h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Life, I'm going to talk about it, snoring isn't it

Posted Aug 20, 2001

Well not so grand really, just the struggle of dealing with the assaults of the media on the predicted shortening of life.

Like this morning, I watched breakfast TV instead of listening to Today on Radio 4 as usual, but was still unable to avoid the health warnings. I admit to starting out smug as the ritual chants of the danger of smoking were spelled out, mollified by the latest results which indicate that your health improves within days of giving up, as I have abstained now since Christmas Day 1987.

But then, the expert unexpectedly switched to the horrors of snoring. She pointed out that there is a growing number of people who suffer from actually stopping breathing during the night because their air passage becomes so restricted, sometimes for as long as 10 seconds (I have to admit I have a friend who has suffered from this & has to use a device to remedy this). "Surely everyone snores?", said the presenter defensively. "They don't!", she replied & proceeded to advise those who snore that they should stop drinking, not eat before bed, & to lose weight. Snoring is not just an anti-social involuntary habit, but by starving your respiratory system of oxygen it makes heart disease et al more likely.

Well you'll have guessed by now that I am a champion snorer. As the pink-suited health expert pointed out, many people don't know they snore, but in my case my exessive decibilisation of the small hours has often been worthy of comment by those who have shared my bed, & even those who have shared a ward with me as during the last time I was hospitalised a couple of years ago others commiserated with my other half when she came to take me home.

What's the thread here? Well, in common with many others who have given up smoking, I have put on weight. Very gradually, but inexorably over the years, from 11 & a half stone to 15. So, I make the big effort to lose weight, but when I succeed (I'm an optimist), what will the health warnings be then? Incidentally, I was told I snored loudly back in the old days, but perhaps that was the cigarettes...

Discuss this Journal entry [1]

Latest reply: Aug 20, 2001