How do you know if you snore? Think about it. You snore when you're asleep. When you're asleep you don't have a clue what you're doing. So how do you know if you snore? Certainly the person in the bed beside you, unless you sleep alone, knows if you snore or not. And most often they'll let you know with an elbow to the head or a knee to the ribs. And then you wake up suddenly thinking that either the house has been robbed or you've just had an accident. The culprit in the meantime goes back to sleep.

Snoring. One of the most annoying problems. Most people think it's just that, annoying. The truth of the matter is that snoring can actually be a symptom of a more serious condition.

So what exactly DOES cause snoring?

Modern medical science has discovered that snoring is caused by physical obstructive breathing during sleep. This obstruction occurs when the muscles of the palate, the uvula, and sometimes the tonsils relax during deep sleep, and act as vibrating noisemakers when the air of breathing moves across them. Snoring can also be caused or worsened by excessive bulkiness of tissue in the back of the throat as it narrows into the airways.

So is all this just a big noise maker or is this serious?

Aside from the unpleasant noise that can disrupt your family life by preventing other members of the family from sleeping, snoring itself also can disrupt the sleep of the snorer himself and can be a sign of a more serious problem called sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a condition where the person sleeping actually stops breathing many times during the night. This condition can be serious enough to actually lead to death if not treated.

However, most symptoms of snoring are not that serious. Still it is something that many people seek cures for because of the problems they cause for those around them.

So just how is snoring cured or treated?

Actually there are a variety of snoring cures ranging from sewing a tennis ball into a snorer's pyjama back to electric shock mechanisms that jolt the snorer during the night. That's got to be annoying in itself. Most of these remedies are based on some sort of sleep behaviour modification. The theory behind this is that the person can be trained, kind of like a dog, not to snore. Unfortunately there is no medical evidence to show that any of these techniques work, other than to keep the snorer awake.

Oddly if you take a look around the Internet you will find dozens, if not hundreds of so called cures for snoring. One of the most popular is Sleep Wizard which they say will cure your snoring in 30 days. Sleep wizard is kind of a mask that fits around your head and jaw. Again, there is no medical evidence to support these claims.

Strange that we can cure many types of cancer but can't find a cure for snoring. Hopefully one day a cure will be found so that husbands don't have to constantly sleep on the living room sofa.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Snoring