The man almost lost his family due to severe snoring: he managed to recover in a very unexpected way

Stuart Jeffreys was fed up with his cacophonous snoring being kicked out by his wife on the couch. How the man coped with the “illness”, reports TheGuardian.

Photo: Shutterstock

“What can we do for you today,” asks a kind nurse in the sleep unit of a north London hospital. “Ideally saving my marriage,” Stewart replies.

“I'm just exaggerating a little. My snoring means my cat is more likely to sleep in the same bed as my wife than with me. Even my teenage daughter and her teddy bear sleep with my wife more often than with me,” he says.

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Stewart is one of 15 million snorers in the UK - that's 41,5% of the adult population. In fact, he is one of the 25% of the 15 million who regularly snore and disturb their partners' sleep. That is, if these snorers have partners, which seems like a diminishing chance given how much suffering they cause to those who sleep next to them.

“A few nights last year or so, while my wife, daughter, cat and teddy bear are giggling upstairs in the same bed, I, banished from the master bedroom, sadly trudge downstairs to the living room, where I can snore without disturbing anyone,” Stewart laments.

“There is nothing more unsettling than lying down and trying to sleep, but all you can do is hear your partner snoring next to you,” says Dr. Ellie Cannon, general practitioner, spokesperson for a nasal dilator company.

“Most likely, millions of people who do not snore, mostly women, are suffering in silence. They lie there, sore, red-eyed, while their snoring partners register themselves on the Richter scale,” says Stewart.

The fact that he snores is most likely due to his gender. “Men are more likely to snore or have sleep apnea than women,” says Pavol Surda, consultant ENT surgeon at London Bridge Hospital. “This is because men have more space in the back of their throat as they tend to have larger airways. When we relax, our tongue moves back and fills that space, but the larger the gap, the more likely you are to snore. Additionally, men tend to have more fat in the neck, soft palate, and top of the tongue, while women tend to store more fat in the lower airways. This is likely related to testosterone levels. Studies have shown that women with overproduction of male hormones are four times more likely to snore.” Estrogen and progesterone also provide protection against snoring and sleep apnea. There are not many male hormones.

So to recap, men are more likely to snore than women due to their thicker necks and large openings in the back of their throats that their tongues are shoved into at night, potentially nasty consequences for bed partners.

Snoring mechanisms

But it's not just gender that matters when it comes to snoring. Stewart's wife noticed that in recent years he began to snore more loudly. Surda explains why: “As we age, the muscles in our tongue and throat begin to relax and weaken, which can restrict airflow, causing snoring.” Stewart is now 59. In a few years, his tongue and throat muscles will be as helpless as a kitten in a tree. Alternatively, you can practice mouth and throat exercises to strengthen these muscles, which can help reduce snoring.

Stewart diligently did some throat exercises he found online. He spoke each vowel aloud for three minutes several times a day, he placed the tip of his tongue behind his upper front teeth and moved his tongue back for three minutes a day, he closed his mouth and pursed his lips, holding this position for 30 seconds.

“I recommend that you do not do this on public transport. Again, with my mouth open, I contracted the muscle at the back of my throat, all the while looking in the mirror to see my tongue bobbing up and down. Who needs Netflix? Everything is very interesting. But despite these exercises, I still snored,” says Stewart.

“My dad was a big snorer. This may not mean that my snoring is hereditary. One day, he said, he woke up on a train to find all the other passengers huddled at the other end of the compartment due to the incredible noise it was making. "You might say it sounds fantastic, but you've never heard him snore," says Stewart. “One night, while he was snoring in his chair, my mother, furious at the noise, snuck up behind him with a pair of scissors. She cut off a long lock of his hair, the length of which exceeded 30 cm. He was furious. Moreover, when my dad snored in bed, it was my mother who got up at night and slept in the guest room. She self-exiled herself, which seems unfair.”

Both my parents are dead, so Stuart will never know if his father's snoring was accompanied by twitches, but he definitely has them. He tore the sheets, scared his wife, and he feels ashamed when he finds out in the morning what he did. “Snoring and sleep apnea can cause periodic limb movements of sleep (PLMS), which is involuntary jerking of the legs or ankles during sleep,” says Surda. “This is because snoring can cause these movements as part of the arousal process where there is a change in brain wave activity as we move from the deep sleep stage to the light sleep stage.”

“It’s sad: I remember when getting aroused at night meant something different,” Stewart jokes.

Why, Stewart's wife wonders, don't snorers wake up? Why do they wake up everyone around them but not themselves? Is it because they are selfish? “When we sleep, we can still hear, but our decision-making processes are different from when we are awake, and our brain filters out unnecessary sounds, allowing us to sleep through background noise,” explains Surda. “People are awakened by particularly loud snoring, but only for a short time before falling back into deep sleep.”

The number of snoring victims has increased significantly since 1975 because, as Surda points out, obesity rates around the world have nearly tripled since that year. “In general, it can be said that our busy lifestyles, which can negatively affect the quality of sleep, have made snoring more and more common. People under stress often rely on unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as overeating. Obesity can mean that we have increased levels of fat in our necks, which restricts our airways and can lead to snoring,” she says.

All means ... are not good

For a long time Stewart tried to solve his problem with snoring. Like millions of others, he doesn't know what to do. He's not particularly overweight, he's not unusually stressed, and he doesn't have trouble sleeping - he's not sure what's wrong with him, but he really wants to fix the problem. However, he refused some funds. His son-in-law wears a continuous positive airway pressure (Cpap) machine at night to reduce the effects of sleep apnea. But Stewart is not at all sure that he has sleep apnea (a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and resumes at night and whose symptoms include feeling tired after a good night's sleep).

“I sleep blissfully through my snoring, unaware that this roar gives my wife nightly “pleasure,” says Stewart.

He experimented with many other means. The first involved sleeping on your side. “Sleeping on your back can cause snoring, so it's always recommended to lie on your side for a better night's sleep,” advises Surda. “Putting a pillow behind you can be a good cue for your body to stay in that position if you tend to move around a lot or roll over in your sleep.” “Easier said than done: I started out sleeping on my side, but within a few hours I was back on my back, despite the pillows, snoring loudly until my wife woke me up. Additionally, the remedy of sleeping on my side became untenable when I had another problem related to aging: I had eye surgery last year for a detached retina, which required me to sleep face down. As a result, I spent several nights snoring loudly into the mattress. My vision was restored, even if my snoring got worse,” says Stewart.

There is a YouTube channel called Asian Zen Lullabies that promises not only to solve sleep problems, but also to stop snoring for those who fall asleep to its soothing sounds. It didn't help him.

“But then again, I have no problem falling asleep, whether it's the Napalm Death soundtrack or Night Tracks Radio 3. I've even recorded my snoring and played it before bed. It made me fall asleep, but did it stop me from snoring? Guess,” he says.

He also tried menthol strips, which you place on the roof of your mouth before you go to sleep. The idea is that they dissolve when you are dozing, opening the airways and stopping the person from snoring.” If it weren’t for the minty fresh breath, I might as well have poured the money down the toilet,” says Stewart.

She tried plastic nostril inserts for $22, carefully putting them in her nose at night and washing the mucus out of them every morning. These nasal dilators are endorsed by Cannon for reducing snoring by up to 75%. Unfortunately, Stewart is in the uncorrectable 25%, and his wife is far from among the 73% of user partners who reported a reduction in snoring severity. The $24 Rhynil Throat Snoring Spray didn't help him, despite the astringent properties of some rare leaves that purportedly help reduce palate flutter.

He even filled out a questionnaire from the British Snoring and Sleep Apnea Association. No, he doesn't smoke. He almost does not drink alcohol, regularly trains. Yes, he has a beard. Wait. What's with the beard?

“The only answer I could find is that some men who snore grow beards to hide a weak or double chin. Both of these anatomical variations increase the likelihood of developing sleep apnea. My beard, which looks more like George Michael's stubble than Darwin's, was not grown to hide these imperfections,” says Stewart.

The results of this survey showed that he has no nasal abnormalities, he does not grind his teeth and sometimes sleeps with his mouth open, which means he should lose some weight. Plus, finally, diagnostics. “Your snoring is most likely caused by vibrations at the base of your tongue and mouth breathing during sleep,” the survey said. Solution? Buy Tomed SomnoGuard 3 for $58. “This new version of the simple one-piece mandibular advancement appliance (MAD)…” says the ad.

“And yet I bought one, put it in boiling water, and then put it in my mouth like a boxer before entering the ring. I then moved the lower jaw forward 5mm as directed, bit down hard and pressed the plastic firmly against the teeth to create a custom fit. To move the jaw forward, open partially closed airways and stop snoring. Result? In the mirror I looked more Neanderthal than ever. Oh yeah, and I was still snoring,” Stewart said.

Sleep analyzer

By this point, he already imagined that he would spend the rest of his life alone on the couch when, after waiting almost two years, he was finally assigned to an appointment at the sleep clinic, where they promised to do everything possible to save his marriage. To this end, the nurse gave him a monitoring device, similar to a fitness tracker on his wrist, so that he could sleep with it through the night. While he slept, the device measured brain waves as well as muscle and respiratory activity.

Twelve weeks after wearing the device for one night and returning it to the hospital, a letter arrived. They informed him that: his AHI was 0,6 per hour, ODI 0,9 per hour, RDI 5,7 per hour, snoring index 1,7%, average SpO2 97% and his Epworth score 9/24. “I obviously had no idea what any of this meant, so I went online to find out,” Stewart says.

AHI, which stands for Apnea-Hypopnea Index, measures how often his breathing stops and starts during sleep for 10 seconds or longer (apnea); hypopnea - partial loss of breath for 10 seconds or more). RDI stands for Respiratory Disorder Index, which, like AHI, measures apnea and hypopnea, but also measures lower-level respiratory disturbances during sleep called respiratory effort-related arousals. ODI stands for Oxygen Desaturation Index and measures how many times an hour oxygen levels drop below baseline, while SpO2 also measures how much oxygen is in your blood. Oxygen levels drop during sleep due to interrupted breathing. The snoring index is the number of snores per hour.

“At 1,7%, it doesn't sound like I snore very often, but of course, since I sleep blissfully during these snoring occasions and am completely unaware of how snoring is disturbing my wife and anyone else within earshot fall asleep. I am not in a position to judge the intensity of those events. One article I read said snoring can reach 100 decibels and long-term exposure can damage your hearing,” says Stewart.

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When he finally got an appointment with a respiratory consultant to explain all this data, Dr. Nikesh Devaney said the snoring index measures the loudness, not the intensity, of snoring, adding that he wouldn't be surprised if it was 45 decibels. “It's very loud and very disturbing to everyone nearby,” he says.

Dr. Devani gave his recommendations. “A mandibular splint,” he said. “It’s a bit like a gum shield that you attach to your teeth after boiling.” Stewart told him he tried it and it didn't work. “Well, it's really worth more than a night or two,” the doctor replied. “They really work because they push your lower jaw forward and stop the collapse of your windpipe, causing difficulty breathing. Wearing it at night to achieve this is really important. ”

A new device has also appeared on the market, which has intrigued Devaney and his colleagues. eXciteOSA is unusual in that it is a device you wear during the day to stop snoring at night. It electronically stimulates a protruding tongue and constricting windpipe, ostensibly to physiologically retrain you not to snore at night. According to Devaney, the test data from the manufacturers looks promising, but so far it is not enough to recommend the device.

Stewart checked the eXciteOSA website, already turned against him for an unnecessary capitalized X. The device looks more like an electronic version of those throat exercises that Stuart used to do.

“The website has a photo of a distinguished, white-haired man reading a magazine while a thing that looks like an elongated cat's tongue dangles stupidly out of his mouth. Behind him, in a living room decorated in the spirit of minimalist Danish design, stands a charming woman, presumably his life partner. She is smiling, apparently because for the first time in many years she sleeps eight hours continuously a night. I was tempted to order eXciteOSA until I discovered it was on sale for $640,” Stewart said.

“Instead, I'm dusting off the SomnoGuard 3 for another try. After wearing it for five nights, I wake up snoring. It’s clear that this doesn’t work for me,” he says.

In desperation, he orders another device from the site Devaney mentioned. He opts for another mandibular splint at $54, less than one-tenth the price of eXciteORA.

“Perhaps I was tempted by the series of Zzzzs spiraling from the company logo. It was likely a 30-day money-back guarantee if the device didn't stop my snoring,” says Stewart.

“When this mouth guard arrived, it looked and felt exactly like the SomnoGuard 3 in my mouth, but instead of boiling it to fit my mouth, I just put it in overnight. I have absolutely no idea why this device works better than the SomnoGuard 3, but it has been working for two weeks now. I'm sleeping with my wife in a real bed again and no longer disturbing her sleep with my snoring, although the device hardly makes me look like love's young dream,” says Stewart.

“While my wife slept last night, I lay awake wondering if this would be the case for the rest of our marriage. Maybe. The prospect is not so dire. And it’s definitely better than a couch,” he says.

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