Snoring

I'm not a huge snorer but if I'm lying on my back and it gets a bit noisy my gf nudges me and I roll over without waking up. It's a system that delivers results

The updated Sleep Cycle app records samples of your snoring through the night (which you can listen to) and provides a total time spent snoring.

thanks for that

perhaps you should have yoru GP check you out - could be sleep apnea which can harm you heart

Hunt3r, you were saying?

welp. i'll try to keep my snoring inquiries and learnings brief for the mercy of everyone. i was advised i snored as an adult esp if i slept on my back, and would occasionally seem to have breathing interruption. my sleep seemed good to me tho, and i got 7-8 hours nightly and felt fine.

after a severe tbi in 2015 my sleep was/is really fucked up. after 15 months of suffering, my neuropsych brain injury guru eventually prescribed belsomra which was, for me, a goddamn miracle. symptoms which i thought were just characteristic of my brain injury- tons of word-finding problems, incredible incredible fatigue, failure to sleep 2a-6a, really poor info acquisition- improved immensely right away. a lot of my symptoms were, i think, more closely related to failure to sleep.

so i was sleeping much better, but snoring worse according to family, and i was considering re-approaching sleep specialists for a sleep study, which i had sought before, but did not do. do i have sleep apnea? do i need a cpap? do i need to learn to sleep on my side better? my stomach? what about a mouth piece, either the tongue manipulation style or the mandibular adjustment? wedge pillow? tennis ball? how do i know how much, how loud, and when i snore?

i am dumb so i have been trying stuff pretty much as i uncovered them in reading. sitiations/observations:

1. i'm on a break from belsomra mostly (that shit is $10/pill retail, and insurance coverage is a bitch and if you're lucky you can get a coupon from merck that brings it to like $3/pill. it really changed my life though).

2. i initially was like, 'can i spoof a sleep test with a pulseox?' (not knowing that while pulseox tracker _might_ show apnea/hypopnea events, there are so many other factors that, best case, all you might learn is "do i probably NEED a sleep test, or do i maybe NOT really need a sleep test?" there is no substitute for the better information that you get in a real sleep test with pros and accurate data re your sleep cycles and other stuff. anyway, for pulseox i got http://kenekedge.com/ from amazon for like $30. i plug it into my iphone and the results are consistent, cool as fuck, and utterly cryptic to me, a layperson. i spent a little time reading and finding out how to use some analytical tools and interpret what i thought i was seeing. based on my oximeter results with some other factors, i don't think i've got a big apnea/hypopnea issue afaict.

3. simultaneously, because i'm all about advanced scientific methods, i read around about anti-snore mouthpieces. i do remember the first time i ever heard of them was from ned, not sure if it was this thread and i won't search now. the "articles" i surveyed are like https://www.tuck.com/best-anti-snoring-mouthpieces-mouthguards/ which i assume to be an advert, basically. i surveyed for price and the likelihood of success and oral trauma. i did decide to try the vitalsleep. now those fuckers spam me incessantly but the mouthpiece had a small positive effect on the number and intensity of the few hypopnea events that my oximeter finds.

4. there are things called nasal dilators. i bought some called Snorepins. because i'm old as fuck i cannot stop hearing juan epstein saying "up your nose..." etc. dunno if they improve my sleep, but they are damn incredible for running and riding bikes imo.

5. not sure how to sugarcoat this one- you take a tennis ball, put it in a sock, and pin it in between your shoulder blades. on a tee shirt. otherwise that would be punk as fuck. it should be a smedium tee shirt, otherwise it won't stay where u want it. i'm sad to say this works to get you to sleep on your side. it kinda sucks in the middle of the night, and it really sucks if you have severely bruised/possibly broken ribs for the nth time cause you suck at bike riding. but you will not sleep on your back. i love this method's simplicity.

6. i've been trying Snorelog, an app that records your sleep when you are making snoring sounds (or when your cat meows). this thing is initially free, but i do think the premium version is worth the one-time fee of $10 to allow tracking and recording of my trial and error stuff. their UI and software is WAY WAY better than the pulseox's, for example. for me, i found that my snoring with the mouthguard is not too frequent, it's mostly "light" noise, rarely "loud" noise, and never "epic" noise. fascinating to me is that, at least with the mouthguard, my sounds are almost never a "snore." it's _really loud breathing_. like, inhales and exhales, not palate/uvula/whatever vibes. i played it for my partner, and i'm like "is THIS what you say is snoring? because THAT is not snoring! she says 'it is.' *a different fight ensues*.

7. by request and at my acceptance of a problem, i've reduced my drink consumption to 0. now i'm more stressed, and occasionally more bored. whether or not i "snore" less, i will deny the fuck out the possibility that teetotalling has improved anything snore-related, in vain hope that the sweet, sweet alcohol will return soon. obv jk on the last part, but i don't know that it helped reduce snoring.

so anyway, i'm still playing with my sleeping sitch to reduce ~sounds~, whatever the fuck they are.

Go the sleep lab route. I did, was diagnosed with sleep apnea, got a CPAP machine which basically resolved all my issues (chronic tiredness, waking myself up constantly, partner refusing to sleep in the same bed, etc). I can't say I'm overjoyed with the thought of being hooked up to a machine every night for the rest of my life - but the constant tiredness was driving me literally insane.

this is all super interesting!

> take a tennis ball

literally the second post on this thread says the same thing. 8)