The Snoring Lady

It was sad to see in the news today that Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher died from sleep apnoea and “other causes” according to the Los Angeles coroner. However, her death certificate states she suffered a cardiac arrest, and in a statement the LA coroner said the exact cause was unknown. [1] For me, as someone passionate about raising awareness of the damage sleep apnoea can do, it is especially sad to hear that sleep apnoea was involved. But note, that even though sleep apnoea was listed as a cause of death [2] , it was not marked as such on the death certificate… because * sleep apnoea doesn’t normally kill people, but it exacerbates conditions, so undiagnosed/untreated sleep apnoea sufferers will die of stroke or heart attack, for example. My question then is does sleep apnoea not get the recognition, does it not have the level of awareness in the general public BECAUSE it is not listed as a cause of death? Imagine if the evening news stated that there had been a...

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...

Houston, we have a problem. OK, the problem is not at NASA - it's bigger than that. In books, cartoons and films, snoring is used to show that someone is asleep... (t hink Zzzzzzzzs coming out of their mouths in a speech bubble, and noisy snoring and you've got the picture.) My 4 year old son is already aware that snoring isn't good (poor boy!) - he now points it out when we read a book together.  The problem is that if you're snoring you're not breathing properly...  and this will be disrupting your own sleep and that of those around you. (Have you ever tried to sleep when you can hear a snorer?!) So, let's start a revolution . Let's stop signifying sleep with snoring. It's fundamentally wrong and it is reinforcing the misplaced belief that snoring can be ignored. More on that another time! Take it easy. TSL #thesnoringlady