Stop Snoring

While the exact mechanics and nature of sleep is not fully understood then, all this makes it crystal clear that we need a full night’s sleep in order to function properly and be at our most productive. This becomes even more important if we have a big event the next day such as an exam or a presentation, making sleep a very important life skill.

If you snore then, suffer from apnea, struggle with insomnia, or have another sleeping disorder that means you get less good quality sleep than you normally would, then you should look into treating your condition as soon as possible and getting medical intervention if possible.

For those who don’t have any sleeping problems – count yourselves lucky – but don’t then take your sleeping for granted. Ensure that the environment your bed is in is as conducive to a good night’s sleep as possible – as dark and as quiet as is possible, and meanwhile prioritise sleep over other things to ensure that you get at least 6 hours a night with 8 being the ideal target. If you do struggle sleeping, remember that just lying down and resting is still better than staying constantly active.

Mood is also seriously affected by lack of sleep, and it is common to be short with your colleagues, family and friends if you haven’t had enough sleep. This can cause you to say things that you might not otherwise or have small outbursts and can result in arguments and damaged relationships – particularly if it something that persists for an extended period of time.

During sleep our body also repairs a lot of the damage that happens to it during the day. For children this is when they grow, due to the increased production of ‘growth hormone’. For adults that same hormone causes the repair of wounds and other general ‘maintenance jobs’ around the body. Sleeping is considered an ‘anabolic’ state, where the body is being built, whereas being awake is considered a ‘catabolic’ state, where we burn our fats for energy and use it to work our muscles. If you don’t sleep properly then this will become evident in flaky skin, lack of muscle, damaged hair and the persistence of wounds that should have healed. In this sense it is not just our mind and our ability to perform and think that will be affected by a loss of sleep.

Someone who hasn’t had any proper sleep will find that their memory is effected and that they can’t lay down memories as well as they normally would. This can then obviously affect our ability to reason and do maths and may cause us to be less productive at work or school. Similarly, when we sleep we ‘cement’ the memories we’ve had in the day, and for this reason lack of sleep can affect our ability to repeat information stored the day before.

Someone who is overtired can also suffer from a lack of clarity and judgement meaning they make clumsy mistakes. This is most evident in how our spatial awareness is affected, and this becomes most dangerous on the roads where extreme tiredness is thought to be as serious as drinking alcohol in terms of the amount of accidents it causes. This is also made worse by the fact that overly tired people can experience ‘microsleep’, where they momentarily fall asleep for brief moments during the day – obviously highly dangerous at the wheel.

Having a good night’s sleep is incredibly important, and if you don’t get at least 6 hours a night (preferably 8, but for some people 10) of unbroken sleep, it can seriously effect your ability to perform during the next day. For those who snore this can seriously damage the quality of that sleep and so have many undesirable consequences.

Sleep deprivation studies where individuals go periods without sleep demonstrate just how important sleep really is. In the most severe cases of sleep deprivation – fatal familial insomnia – patients will suddenly lose the ability to sleep, after which they will die after several days to a few weeks. Before death however they will suffer hallucinations (which have been demonstrated to be the result of a lack of ‘REM’ sleep – or dreaming – which then creeps into the patient’s waking life), severe forgetfulness, lack of judgement or coordination, sensitivity to light and sound depression and other mood disorders among other conditions. In less extreme cases where people have gone a few days without sleep, all these same symptoms become present, and for those of us who simply don’t sleep that well we can notice it all begin to effect us after even a single night.

One way you can lessen snoring then, is by forcing yourself to stay sleeping on your side, and there are fortunately some ways you can do this. For example it is possible to by shirts (though you could probably easily make one yourself) that make it uncomfortable to lie on your back, meaning that during the night you will stay on your side. How much this damages the quality of your sleep is uncertain, but then how much you damage your sleep from snoring (not to mention how much you damage everyone else’s) is not negligible either. Similarly you could achieve a similar effect by wearing a baseball cap, or other hat with a peek, so that the peek faces backwards again making lying on it uncomfortable.

The other good position for snoring is to prop yourself up more so that there is less gravitational force coming down on you directly. The obvious way to do this is to use pillows to make yourself more upright, and this should counter the effects of most snoring (though it can again be quite difficult to stay propped upright once you fall asleep if you toss and turn in the night).

One of the major causes of snoring is the neck closing off the wind pipe. For this reason snoring becomes more common for those with larger necks, which is generally present in those who are overweight in general. Not only will this cause snoring, but it can also lead to other complications such as sleep apnea, where the patient completely stops breathing during the night.

To prevent snoring when it is caused in this way, it is possible to change the sleeping position so that the weight of the neck is not on the trachea. Lying flat on your back is the position that is most likely to cause snoring, whereas lying on your side can lessen the problem as the muscles in the sides of our neck are stronger than those in the front (this is one reason that you are advised to roll someone over if they snoring in the night and it is preventing you from sleeping well). Obviously staying asleep on your side is impossible however, as soon as you fall asleep you are likely to roll into a more comfortable position.

A good night’s sleep is something we all greatly enjoy, but it’s also highly important to the functioning of our body and mind. The exact purpose of sleep is not fully known, but scientists have witnessed how important it is through deprivation studies and by watching animals. In the animal kingdom every single animal sleeps, and where their environment doesn’t allow for it some animals come up with incredibly clever methods to ensure they manage to get some shut eye. For example, for many sea creatures sleeping presents a large problem, and it is often said that sharks cannot sleep without dying. This is actually incorrect however, and sharks instead have ‘dormant’ periods where they are for all extents and purposes asleep, but still able to follow objects of interest with their eyes and spring up at a moment’s notice (how useful would that be?). For dolphins the solutions are more elaborate. In one species of dolphins for example, sleep is achieved by sleeping with half the brain (one hemisphere) at the time while the other half is active. In another species they sleep for brief microseconds while still swimming and repeat this hundreds of times.

From here you then allow you head and neck to drop – as though your looking back under the bench you’re lying on. Now you’ll do the hard part – using your neck to lift your head back up and further so that it’s looking forwards and allowing it to take some of the weight of the plate. This is one rep – now repeat that around ten times for 3 sets (do not repeat to failure).

Granted however this may sound a little daunting for some, and for the elderly or the gym-shy it’s just not viable. Fortunately there are also some more relaxed neck strengthening exercises you can do that will still have a fairly good effect. Here you simply use your own hand rather than a weight and use it to push against your head. For example then you would put your hand on the right side of your head and then use your neck muscles to try and push it by turning your head right. This can work in all directions with forwards and backwards being the ones you’ll need to practice most in order to lessen the occurrence of snoring. Again, simply place the palm of your hand on the front or back of your head and then push against it.

Often the cause of snoring comes down simply to the fact that the neck collapses and covers the windpipe, usually because either the muscles supporting the neck are too weak to hold it up, or because the neck is too thick and heavy as is often the case in overweight individuals. Obviously then one way to combat this problem is to lose weight, but for even quicker improvement in snoring you should also look into exercises to strengthen the muscles around the neck. These may seem fairly difficult to train – what with not being connected to limb – but actually there are several exercises you can do that will quickly make those muscles stronger.

One of the first and most effective ways to train the neck is with the neck curl. Now that might sound fairly ominous and unhealthy, but if you take it lightly it will actually have many health benefits rather than being a risk factor. To perform this move lie on a weights bench on your front so that your neck and head go over the edge. Now from here hold a light weight plate (no more than five kilograms) onto the back of your head.

For example, even if you were to tape a tiny pebble into the back of the shirt, that would be enough to become a niggling pain that would cause you to roll back over. This option however would possibly disturb your sleep more than necessary and cause you to toss and turn quite a lot and possibly even wake up. A popular option is a tennis ball, which can often be enough to prevent you from turning onto your back at all – however this can be even worse than the pebble if you do lie on it and will dig in and even cause pain. A tennis ball would be better served (no pun intended) in your sleeping shorts, as your buttocks are more padded than your spine. An option that will prevent you turning at all however and still be comfortable is a cuddly toy – soft, but large enough and awkward enough to prevent you lying on it.

Another temporary option is to use a baseball cap with the peak facing backwards. This way you can still sleep on your back so long as you look to the side and this works as it’s your head that causes the problem. For some however a baseball cap will be too noticeable to sleep with.