These are some of the questions that came to mind as my problem with snoring was happening more and more often. Maybe you happen to share some of the same ones.
How do I know if I even snore or not?
I’m sure this is a very common question. Even after I was told that I was snoring, I sometimes thought that it couldn’t be true! If you are actually asleep, you really have no definitive idea if you snore regularly or not. In my case, over a few years my wife kept me keenly aware of my snoring and its impact on her. I suppose you could always get a voice activated mp3 recorder to double-check on yourself if you do sleep alone. In my earlier married years, I have had a little bit of “light snoring” and although I only have added a total of 5 or 10 pounds over the 14 years I have been married my snoring has increased significantly.
Why should I care?
At first I didn’t think it was anything I should be worried about. I even thought maybe my wife would eventually get used to the sound and she would be able to sleep “just fine” through it. This was not the case and it only got worse. The snoring was bruising our relationship ever so slightly over and over and over again. I finally realized rather than just causing me lack of rest, it was affecting us both and I was being unkind to let it continue.
Can this be due to me being just slightly over-weight?
In fact this was the main point my wife would so gingerly bring up before I had visited any of the physicians. Losing weight is HARD work and I did drop some pounds for a while but it didn’t provide any real benefit with regards to snoring that we could tell. This was later confirmed by one of the physicians that examined me.