Singlehood. (It’s not a disease.): Part II How I Stopped Snoring Myself Awake (And So Can You!)

“Sknnxxxx!” … “SKnnXXKX!!” ….. “SK…….. NNXXXXXKX!”

Many of you might remember the old Andy Capp comic strip from newspapers of yore, where we see Andy in a sleep coma, sawing logs after a hard night of snooker with the boys, his mouth lolling open, his big ol’ schnoz pointed to the ceiling. Classic cartoonery at its finest. It’s a universal comedy trope. 

Granted, Andy did have a bit of a drinking habit which, as we now know, is a medical factor in chronic sleep apnea/snoring. No judgment, just the biochemistry of alcohol as a short half-life muscle relaxant, causing the tongue and throat muscles to collapse around your airway, resulting in your ceasing to breathe many times an hour during the night. Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, and some other Looney Tunes gangstas may have had the same issues. I’d have to review their medical records.

To be sure, sleep apnea, aka snoring, can be present even if you don’t drink (me) even if your weight is fine for your height (me), even if you’re a high-level athlete (me), and even if you have zero allergies (me). It’s a sneaky, equal-opportunity offender.

To my non-snoring readers with nightly snoring partners – you know who you are. You are absolute saints.

To the snoring party: be good to them, and to yourself, and sleep in another section of the house… at least until you can be evaluated and diagnosed by a pulmonologist. Separate sleeping is absolutely not a reflection on your relationship. 

You’re welcome.

I currently live solo, with no one to shove me, roll me over, etc. For the past several years, I knew only that I’d awaken each morning exhausted, and then annoyed by the exhaustion. Damn. I’m too young for this. Lousy way to start the day. After coffee I’d be functional and forget about it until the next morning. Talk about the Myth of Sisyphus, snoring my rock up Insomnia Hill every night.

Bonus dammit: Snoring never gets us down into the restorative, Delta-wave, later-sleep phase that otherwise occurs in four separate cycles each night, where the body’s rest and repair happens, brain included. Enter “Nightmare Syndrome.” If you know, you know. And no, you’re not crazy. Seriously. 

So, I fully woke up to my own snoring about three years ago, when a visiting friend camped on my couch for a few days. Around that time, I’d also begun to study the various root causes of certain sleep disorders. My own underlying insomnia could be traced back to a very high fever when I was 40, which then fried out my pineal gland – our brain’s melatonin factory. 

“Hey, um, did I snore last night?”

“Yep. Big time.” 

“Oh, for gosh sakes, why didn’t you tell me?!?” 

“I didn’t want to wake you up. It’s not your fault. Don’t worry about it. Everybody snores.”

Color me mortified. Maybe that’s why my mornings have felt so bad all these years… 

He was so forgiving, but I could not override the fact that not everyone snores. I’m a pretty considerate person when I’m awake, but I was apparently quite a jerk after midnight, inflicting my snoring problem upon my good friend. 

I then remembered that, when I was a child, my father would loudly rattle the rafters every night. This continued for decades. Ask each of his five ex-wives. 

Reading Dad’s life backward, I then wondered if maybe his late-onset dementia was due in part to his lifetime of snoring. I learned that chronic, life-long snoring and late-onset dementia can orbit around each other, like two black holes. 

The Google Machine recommended that I see a pulmonologist to be evaluated for sleep apnea. Because snoring like Andy Capp (or Fred Flintstone if you’re a Hanna-Barbera fan) every night for years is a symptom of something way worse: a long, slow descent into numerous chronic diseases, and… sudden cardiac death while not so peacefully asleep. Erph.

The Great Algorithm in the Sky also pointed me to the “SnoreLab” App. It records your breathing sounds all night, graphing the volume of each snoring event. Four colored volume levels are bar-graphed for each snoring session you have over the course of a night: “None,” “Low,” “Moderate,” and… “EPIC.”

Next day, you hit “replay.” To hear yourself snoring, even at “low” or “moderate,” is weird enough. But “EPIC??” I was aghast.

(Maybe that’s why you’re single… Nah, no way. That’s for sure not it. I’m happily self-partnered right now and have a perfect relationship with myself.)

Your nightly results are shown in color, with the real-time, bar-graph readout that rises and falls throughout the night. It retains your nightly data over weeks and months so you can track and compare.

Everyone should give SnoreLab a try, even if you don’t “think” you snore, or even if your non-snoring partner is a saint. The proof will be right there, in living sound and color, at a glance. 

I hit “EPIC” six to eight times an hour. I was basically suffocating about 50 times a night from 11 pm to 7 am for years. The math is astronomical. When you snore, you stop breathing. Then your adrenal glands fire off, trying to wake you up. All without your knowledge or consent.

My subsequent consult with Dr. Z at Sansum Pulmonology fully confirmed my nightly multiple deaths from the SnoreLab read outs, after sending me home for a one-night sleep-study using unobtrusive, strap-on monitoring equipment, to record and analyze the data, like an overnight electrocardiogram. 

My poor adrenal glands were in hyperdrive when they should have been in auto-repair mode at night, trying to wake me up so I could breathe. Same nightly deal with all your other endocrine glands and organ systems – your nightly Circadian rhythm. No wonder the morning exhaustion and drowning nightmares.

I was flabbergasted. (Hey, women don’t snore, do they?? How… un-ladylike. Women don’t snore in cartoons! No girlfriend, that’s denial. Time to own it.)

Ok, so now what? Do I have to use a clunky, noisy, slobbery CPAP machine for the next 50 years? Spoiler alert: Turns out, in many cases, no, you don’t. We have a better option nowadays.

Dr. Z. referred me to a wonderful sleep dentistry specialist on the Mesa. I was fitted with a custom-molded, tinted-plastic, mouth-guard device shaped like a set of toothless shark jaws, with an adjustable hinge between the upper and lower parts. Similar to “Invisalign” retainers, the hinged device re-aligns your lower jaw during sleep, preventing your airway from collapsing and causing that esophageal flapping, jack-hammering, sleep-shattering snoring problem to begone.

My post-device SnoreLab data: Mostly “None.” Sometimes a few “Low” nasal inhaling & exhaling sounds, quiet and steady. My mornings have felt well-rested ever since.

The device is quite easy to acclimate to. Its thin, polycarbonate material is low-profile and the hinge is adjustable to your unique jaw anatomy. It’s easy to clean with a good rinse next morning using a special brush (your morning Zen practice) and then an all-day soak with a squirt of dish soap and water in its little container, until you rinse it off well again before bed (pre-bed Zen).

I use tiny rubberbands on mine – the kind often used with kids’ braces – to keep my mouth more closed for better “nose breathing.” This generates more nitric oxide, to coax your nervous system into that elusive para-sympathetic state – the absence of stress required for the restorative Delta-wave sleep phase we’re supposed to enter four times a night, to prompt our brain’s glymphatic drainage and reset other organ systems.

Even while awake, inhaling through your nose is far better than mouth-breathing. 

Good nose-hair grooming aside, did you know that your nose hairs actually help generate nitric oxide on inhaling? Ask any Yoga-phile. But no Yoga is necessary. Consider it “Nose-Yoga.”

Even better, the device is covered by most insurance and Medicare. Because health complications from chronic snoring are not merely a noisy “inconvenience” that you and your saintly partner just have to “live with.” It’s an airway anatomy problem that brings long-term, downstream medical conditions. 

Moral of the story: Your sleep is a major pillar holding up your overall health. Reclaim your well-rested, healthier self. 

It’s your birthright. It’s still in there. 

You’re welcome.