
One third of women snore, while pregnant women have a higher likelihood of snoring.
If snoring impacts your everyday life, no fear! Not only are there solutions, you’re also not alone. We’ve compiled a bunch of facts about snoring for your entertainment and pleasure. Some are to be expected, but others are just a little bit bizarre. Hold on to your MADs! We’ve got ten fun facts about snoring and snorers for you to explore.
- SUS stands for Socially Unacceptable Snoring. SUS refers to snoring that is so loud, it wakes up other people or prevents them from sleeping. Unfortunately, SUS is named as the third most common reason for divorce, behind infidelity and finances. In 1997, one Iranian man filed for divorce due to his wife’s incessant snoring – as it turns out she had drugged him early in their marriage to prevent him finding out.
- Snoring is hereditary. Although lifestyle and physical health have a great deal to do with whether or not you snore, 70% of snorers also have another snorer in their family. When it comes to lifestyle, alcohol, some drugs and prescribed medication (like antihistamines) can be the cause of snoring. Your muscles are relaxed to the point where your tongue partially blocks your airways and remains that way throughout the night.
- Snoring ranges in noise level from between 50-100dB. That’s like having a food blender right next to your ear. Most people incur hearing damage if you’re exposed to this level of noise for eight hours. Unfortunately, eight hours is around about how much sleep you should be getting each night. Nowadays, the average non-snorer gets between 6-7 hours a night.
- One of the loudest recorded snorers is Jenny Chapman, who snores at 111dB, louder than a low-flying jet. She never realised this until going to a sleep clinic in 2009 and found her snores were louder than any sleep specialist had encountered. 110dB is at the average human pain threshold, which also meant her husband would sleep in a separate room around 5 nights every week.
- Tom Cruise’s snores are apparently so loud, he ended up converting a spare room in his house into a “snoratorium.” This transformation was so he wouldn’t disturb his former wife Katie Holmes.
- Some unconventional methods to reduce your snoring include wearing flight socks during the day, sleeping in new pillows, attaching a tennis ball to the back of your sleep shirt, taping your mouth shut and taking singing lessons. One old wives’ tale states that you should pinch the snorer’s big toe to stop them snoring.
- Matt Damon tried hypnosis to reduce his snoring, not at the request of his ex-girlfriends Winona Ryder and Minnie Driver, but after it started disturbing his own sleep!
- One third of women snore, while pregnant women have a higher likelihood of snoring. This compares to 40% of all men who snore. It seems there is a difference between the sexes, but there is hope! Men over the age of 70 have in many cases reduced or stopped their snoring at night for reasons that are still being researched. Over the last 100 years, 1000 studies have been published about sleep deprivation. Let’s hope they find some answers!
- The word “snore,” wasn’t really a word until Shakespeare decided to use it. Originally, we said “snort,” and referred to animal noises. Shakespeare was the first to use “snore,” as a verb in reference to people during his play The Tempest in the phrase “Thou dost snore distinctly; there’s meaning in thy snores.” Shakespeare was using the connotation with animals as an insult.
- Some celebrity snorers include Ashley Tisdale, Prince Harry, Marilyn Manson, Lionel Messi, Teddy Roosevelt and Shaquille O’Neal. They are just some of the many, many people who snore around the world. In fact, 37 million people in the United States alone snore on a regular basis.