A Cure for Snoring?

There's no sound quite as annoying as that of a snore; it's right up there with the noise of a jackhammer or a baby crying. Anyone who has tried to sleep near a snorer will agree that the worst part about a snore is the silence in between when you think that it might have stopped ... only for it to start again.

Snoring affects 45 per cent of the population at one time or another and it is not just irritating for the bedfellows of snorers, it can also be dangerous for the snorer. In 2003, researchers at an Australian hospital made the link between chronic snoring and heart disease. Snorers often also suffer from fatigue as their sleep is disrupted, even if they are sleeping in a room by themselves; if they are sleeping in a bed with someone else, their sleep is also disrupted by being nudged or rolled over by their bedfellow. This is exemplified by the fact that habitual snorers often describe an overwhelming need to sleep in the afternoon.

So why do so few snorers seek help? The problem may lie in the bewildering array of snoring cures on the market. There are rings for your fingers that promise to cure snoring through acupressure, boxes that light up when they detect you snoring and alter your sleep patterns and laser operations, lotions and potions designed to tighten the throat muscles and clear the nose.

Treatments for snoring fall into two camps, the mechanical and the chemical. The British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Association (BSSAA) believes that the most effective way to treat snoring is temporarily to alter the shape of the nose and mouth during sleep to stop the vibrations that make the snoring sound.

On its website, the Association sells nostril dilatory (springy semi-circular devices that prop the nostrils open), nasal strips (that also widen the airways), sticky strips to keep the mouth closed and the mandibular advancement device (MAD), which changes the position of the jaw during sleep.

The other method of treating snoring is chemically, with sprays and creams to tighten the throat muscles and clear the nose.

But embarking on a search for a treatment for snoring can be long and frustrating. People often give up after trying one or two treatments because they don't realise how idiosyncratic snoring is -- everyone snores in a different way for a different reason. A treatment that works for one kind will not work for another (see box). But the good news is, if you can correctly identify the cause of your snoring, there's every chance you can cure it.

"A lot of people try one thing and then, when that doesn't work, they give up and think that nothing will work," says Dr Neil Stanley, a sleep expert from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. "But few people realise that there isn't a cure-all and a lot of people try many different things before they find the treatment that works for them."

More recently, operations have been cited as an effective cure but Dr Stanley believes that surgery should not be undertaken lightly. "There are a number of operations that can be done. They all try to do the same kind of thing, which is to cut the flaps of skin in the airway. The success rates for this aren't exactly brilliant. I think in about 25 percent of people it works perfectly, in 50 per cent it makes no difference at all and in the rest it can make the problem worse.

Graham Newman, a retired marketing director, searched for a cure for his snoring for years. "I remember as a child that my father snored -- I think snoring has a lot to do with facial structure and so that maybe why I snore, too. My snoring only really became a problem when my children were young; my eldest is now 36 and the youngest is 30. When they were little my wife, Janet, would be up in the night with them and then she couldn't go back to sleep because I'd be snoring. I was in complete denial about it at first but in the end I tried a lot of the treatments because my wife is a deputy head teacher and it's an awful lot of work, with late nights and early mornings. She obviously wasn't getting enough sleep because of my snoring."