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Women like me aren’t supposed to snore – it’s driving my boyfriend mad
Studies show that while male snorers generally outnumber female ones, the situation is reversed in the 25-34 age group
While it’s frowned upon to try to change things you don’t like about a lover, snoring, I’d argue, is the exception. Shortly after my partner, Harry, and I started dating five years ago, I discovered he suffered from the roaring Zzs.
My subsequent campaign to cure him was an early relationship victory and frequent boast; proof positive that he was better off with me in his life. To anyone, regardless of their interest, I would explain my diagnosis: too much mouth breathing. And the treatment: ad hoc application of my own hand to close his jaw and the occasional hard prod in the arm.
Sleep pride, I have now learnt, comes before a fall – to my horror, I have started to snore myself. Where once Harry would snuggle up as we fell asleep, he now gives up and rolls away from an onslaught of grunts.
Too often I wake up to the morning greeting: “You were snoring like a piglet again.” It is apparently not a heavy continuous snore, “more like an intermittent pig-like snuffling”. It cuts through his sleep and keeps him awake. I know it’s bad because I often wake myself up with the plaintive cry: “I’m snoring again!”
At least I’m not alone. Research from the former Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital found that, while male snorers generally outnumber female ones, the situation is reversed in the 25-34 age group. In this cohort, 34 per cent of women snore at least three nights a week, compared with 31 per cent of men.
The reasons put forward for this increase are drinking, vaping and rising obesity levels. Alcohol amplifies the sedation of the muscles holding the airway open, which, in turn, leads to sagging tissues that vibrate while you sleep. Vaping causes inflammation of the airways. Obesity increases the neck circumference, which increases the chances of sleep-disordered breathing – generally anything above 17in for men and 16in for women.
However, none of these factors really applies to me. Apart from being 38, so just outside the 25-34 age group, I am slim. I practise nose-breathing as part of my yoga routine. And, although I do drink, I have noticed that I snore more often on nights when I haven’t had alcohol.
Harry and I are getting married next month. If I don’t get to grips with my problem, then we’ll be retiring to separate rooms quicker than you can say “slippers and a hot cup of cocoa”, so I need advice.
Sleep expert Dr Guy Meadows is the author of The Sleep Book: How to Sleep Well Every Night and says hormones are often to blame when women develop a snoring problem. “One of the biggest shifts we know is that as women go from perimenopause to menopause to postmenopausal we see a significant increase in sleep disordered breathing,” he says.
One of the functions of progesterone is to maintain the integrity of the tissues of the upper airways and prevent them from relaxing too much, as well as to manage the breathing drive.
“So as you move into menopause, the protection [progesterone] provided for breathing during sleep is lost.”
Fifty-six per cent of women going through the menopause report sleeping difficulties, he says. And, even though I am too young for the menopause, hormonal changes could still be to blame for my snoring. “Keeping a sleep, energy and mood diary for three months and then talking to your GP could be a good idea and seeing if there’s a pattern,” says Meadows.
Might there be a simpler explanation? I notice that I often snore after forgetting to plump my pillows, resulting in my throat being higher than my head. “This comes down to positional therapy,” he says. “When we look at the treatments for snoring, one of the simplest ones is the position of the head and neck. One of the major problems is that a lot of us will sleep on our backs.”
Lying on your back increases the chance of your tongue falling back into the throat. “It also increases the chance of fat mass pressing down on to the airway.”
So for some individuals lying on the side with enough pillows to cover that neck to shoulder gap keeps the airways open. “In the old days we used to advise people to wear a bra back to front with a tennis ball in it,” says Meadows. “So that whenever you rolled onto your back it was too uncomfortable.”
Another factor is sheer exhaustion. “Tiredness in itself is a sedative that can cause snoring,” explains Meadows. “When I’ve been absolutely shattered I will snore for Britain because it causes that airway to collapse.”
Napping during the day and going to bed early, or sleeping in for an hour at the weekend, could help.
Whatever the cause though, it can put a strain on relationships. “I’ve had plenty of clients where their insomnia has been triggered by a partner’s snoring, putting pressure on them to fall asleep before the noise* starts, which cultivates sleep anxiety,” says Meadows.
Now in their mid-40s, Meadows and his wife sleep apart. “When my wife entered the perimenopause, she started to snore and suddenly we were just becoming more sleep-wise. We’re both a little obsessed with our sleep, but we both see that sleep is the single most powerful thing to maximise our wellbeing.”
Now they love sleeping apart. “Ultimately if one of us has had a bad night the other hasn’t.”
I’m not sure Harry and I have reached that stage yet. What’s really been damaged though, I’ve realised, isn’t my sleep, it’s my pride.
“We see good sleep as a badge of honour,” says Meadows. “The important thing to understand is that sleep changes for all of us, especially as we age.”
*Read our guide to the best earplugs for snoring