On Question of Snoring, Maybe It’s Best to Sleep on It
I recently took a three-day road trip with my mother and sister. Because we’re a close family and hate to be out of each other’s sight for very long, we stayed in the same hotel room.
During the first morning-after round-robin “How’d you sleep?” inquiries, all was well until my sister told me she awakened in the middle of the night but couldn’t get back to sleep, “because you were snoring.”
Ha, that’s a good one. I told her it was beneath her to make an accusation like that, but she stuck with her fable. Playing along, I gave her permission to get up and nudge me if it happened again that night.
Snoring? That’s for over-the-road truckers or the old guys with good opera seats.
Me? Get serious.
But, ever the detective, I dropped in for a chat this week with Joyce Zeiler, nursing director at the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic on the UC Irvine campus. The staff is among many in Orange County now doing a routine laser procedure to cure those other people of their snoring.
I told Zeiler of my sister’s outrageous accusation. Zeiler gave me a knowing look and began discussing the denial aspect of snoring.
“We’ve had husbands come in who say, ‘I don’t snore,’ ” she said. “They tell their wives they must be light sleepers. And so the wife has gotten desperate and taped him at night.”
Most of the patients are men, Zeiler said, hauled in to the clinic by wives. Of the men who come on their own, most are businessmen who snore loudly on long airplane trips.
“It’s more of a relationship-oriented problem,” Zeiler said of snoring. “What happens is that people begin to sleep apart, and in a relationship that’s not good. It gets to the stage where people feel badly they can’t sleep in the same room with the person, but if they do, they literally can’t get any sleep. They don’t want to move, but that’s the only alternative, because they get so fatigued.”
While many of us think of snoring as comic material, such as the Swedish man in the Guinness Book of Records who in 1993 topped the vaunted 90-decibel mark with his snoring, it can have unforeseen implications. A Davis woman was ticketed in 1994 because her duplex neighbor claimed her nocturnal log-sawing violated the city’s noise ordinance. The case was thrown out after officials deemed the woman’s snoring was unintentional.
On a more somber note, three homeless men in Arkansas bashed a companion’s head with the porcelain lid of a toilet tank a few years ago after his snoring kept them awake. For good measure, they shaved his head and left leg, according to police.
Zeiler didn’t have any tales quite that drastic, but she said snoring “absolutely” can break up marriages. She also cited a young unmarried woman who came for help because she feared her snoring would discourage potential suitors. And the plight of the snoring businessman shouldn’t be minimized, Zeiler said.
“Think about these long flights from California to New York and having a meeting the next morning, but knowing that if you sleep, you’re going to disturb everyone in the cabin. These men will often force themselves to stay awake, because they’re embarrassed to have a flight attendant say, ‘Roll over.’ And the other passengers can’t move into the next room. So, if they don’t sleep, they’re not ready for what happens when they arrive on the other end, because they’re fatigued.”
Laser treatment is the latest method for treating snoring, and it’s highly effective, Zeiler said. In simple snoring, the sound results from the air in a person’s airway vibrating the uvula, that thing that sticks down in the back of the throat. Small airway, big uvula can make you sound like a John Deere, and the 10-minute clinical procedure consists of enlarging the airway and eliminating the uvula.
At Beckman, the procedure costs about $2,500 and may require more than one visit. You can probably count on your snoring to disappear, with the only real side effect being a significant sore throat for a few days, Zeiler said.
Other than driving all within earshot crazy, snoring has no medical consequences, Zeiler said. However, she hastened to add that doctors should distinguish between simple snoring and sleep apnea, a potentially serious medical condition in which a person actually stops breathing periodically during sleep.
For the simple snorers who come to the clinic, Zeiler said, the men sometimes describe the procedure as “a Christmas present or a birthday present for their wives.” Satisfied customers have thanked the staff for saving their marriages.
Me, I don’t know from uvulas and lasers. All I know is that it was a pretty rotten thing for my sister to say and if I didn’t have such a good personality, it could have ruined the whole vacation.
I don’t snore, darn it, and if I, uh, didn’t have to use my tape recorder at work, I’d prove it to her.
Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.