The Snoring Lady

The launch of the Amazon 'Dash button' got me thinking... I love that the Internet of Things is happening... but what does it say about us? Press a button and 'ta-da' the thing that you need is delivered the next day. As a working mum, it's great that re-ordering could be made so easy... put one of these buttons on the washing machine and when you're running low on detergent, press the button and new detergent arrives. But is this indicative of our need for immediacy? We want an immediate 'cure' for this and 'fix' for that. Don't want the sustained effort of calorie reduction and exercise? - No, I'll have a pill please. This is what I see increasingly in medicine and healthcare. We're increasingly impatient to wait for a doctors appointment, so we Google our symptoms, and no doubt scare ourselves to death that we have some terrible condition... and succumb to the latest quick fix. We self diagnose ourselves rather than waiti...

Why is it that no one wants to 'fess up' to snoring? Tell someone that they snore and you'll probably get rebuffed (or some slightly less polite variant!). Or you'll be told that you snore, etc etc.. and so it disintegrates into a "who snores more" competition. The statistics on snoring vary greatly, from 25%-50% of the population being affected, and I'd suggest that many more people will occasionally snore - perhaps after a few too many alcoholic drinks, certain over the counter medications etc. So if this is such a common issue, why aren't we more open about it? I hope that in time it will be a bit like mental health and one day we will feel happier to talk about it. Is it because it is something that happens in the bedroom, and we're usually pretty tight-lipped about that! Snoring might be just anti-social... noisy and disturbing for those around you, but it could also be a symptom of sleep apnoea, which has connections to so many hea...