There’s all kinds of hints and tips out there which are advocated as Cures For Snoring, from the tennis ball sewn into the shirt, to nasal strips, to the dreaded CPAP machine strapped to your face and pumping air down your gullet during the night. There’s also a multitude of wild and wacky techniques- tongue exercises, singing, and a whole range of other strange ideas.
Here’s the latest of them all- playing the digeridoo. Recent research by a Swiss team has suggested that this world-renowned aborigine instrument can be just the ticket for the snoring sufferer looking for a cure to their problem.
Let’s consider how and why this is supposed to work. One of the main reasons someone is likely to suffer from the more unpleasant and loud forms of snoring is OSA, which is at base a problem of slack and loose throat tissues, leading to intermittent closure of the breathing passages during sleep. This causes a very loud, sporadic and explosive form of snoring, which can wake even the most soundly asleep bed-partner!
It also wakes the sleeper- the typical OSA sufferer can partially wake from sleep hundreds of times every night, which greatly reduces the quality of the rest the sufferer is getting. It can also lead to depression, high blood pressure, and a whole host of other related problems.
Well then. This much the average snoring sufferer knows. What can playing the didgeridoo possibly do to help?
Well, consider the previous point, that OSA happens when the muscles of the throat are weak and loose. And now consider how you play the didgeridoo. It’s all about circular breathing, which maintains a steady flow of air through the instrument. That’s quite similar to the state a CPAP machine is looking to create artificially. If you’re playing a didgeridoo, then what you’re doing is training the muscles of your throat to do this on their own. What these Swiss researchers found was that if you make the throat muscles stronger, this is a very effective way to combat OSA.
So, maybe those aborigines had the right idea. To be fair, there are a lot of other wind instruments out there, many of which will do the same thing. There’s something irresistible about a didgeridoo, though, isn’t there?
Just don’t play it too late at night!
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