Today I ran across an article on the WebMD site that gave some tips to help stop snoring.  The last tip, one that I hadn’t encountered yet, recommended keeping yourself well-hydrated.  Daniel P. Slaughter, MD, is quoted in the article as saying “Secretions in your nose and soft palate become stickier when you’re dehydrated,” and continues to say that “this can create more snoring.”  This interested me greatly as I believe I am most often in a state of slight dehydration.  I believe this is the case as my urine is often darker than it probably should be, I rarely drink water in-between meals, and even during meals, I may have either coffee, milk or a soda-pop rather than just drink water.  To make matters worse, I tend to sweat easily when I am working, even if the task isn’t very physical.  Living in the South, where the humidity is high, any workout really makes me drenched in perspiration and it is difficult keeping up with the hydration.

As I mentioned in some of earlier posts and pages, I also tend to have a lot of  mucous in my nasal passages.  I can see where this may be a factor.  Luckily, lately I have successfully reduced my mucous through modifying my diet and other means, but I plan to increase the level of hydration anyway to see if this may help.  If I notice a difference in the ability to breathe easily I may even try a few nights without the anti-snoring mouthpiece even though it has worked very well thus far.

My main concern regarding keeping myself well-hydrated is that I will cause myself to actually lose sleep by having to wake up to empty my bladder.  This may be counter-productive in the end.

Occasionally, I do end up getting up in the “wee” hours (pun intended) of the morning to use the bathroom and at least half of the time I have trouble going back to sleep.  Getting older seems to be fraught with different health challenges. It makes me wonder, however did our previous generations even cope?!

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