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Snoring is No Laughing Matter

As innocent children armed with our trusty toolbox of crayons and markers, we often depicted a snoring person as someone lying in bed with a series of “Z’s” casually emerging from a peacefully sleeping body. 

However, what we neglected to draw – and again, rather innocently – was the severe underlying damage that was occurring in that ordinary picture. 

The Damage is Far-Reaching

Damage to whom?  Well, damage to at least one person, and potentially many more.  Primarily, snoring has the very real potential of causing health damage to the snorer him or herself. 

This damage can range from relatively mild sleep disturbances, to outright fatal Sleep Apnea (described further in this book).  Indeed, when looked at under this light, those innocent Z’s in our childhood drawings don’t seem quite so harmless, anymore.

Yet is that where the suffering ends -- with the snorer?  Hardly; and this is where the dilemma of snoring – and it is indeed a dilemma – takes on an added hue of suffering and misery. 

To understand this in its painful clarity, let’s return quickly to that childhood drawing of the sleeping person (usually a man) slumbering away after a hard day of work, possibly dreaming about something pleasant, as Z’s floated up from his peaceful, sleeping body. 

Now, how many of us took the time to draw the person trying to sleep next to that snoring partner? Hardly any of us, I would venture to presume, took the time to accurately depict the total anguish that the non-snoring partner of a snorer undergoes on a nightly basis. 

But really, that’s where a great deal of snoring-related suffering is contained: in the life of someone trying to live (and love!) a snorer.  We’ll take a deeper look at the tragic dilemma faced by these people later on in this book.

Snoring must be Solved!

Of course, non snorers who have valiantly slept in the same bed, or even in the same house, as a chronic snorer know precisely how severe this problem is, and they don’t require any convincing that snoring is a problem that requires a solution! 

Yet there are some, perhaps, who haven’t yet experienced the true violence of living with a snorer; and for those people, I humbly invite you to try sleeping with any of the following devices; all of which have been ranked as emitting the same or fewer decibels than the average snorer:

ð An operational lawn mower (and not the super-quiet luxury kind, either)

ð An industrial vacuum cleaner (the kind that picks up nails and glass!)

ð A running motorcycle (these things have no muffler, really, and you can hear them from blocks away!)

ð A passing jet (the kind that wakes up babies, scares cats, and sets off car alarms)

ð An operational chain saw (hopefully you haven’t actually slept while one of these things are operating…unless you were a horror movie actor)

ð A blender, food processor, or hair dryer (not one; all three at once!)

The Noise is Often NOT Temporary!

And remember, please: we aren’t talking simply hearing these sounds and then having them fade, such as what we’re used to when we hear a passing jet (i.e. we only have to hear it for a minute or so, and then it’s gone). 

Imagine, if you can, listening to these sounds all night long; and then you’ll have a very real and non-exaggerated sense of what a non-snorer withstands, or tries to withstand, on a nightly basis when attempting to co-exist with a full-time snorer.

So in a nutshell: if your exposure to the world of snoring is simply and innocently depicting some happy Z’s floating up from a peacefully sleeping person, possibly beside another peacefully sleeping non-snoring person, then it’s time to update the records: it’s not a laughing, innocent matter at all.  For both the snorer and the non-snorer(s), snoring is an extremely serious matter.

And, as you can imagine, because of that seriousness, a number of people are desperate to end snoring; either their own snoring, or that of a partner.  And as you can just as easily imagine, that desperation has inspired an array of so-called solutions; some of which are effective and safe, and others that are risky and exploratory. 

Unfortunately, because the problem of snoring is so acute – it’s actually fatal in some cases, and you can’t get more acute than that! – There exists widespread confusion and misinformation with respect to how to end snoring once and for all