What my desperate struggle to stop snoring says about ageing

BY Jordan Foisy

17th Oct 2023 Health

9 min read

On a desperate search to find a cure for their thunderous snoring, a trip to the sleep clinic leads this writer to confront their own mortality

I think of myself as a good sleeper. Give me a large book and a horizontal position, and I could fall asleep strapped to the top of a bullet train. Sleep has been a constant ally, a friend.

When I was a teen, it was a refuge. I used to pray for sleep. Its temporary oblivion was a welcome respite from anxiety and obsessive thoughts. It was a pause—not a death, but close enough to it. Every time I fell asleep, there was a chance of resurrection, to wake up new.

My girlfriend, Allison, however, does not think I’m a good sleeper. She knows the truth. At night, I thrash around and scream. Occasionally, it sounds like my breathing stops.

Worst of all for her, I snore. Badly. She’s shown me a video of it, and it’s horrifying: my thin, wheezing inhalations are interrupted by a wrenching tear of a noise, like someone ripping a carpet inside a cave.

We sometimes get into little fights when I wake up. She’s had a terrible sleep and is justifiably annoyed. She can’t stay mad for long, though, because who is she mad at?

"It’s horrifying: my thin, wheezing inhalations are interrupted by a wrenching tear of a noise"

Certainly, it was my body, not me, that was snoring; my lungs moving the air, my soft tissues. Those are the guilty parties.

When Allison is flipping my sleeping body over and plugging its nose, or occasionally smothering my face with a pillow, who is she smothering? How unimportant is the self to our life when we are sleeping—something we spend a third of our life doing—that it can be completely absent?

I tried treating my snoring with the junk-drawer solution of buying every anti-snoring device I could: nose strips, mouth guards, nasal spray—anything that promised snoring absolution.

Nothing worked. Every time, there would be a glimmer of hope, when we would try to convince ourselves my snoring wasn’t as bad. But, every time, it soon became clear that the only difference was the top of my mouth was now shredded from the cheap plastic of a so-called snore guard.

Allison wanted me to see a doctor, but it’s hard to take snoring seriously as a health problem. It seems more like a joke, like a problem that a sitcom dad would have after getting electrocuted by Christmas decorations. It seems less like a health issue and more like a personality defect.

No matter what sleep remedies he tried, Jordan's snoring kept his partner awake

Why is sleep so important?

According to Nick van den Berg, a PhD candidate in experimental psychology at the University of Ottawa and a member of the Canadian Sleep Society, “Snoring occurs as our muscles in the upper airway relax so much that they narrow the airway.”

This is why snoring gets worse as we age, as our once taut and virile inner neck muscles become flabby and weak.

The real threat of bad snoring is that it could be a sign of obstructive sleep apnoea, when a blockage in your airway causes you to wake up constantly. The lack of sleep—for you or your partner—can be a serious health risk, as insufficient sleep has been linked to heart disease, type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

"When we sleep, our brain organises, processes and saves our memories"

More than all of that, sleep is essential to your functioning as a human being. “Sleep is key to memory consolidation,” says van den Berg. When we sleep, our brain organises, processes and saves our memories. Not only that, he says, but sleep also enhances our memories.

Van den Berg told me about studies in which the subjects are taught a basic skill before bed. When they wake up, they not only remember the skill but have actually improved upon it.

Sleep, then, is where we are forged. Every night, we throw our day-to-day experiences, memories and lessons into the kiln of sleep, let them bake for hopefully eight hours, and emerge a better, stronger, fuller version of ourselves in the morning.

The reluctant patient

So my girlfriend was right to insist I deal with the problem, but I was resistant. I’m in my mid-thirties and haven’t had a doctor since I was a kid. My healthcare subsisted on walk-in clinic visits and youthful hubris—a faith that things will work out and a belief that a problem doesn’t really exist until you deal with it.

But what really scared me off was that going to a doctor about my snoring would force me to confront how I live and its repercussions, and that my body has limits.

It has been a tough year. A friend passed away suddenly and tragically. Then my grandmother followed.

My chronic knee problem turned into a full-blown meniscus tear, dashing any hopes of a late-life bloom into a guy who is “surprisingly athletic.” My eyesight became distorted, and a visit to the eye doctor revealed I had fluid under my retina, a condition called central serous chorioretinopathy. It’s caused by stress.

Also, I started seeing a therapist again and within minutes, over Zoom, he told me I looked depressed.

"What really scared me off was that going to a doctor about my snoring would force me to confront how I live"

It was a year of the space capsule of my youthful fantasy breaking up on contact with an atmosphere of reality and repercussions, all soundtracked by some of the worst snoring you’ve ever heard.

But there are other things to be afraid of besides ageing and so, fearing a breakup or an unexplained disappearance (mine), I tried what Allison had been asking me to do. I went to a doctor.

The doctor asked how much I drank a week. I gave him a number high enough that he should factor it into his diagnosis but low enough that I could say it without being embarrassed.

He figured I had sleep apnoea and said I should drink less and lose weight. He referred me to a sleep study to confirm the diagnosis so I could get a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine for the apnoea.

A CPAP machine is a device that shoots a steady flow of pressurised air into your nose and mouth. It involves a hose, a mask that covers either your nose or mouth or both, and a head harness, resulting in the wearer looking like a cosy fighter pilot, like Top Gun’s Maverick if the undisclosed enemy country were your dreams.

What happens at the sleep clinic

An EEG measures your brainwaves while you sleep in the sleep clinic

I entered the sleep clinic feeling nervous, excited and blisteringly sober. I had successfully adhered to the guidelines sent out by the clinic: no alcohol in the past 12 hours, no coffee in the last two, and no naps. Free from its usual coating of hangover, too-late coffee and post-nap delirium, my mind was unadorned and hungry for answers.

Next, a technician came and asked me a couple of questions, the most provocative being: what position do you sleep in?

I’m mostly a mix of side and stomach, with one leg pitched like I’m doing a hurdle. Overall, though, I would describe my sleeping position as maximum obnoxious. My limbs are splayed as far as they can reach, and I continually thrash and roll from side to side in erratic and irregular movements. Basically, I sleep like David Byrne dances.

I sat on my assigned bed, waiting for the sleep lab to begin its work. “Lab” was a misnomer.

"I would describe my sleeping position as maximum obnoxious"

There were no beakers, or mad scientists, or stainless-steel tanks with anonymous figures floating in green fluid. Just a generic hospital room: infinite white walls; a thin, hard bed that made me feel like I was lying on an H&M clothing shelf; and a pillow that had all the comfort and support of a bag of napkins.

Worst of all, something was dripping in the air conditioning unit, producing a sharp, arrhythmic, metallic smack.

At 10.45pm, the technician began sticking electrodes to my body for the electroencephalogram, or EEG. Created in 1924, this test measures brain waves without any need for your head to be cut open. It is still the gold standard for sleep studies.

The technician also placed sensors on my arms and legs to measure my movement, a sensor below my nose and a harness around my chest to measure my breathing.

I don’t know what it says about my self-esteem, but I found being a specimen thrilling. The thrill quickly passed as I proceeded to have the worst sleep of my life.

The science of dreams

The body repairs itself while you are in the third stage of deep sleep

There are two types of sleep: NREM and REM. Both are required for memory consolidation. NREM, or non-rapid eye movement, sleep has three stages.

Stage one is drifting off: those five to ten minutes of drowsiness where it is hard to tell if you are asleep or not.

Once you are out, the second stage begins. It is marked by slower brain waves and short, fast bursts of brain activity called spindles.

The third stage of NREM is slow-wave sleep. Your brain waves are now deep, long curves, similar at times to those seen in people under anaesthesia.

It’s in these last two stages of NREM sleep that the majority of restoration—in which the body repairs itself on a cellular level from the wear and tear of the day—happens.

Suddenly, the second act of sleep occurs: REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. The brain explodes with activity; it appears to be awake.

"If NREM is recovery from the day before, REM seems to be preparation for the day ahead"

This is when most dreaming occurs, especially the intense, emotional genre of dreams—the ones that are like “I’m on a date with a book report I didn’t finish.” Beneath the eyelids your eyes dart around wildly, and your heart races.

It’s not entirely clear why this happens. Van den Berg’s favourite theory is that it is preparatory. “If NREM is recovery from the day before, REM seems to be preparation for the day ahead.”

When you have a good night’s sleep, these different stages are a harmonious cycle. Of course, many things can disrupt this harmony: electric light, caffeine, a late night out or—as I found out—being covered in wires that precariously cling to your body with every toss and turn.

Many thoughts can keep you up at night, and in the lab I discovered a new one: “I sure hope that when I turned over, I didn’t ruin this experiment being performed on me.”

Another pressure point in the delicate dance of the sleep stages is if there is an unceasing arrhythmic drip of an air conditioning unit the entire night.

I was woken up at 5.30am after two hours of gruel-thin snoozing. The wires were removed, and I strolled home in the dawn light, feeling like my sleep-wake cycle and circadian rhythms were utterly and completely ruined.

Sleep, the little death and confronting mortality

After two months, the results of the study came in. There was no sleep apnoea. I have what the report called “mild primary snoring.” As far as the study could tell, there is no particular reason for it. Ageing, drinking too much, and rapidly deteriorating neck muscles are all it takes. The snoring was simply the sound of time catching up to me.

These were not the results I was looking for. I had been hoping for a condition, a disorder, something to point to whenever I indulged in a self-pity wallow. I had wanted a quick fix, even if that meant strapping a glorified bike pump to my face.

Instead, what I got were consequences, which coalesce and compound and reverberate, like a snore off the inner walls of your throat. There is no guarantee things will just work out: injuries worsen, tragedy happens, your girlfriend gets fed up with your snoring. When you don’t sleep, it takes days to recover.

"When you ate, what you learned, how you slept: these things matter"

My snoring has got worse since the study. Louder, more frequent. Thankfully, Allison and I have figured out a staggered sleep schedule that seems to work.

Also, I’m exercising more, eating better and drinking less, because from this study, I learned that you are an accumulation of everything you did before. Things aren’t just going to get better on their own. You have to take care of yourself and others.

When you ate, what you learned, how you slept: these things matter. The person you are today builds from the person you were the day before.

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