is where the sleeper lies face down with their arms out, crooked, sleeping on their stomach. This is supposed to denote stubbornness, and a compulsive nature. It also implies persistence.

The semi-foetal position, which is an optimal sleeping position in terms of comfort and ease, is apparently the most common. It’s meant to be the stance of someone willing to compromise, and be conciliatory in their nature.

Just a step away from this, however, is the full-foetal position, where the person sleeps curled up around themselves. Someone who sleeps in this way is supposedly emotional, highly sensitive, artistic, and prone to relationships which are more intense. In other words, high maintenance!

Now, I’m not a scientist, but I’d like to add another one- the long-sufferer. This sleeper is bent over, their head buried beneath pillows, which they clamp around their ears with one or both arms. They alternate this with pacing about their living room, glancing guiltily at the bedroom, wondering if they should wake their partner up and say something, or just sleep on the sofa. They are the partner of a snorer, and they are miserable, tired, and quick to anger.

If your snoring is currently making someone into that fifth type of sleeper, wouldn’t it be good if they could change that?

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleeping Positions As Personality Indicators

When you snore, it’s hard to realise just how annoying it can be to your partner. Part of you doesn’t want to hear it, and what’s more, you’re asleep when it happens, so you’re literally oblivious.  You’re relying on what your partner says, and no-one wants to be a nag to their loved one. Love is love, after all. So they hold back, and don’t say anything.

How to judge how bad Snoring can really get? How’s about this example, of two people who don’t have such considerations, but who are still sharing a space.

A prison inmate in Mower County, Minnesota, was recently found guilty of assaulting his cellmate over snoring accusations. He was actually responding to the other’s complaints about his own snoring, which had previously caused tensions between the two for the previous five nights, and had been the cause of a heated and prolonged argument on the previous night, culminating in threats of violence if the snoring didn’t stop. Eventually, the snorer couldn’t take his cell-mate’s protests any longer and attacked him.

This wasn’t hot-headed teenagers or twenty-somethings fighting, either- it was a 51 year-old and a 42 year-old. Grown men, coming to blows over an annoying noise keeping someone up at night. Still feel that snoring isn’t a big deal?

Now, in case you’re thinking this is a bit unrealistic, let’s admit here that these were two people who were maybe a little more prone to violence in the first place. Plus, they were perfect strangers, forced to share an enclosed space, which often leads to problems anyway. It isn’t a wholly accurate comparison between these two ill-tempered cell-mates and two people who choose to sleep together.

Still, there’s a kernel of truth here, isn’t there?

Bottom line. If you snore, and you have a partner, don’t drive them nuts with it. Don’t make them suffer in silence try and find a Snoring Cure.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Ever Wondered How Annoying Snoring Really Is?

A Blogger for the Huffington Post recently pronounced sleep to be ‘the next great feminist issue,’ arguing that for women, getting better quality of rest is the next important step towards equality that we need to take.

I’m pretty sure that if you got a room full of avowed feminists together, improved sleep is not exactly the first hot button issue they’d go to.  Trust me on this, there’s a lot more issues than that to be going on with first! Still, if you back off from that rather grandiose claim for a bit, it’s not too hard to see the sense in the statement that if women are to live better and fulfilling lives, getting more sleep is important.

What’s more, researchers at Loughborough University have found that women tend to need more sleep than men, by virtue of the different tasks they tend to do. As women tend to do more tasks at once than men, the corresponding tendency is that they often use more of their brains then men do.

There’s a lot that could be said, both sarcastically and otherwise about that little nugget of scientific research, but let’s leave the sarcastic, battle-of-the-sexes arguments aside for a while if we can.

Let’s look at the facts. We know that women end up with less sleep. We also know that men snore more than women, and here’s that third fact- that a partner’s snoring is one of the most frequent, and most annoying, causes of disturbed sleep for people sharing a bed.

If you’re a male snorer, or a female suffering from sleeping next to one, surely it’s worth trying to do something about it?

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Is A Feminist Issue? Damn Straight!

Let me tell you a story about sleep deprivation and truckers; A few years ago, I worked for a Telecoms provider in South Wales, and one of my workmates had recently given up working as a trucker. He’d regularly driven from Italy to Wales, sometimes 18-hour journeys or more. He looked like the classic high-risk case for sleep disorders.

He clearly didn’t enjoy his job, and did say he really liked the freedom of being a driver. When I asked him why he’d given up, he told a story about driving home from Italy, desperately exhausted, trying to stay awake and unsure if he could make it all the way to Swansea. As he crossed England, he told himself he’d just make it to Wales, cross the Severn Bridge (a toll bridge that links the two countries) and then decide if he needed to pull over in a lay-by and stop.

‘Keep going until you get to the Severn Bridge, stay awake till the Severn Bridge’ he kept repeating to himself.

And then he found himself at home, in Swansea. He checked in his pocket and found a ticket and a receipt from the toll both which showed he must have actually had a conversation with the person who gave it to him. He had no memory of the conversation, the ticket, or the bridge itself, which was the one thing he’d been thinking about.

Safe to say, from that day on, I understood that sleep deprivation and truck drivers was a major issue. The profession is at high risk, when you consider that truck drivers are likely to be physically inactive for long periods of time, and to work unusual hours, with the attendant risks of insomnia and obesity. Drowsiness on the roads is also one of the most common causes of traffic accidents.

This is why it’s such a good sign that the American Sleep Apnea Association is putting on a conference in Baltimore, specifically devoted to Sleep Apnea and trucking, and that by all accounts there is keen interest in the industry.

If you’re in a profession that requires you drive for long periods, don’t you think it’s time you got hold of some facts?

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Apnea And The Long-Distance Lorry Driver

We know Sleep Apnea is associated with obesity. It’s also true that it can cause all sorts of complications.  We can all be happy that there have been many breakthroughs in this area.

A good example of the progress that has been made is in Bariatric surgery, known as weight loss surgery. This is becoming a more and more common procedure, and involves either the implanting of a gastric band in the patient or the more extreme measure of removing portions of the stomach or small intestines- a gastric bypass.

The aim of this procedure, or rather group of procedures, is to reduce the functional stomach space of the patient, thus reducing their capacity to consume.  It’s an extreme-sounding procedure, but it’s proven remarkably successful in recent years and is growing in popularity.

One issue that surgeons carrying out this process have become more aware of recently is that bariatric patients are at a high risk of Sleep Apnea.  When gastric surgery was in its infancy, this was less clearly understood, and as a result a number of patients were historically exposed to high risk of further complications, and in some cases deaths.

Now, however, the fact that gastric surgery can cause breathing disorders during sleep has been more widely understood. It’s now commonly tested for, and easily and effectively treated, using widely understood procedures such as the CPAP machine, corrective surgery on the airways, sprays, and many other remedies.

Reason for optimism, I would think! Sleep Apnea and obesity are so intertwined that it’s good to know that they can be treated together.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Sleep Apnea And Obesity

Sleep Apnea and snoring problems have traditionally been seen as an Ear, Nose, and Throat issue, but as understanding of the condition expands, dentists are becoming increasingly involved in efforts to combat the condition. This is possibly a symptom of the fact that Sleep Apnea is becoming more widespread, with more and more people looking to get some kind of relief. It’s also because Oral Appliance Technology, a standard part of dentistry, has been shown to be highly useful in treating the condition.

There are a number of benefits to these mouth devices. They’re quicker and less complex than surgical options, and if they are in need of modification or prove ineffective, then all one does is just remove them. They’re also cheaper and quicker than surgery is for patients.

They work by holding the jaw in a particular position, which helps to keep the airways open. In many ways it’s quite a natural progression for the dental profession- a lot of work with braces or re constructive surgery, for example, involves ensuring that the jaw is held in the correct position.

The device used by the dental profession is the T.A.P. or Thornton Adjustable Protector, a device which resembles a gum-shield, and is adjustable and easily customised to fit an individual’s mouth. It supports the jaw in a position which keeps the airways open, and as a result is highly improved airflow, which some people claim is even close to the success achieved by a CPAP machine.

There’s also some evidence that there are muscular benefits- being held in an open position teaches the soft tissues of the airways to adopt more rigidity, and to stay in that position.

So, if you don’t fancy trying a CPAP machine, you might be able to get some assistance from your dentist.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Snoring Help Now Coming From The Dentist.

Dr Philip Low is a neuroscientist working in La Jolla, California. He is 30 years old. He is also on the verge, so he believes, of revolutionising the study of sleep and sleep disorders, changing the way we diagnose sleep disorders and disease, and, as he puts it “to give people access to their own brain.”

This sounds fairly grandiose stuff. What does it actually mean? Well, the advance he’s talking about it the Ibrain, a small device which uses a single electrode to do what has previously taken a lot more effort, equipment and time. This, so Dr Low believes, will lead to almost a real-time interpretation of  brain events during sleep- in a recent demonstration he transmitted a patient’s brain-wave details directly to someone’s mobile phone!

He’s also looking at ways to improve the algorithms of analysis, speeding up the process of interpreting the results. If he can achieve this, then what it means is that sleep-disordered patients will be able to get quick and simple insights into their conditions. This should, then, lead to quicker diagnosis and easier identification of the relevant modes of treatment. I think we would all agree that this is a very good thing.

Another possibility is that this will also open up new avenues in research- the more data we have, the more likely we are to increase and improve our understanding of what actually happens to the brain during sleep, and when a person is suffering from Sleep Apnea, or any other sleep disturbance for that matter. As with any field of scientific research, as new avenues open up, so new discoveries follow.

The future, it would seem, is an interesting place.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Dr Philip Low And The IBrain; Advances In Sleep Disorder Research

Children who already suffer from breathing problems may have their condition worsened by weight-gain around their middle. A recent study conducted by researchers in the US has suggested that weight gain of this type can lead to an increased incidence of Sleep Apnea in the young.

At the moment, around two percent of children are assumed to have full Obstructive Sleep Apnea, and the most common treatment is the removal of the adenoids or the tonsils. These findings suggest that we may have to widen our considerations. At the moment, however, the link between obesity and Sleep Apnea hasn’t quite been as clearly established for children as it is been for adults.

The study, which followed a number of children who suffered from Sleep Apnea through several years of their development, noted that increases in the severity of Sleep Apnea did seem to have a correlation with increases in weight gain.

This isn’t conclusive, however, as the study how this waist size increase may not have fully considered how this could have been caused by a child’s growth. Clearly, further research is still needed, and it it’s obviously no bad thing to increase awareness of issues around childhood obesity. What is still open to debate, however, is whether or not it is helpful to focus on a child’s weight or BMI, when treating the condition.

There is currently a further study under-way in the US which will seek to answer some of these questions, and provide further insight into the effectiveness of current procedures.

Posted by: Sleep And Snoring Aids

Weight Gain And Sleep Apnea In Children