Snoring – are you a perpetrator or a victim? VERNE MAREE confesses to having been both, and offers some solutions.

Snoring is no joke… it’s a serious hazard to your health, and possibly to your relationship, too.

True Snoring Story, UK Summer 2005

Snorers often don’t like to admit they snore, and Roy was one of them. But his cover was irrevocably blown one summer, when he rented a lovely converted barn in Warwickshire – close to his mother’s home – to accommodate the whole family.

Roy and I slept upstairs; everyone else downstairs. In the morning, the younger folk, sporting new dark under-eye circles, expressed deep compassion and asked me how I ever got any sleep.

“I had no idea Dad snored like that,” said Carl. “It sounded like he was dragging heavy furniture back and forth across the floor – all night long!”

If your partner snores, there’s a simple solution – at least for you: earplugs. They’ve doubtless saved many a marriage… or at least kept both partners in the marital bed for longer than would otherwise have been the case.

It’s been eight or ten years since I first started using silicon earplugs nightly, and now I wouldn’t be without them. For someone like me who has always been a light sleeper, being able to block out noise – from whatever source – has made all the difference.

No more the snorer

Meanwhile, Roy snores far, far less than he did just two years ago, before we embarked on my Low Carb, No Crap® eating plan. (Click here and maybe here, too, for details.) As he steadily lost those now-famous 35kg – and kept them off – his spectacular snoring gradually diminished.

That’s because excess fat around the neck is associated with snoring. According to otolaryngologist Daniel P. Slaughter, quoted on webmd.com, it compresses the internal diameter of the throat, making it more likely to collapse during sleep, thereby triggering snoring.

 

The back story

And now, it seems, I’m the one who snores. I probably always did to some extent. But as I said, it’s no joke – and I’m not laughing.

It doesn’t help that I’ve recently trained myself to sleep on my back instead of on my side. That solved my problem of waking up during the night with numbness or pins and needles in my hands and arms. (Did you know that it’s also good for preventing or smoothing the wrinkles on your face and chest? Like Botox, but free.) There has been a price to pay, though! Anyone who’s slept with a snorer knows they snore worse on their back.

Biohack: Shut your Mouth!

Biohacker that I am, I’ve also trained myself to breathe through my nose… literally all day and all night. Yes, even while I’m out running. If I’m sprinting at full pelt, say during a HIIT (high intensity interval training) session, I’ll breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth if necessary.

It took me a few weeks to get used to jogging with a closed mouth: I had to start off really slowly, running only as fast as the initially limited inflow of air allowed. Amazingly, my airways adapted, and now it’s second nature.

Why did I bother to make this change? It’s because I’ve become increasingly convinced that nose-breathing is essential for good health. Exactly why is beautifully explained in American journalist James Nestor’s groundbreaking page-turner of a book – Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.

Breath was a recent Christmas gift from daughter-in-law Carrie. Interesting story: she couldn’t find it in the Health section of Dymocks bookstore – and that’s because it was right in the front, on the Best Sellers stand. (Who’d have thought?)

There is so much vital information and fabulous research, and so many fascinating insights in Breath, that I heartily recommend this book to anyone who – well – breathes. Apart from revealing the incredible link between the clitoris and the nose (spoiler alert: they both contain erectile tissue), I guarantee it will make you want to breathe differently.

Click here for John Douillard’s concise and digestible review of his own interview with James, titled “Snoring, Sleep Apnea, Crooked Teeth + More: The Dangers of Not Chewing and Breathing Correctly”. This is potentially life-changing information. (John is the creator of Lifespa.com, and is a luminary in the fields of natural health, sports medicine and Ayurveda.)

Here are just a few benefits of nose-breathing:

• improved brainwave coherence and alpha wave activity

• better lower lung gas exchange

• lower, more efficient rate of breathing

• stress reduction and all its associated benefits

• increased endurance and reduced perceived stress during exercise

For the science behind all this, and useful tips on how to get back to nose-breathing, read the article here.

I also recommend this article by the world’s cutest biohacker, Ben Greenfield – as usual, it’s full of links that could take you down a veritable rabbit-hole of information.

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Mouth-breathing and Snoring

For various reasons, mouth-breathing is the number one cause of snoring. So it follows that if you taped your mouth shut, you’d be forced to breathe correctly – i.e. through your nose – which should put an end to the snoring.

If you’ve never heard of mouth-taping, it might sound crazy, even slightly barbaric. Roy likes to suggest using duct tape and mimes wrapping it right around the head several times, mummy-wise. (Don’t try this at home.) But in alternative health circles – where the importance of nasal breathing is being increasingly appreciated – the concept of mouth-taping is rapidly becoming acceptable, even normal.

I’ve been mouth-taping nightly on and off for around 16 months. Until recently, I was using these neat tapes from SomniFix – “ gentle mouth strips for better, quieter sleep”. They can take a few nights to get used to, as with anything. I liked them; but at A$30 for 28 strips they weren’t cheap, and they took months to be delivered here to WA from the US.

I don’t think James Nestor even mentions SomniFix in his book. He uses and recommends a simpler and vastly cheaper alternative: surgical tape, readily available at any pharmacy. 3M Microspore surgical tape, to be precise.

One doesn’t need much of the stuff: I snip off about two square centimetres – about the size of a Charlie Chaplin moustache – and, after kissing my wonderful husband goodnight, place it centrally over the middle part of my lips. The smaller the piece, the less discomfort when you remove it in the morning.

(Roy seems to welcome this indication that the chatting has ceased, though he has, so far, stopped short of recommending that I use mouth-tape while he’s watching the F1 Grand Prix.)

Most people find that simply shutting their mouths will completely stop any snoring. Sadly, I’m not one of them. Sometimes, though rarely, the long arm of the Roy reaches out to shake me awake – while my mouth is safely taped, preventing me from biting him. So, I had to go back to the drawing board, i.e. to DuckDuckGo. (Why I use now DuckDuckGo instead of Google is explained here, here and here.)

Anti-snoring Exercises

According to this advice online, snoring despite a shut mouth might indicate a problem with tongue positioning. (On the other hand, snoring with an open mouth indicates a throat problem.)

It suggests the following exercises to strengthen the upper respiratory tract in just 30 minutes a day: repeating the five vowels A, E, I, O and U increasingly loudly and quickly; performing a tongue slide exercise; working out the jaw with a jaw slide; pursing and closing the lips; and singing out loud.

Then there are exercises for the throat. Chin presses for your throat muscles, sipping through a straw, opening up and saying “Aah” and more.

Do they work? As I’ve just started, it’s too soon to say… but I’ll keep you posted. And if anyone has any other biohacks to suggest, let me know!