Ross and the folks at Y-snore hope Mel Switzer will go from being a curiosity to an inspiration. Two in every five married people suffer from it, and that means a lot of people are losing sleep. Most snoring conditions are the result of sleep apnea, a condition that arises when the tongue drops back in the throat, causing it to vibrate with each muffled breath. Snoring as Guy Stuff Snoring is yet further proof of man's superiority over women. Lady snorers are outnumbered 10 to 1.
Doctors take sleep apnea quite seriously.
About 3,000 people die from it every year. It's a condition that affects mostly men. Other forms of snoring, while less lethal, can also cause great discomfort. Reseachers studied 10 married couples in which the husband was being checked for obstructive sleep apnea, a disorder in which breathing recurrently stops and starts as someone snores. When the husbands were fitted with an oxygen mask-like device that stopped snoring and irregular breathing episodes, wives on average got more than one hour's extra sleep.