Sleep · 4 min read ·
A dig in the ribs in the small hours, and in the morning you get up drained. Why you snore, and what to change at dinner, in bed and through the day.
If you have 30 seconds
- 1Snoring tells you how you breathe at night, and how well you really rest.
- 2Belly fat, a blocked nose and lying on your back narrow the airway; drink and short nights often add to it.
- 3The remedies: sleep on your side, eat light, breathe through your nose, lose the belly.
Half past midnight, and there's the dig in the ribs: "You're snoring." You usually look up how to stop snoring for your other half, lying there wide awake. You drop off again and get up wrecked.
Plenty of the business owners and managers I work with treat snoring as their partner's problem. It also says a lot about how you sleep, and sometimes about your heart.
How to spot it
- People tell you. Your partner, or a colleague sharing your room on a trip.
- It's often worse after certain evenings. A work dinner, two drinks, a late night.
- You wake with a dry mouth. Usually a sign you've been breathing through it.
Why do I snore?
Because at night your throat relaxes and narrows. Air rushes through faster, makes your palate and soft tissue vibrate, and that's the noise.
On your back, the airway closes more. The walls of your throat are soft and tend to sag inwards.
Fat squeezes from outside. Fat stored round the throat and in the tongue leaves less room for air, and a bigger belly often comes with breathing pauses. It happens to slim people too.
Your evening plays its part. Alcohol can bring on or worsen snoring and breathing pauses, and a blocked nose makes you breathe through your mouth. Short nights and smoking, which can inflame the airways, often add to it.
The noise is the least of it. Each time your breathing catches, your brain briefly surfaces towards waking, unnoticed. If it happens dozens of times a night, your deep sleep falls apart. Then by day you blame your diary, never the night.
In women it can start later. Snoring is one of the possible changes of the menopause, like hot flushes.
The sleep that restores you is sleep where you breathe well, from the first hour to the last.
Remedies, from dinner to pillow
Sleep on your side. It's the first remedy, and it's free. If you roll onto your back, something bulky fixed to the back of your pyjamas makes that uncomfortable. Sleeping with your head slightly raised may help too.
Alcohol only at the table, and a light dinner. One glass at most, and nothing after. Finish eating three hours before bed and skip pizza, rich cheeses and cured meats, which slow digestion just as you lie down.
Breathe through your nose. Your nose filters, warms and moistens the air, your mouth barely does, and people who sleep with their mouth open tend to snore more. If your nose is blocked most of the time, from allergies or your septum, raise it with your doctor.
Work on your waist. If there's a belly, losing it is often the remedy that counts most: belly fat responds quickly to food, movement and seven or eight hours' sleep.
Try this tonight
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Test yourself
You snore mostly after work dinners. Where do you start?
Start with sleeping on your side and one glass with dinner, and in two weeks ask your partner how the nights are. If you wake up tired or there are pauses in your breathing, see your doctor first.
