Silent Night From the Snore-Chestra

Snoring has been called many things, but rarely if ever has it been considered musical! British natural snoring remedy company Helps Stop Snoring hopes to fix that.

The company has recruited snorers from around the UK to contribute their wheezes, rumbles and roars to form a so-called "snore-chestra". Graham Carr-Smith of Helps Stop Snoring said:

We know that snoring can be a real nuisance, and no one suffers more than the person who is sleeping next to a culprit. We’re launching the UK’s first snore-chestra to put a smile on the faces of hacked off partners

The first snorechestra recording has now been released. Appropriately enough it's a rendition of Silent Night which you can download here. Will it be this year's Christmas Number One?

Sleep Apnea: Women Suffer Worse Than Men

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is an unpleasant nighttime condition that can have serious consequences. Even those with mild OSA can find themselves experiencing daytime drowsiness.

Recent research, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (JCSM), looked at the way OSA affects different genders. Researchers studied male and female sleep apnea sufferers and measured various clinical manifestations of symptoms including daytime sleepiness, mood disturbance and neurobehavioral performance. They found that:

Despite similar age, body mass index, and apnea-hypopnea index, women reported significantly lower functional status, more subjective daytime sleepiness, higher frequency of apnea symptoms, more mood disturbance, and poorer neurobehavioral performance compared to men at baseline.

Note that this research was looking at the severity of the symptoms of OSA, not the incidence of the condition.

The researchers also examined the effectiveness of CPAP treatment, however they found no significant difference between men and women.

What Wakes Us Up

"How could you sleep through that?" is a common question asked of a partner. Well, it could simply be a matter of gender. New research suggests that men and women are sensitive to different things at night.

The research, carried out by MindLab for Lemsip, Found that there are many similarities between the sounds that wake us, for example snoring and sirens. However the top sleep wreckers are completely different.

For women, the noise most likely to wake them up is that of a baby crying, something that isn't even in the male top ten. Second on their list is a dripping tap, which rates number ten with men.

For men the most disturbing sound is a car alarm (number eight for women), followed by a howling wind (number nine for women).

Dr David Lewis of MindLab said:

These differing sensitivities may represent evolutionary differences that make women sensitive to sounds associated with a potential threat to their children while men are more finely tuned to disturbances posing a possible threat to the whole family.

Personally I wonder how much is evolutionary and how much is socially induced.