How I tackled my snoring condition in 3 to 7 minutes a day – and got my life back!
Case study: Gary Steven
I don’t remember the day I stopped snoring.
How could I – I was asleep at the time!
But there was that first night – that first perfect night, as my wife describes it – when I slept soundly from the moment my head hit the pillow… until I slowly woke nearly 9 hours later.
I knew something was different that morning. I’d gone to bed feeling very tired – and woken up feeling almost like new.
Over the next couple of nights I refreshed and rejuvenated myself with deep, wonderful, life-giving sleep.
I hadn’t realized how badly snoring had ruined my night-time rest until I suddenly got perfect sleep.
The contrast was staggering. And beautiful.
My wife couldn’t agree more. She suffered years of sleeping next to someone who – in her words – snored ‘like a snorting bull’.
So when I slept soundly, quietly, peacefully… silently…
…then so did she.
We both won.
Snoring has life-affecting consequences
It’s not the snoring itself that is the problem.
Whether it’s just plain, disruptive snoring or the even more serious sleep apnea… it causes chronic, ongoing, exhausting loss of sleep.
The snorer might not notice how disturbed their sleep is at night. But they’ll feel it throughout their waking day.
I noticed that on occasions my brain often worked a step or two slower than other people’s.
I could feel sluggish some days for no obvious reason.
It affected my work. My attention span wasn’t the best. I missed details, I didn’t always grasp complex ideas as quickly as I once did. That concerned me quite a bit… my job is really important to me.
And it took some of the joy out of life generally. I’m not saying I was a depressive wreck. Some snorers end up in a very bad way mentally. I didn’t – for which I am grateful.
But ongoing, low-level tiredness sapped my energy, my sense of humour, my enthusiasm for hobbies and domestic pursuits.
I was occasionally snappy due to tiredness.
So was my wife. She was sometimes as tired as I was.
On those rare occasions when we were snappy at the same time… it got pretty heated! I can smile at it now – it wasn’t so easy when it was actually happening.
I only noticed how bad it was when it became good
The incredible thing about this is that we don’t always notice these things until the snoring stops.
We forget what peaceful sleep feels like, what having energy does for us. It’s been so long since we experienced it.
We grow so used to low-level tiredness, sluggish movements and lack of drive that we stop noticing that we’re that way.
It’s only when we suddenly get four or five nights of sleep in a row that we properly understand what has been happening to us. What we’ve been missing.
It’s when we switch from months or years of disruptive snoring and disturbed sleep – and feel life how it could be – that we’re jolted back to reality.
The contrast is almost shocking.
A sharper mind, happier moods, a more driven and energetic day.
It’s fantastically, indescribably joyous.
I know exactly how it feels. I made the switch from snoring and ongoing fatigue to rejuvenating sleep and a fresh zest for life.
Which is useful because snoring is no joke.
In fact…
Snoring is a killer
And I don’t mean that the frustrated partner of the snorer feels like strangling the snorer. Although, quite understandably, they sometimes do feel that way!
The key here is that snoring and sleep apnea can ruin a person’s sleep – even if they are not conscious of having woken up in the night.
Research in countries across the world shows that constantly disrupted sleep is a direct risk factor for some of our mostly deadly illnesses – including heart failure, high blood pressure, strokes and diabetes.
I was shocked to discover that general drowsiness slows reaction times almost to the same level of a person who is drunk… Which leads to measurably more accidents – on the road, at work and at home.
Work-life and home-life take a hit as disrupted sleep ruins concentration, impairs the ability to learn and plays havoc with our memory.
Worse, maybe: lack of sleep leads to lower moods, irritability and, at its worst, ongoing mental health struggles. It damages sex drive too – sleep that is interrupted by snoring or apnea robs us of energy and libido.
If that’s not enough, interrupted sleep makes us less attractive!
How? Well, sleep helps cells renew themselves – the lack of which causes us to age more quickly. And so, amongst other things, we suffer poor skin quality and weaker bones.
Finally, sleepless people become overweight people. Disturbed sleep is a direct factor in obesity – tired people are subject to more food cravings and have less control over their appetites.
There aren’t many people with snoring or sleep apnea who are also slim…
Thankfully, snoring, sleep apnea and all they lead to aren’t inevitable and we don’t have to put up with them anymore.
The causes of snoring aren’t a mystery
The causes of snoring are actually well understood.
Weakness or tightness in and around the throat….
The tongue falling backwards and blocking the air-passage – often caused by sleeping on the back, but not always…
Narrowed nasal passages that again restrict our breathing…
Muscle tension or narrowness in the jaw region will impede proper, relaxed breathing at night…
There’s no controversy around why people snore.
What does exist are some doubts about the standard ways that snoring is treated.
Why the snoring remedy you tried didn’t work
There are three common approaches to snoring or sleep apnea:
Surgery – for example, reconstruction of the face or jaw
Facial attachments – attempts to force the face, jaw or tongue to conform to better sleep positions
Lifestyle changes – lose weight, sleep on your side, stop smoking etc
There are people who have had some useful results with these methods. But each of these approaches has hundreds of thousands of complete failures.
Here’s a quick summary of each:
Surgery
Apart from those rare cases of necessary facial reconstruction, surgery invariably results in expensive disappointment.
Because too often a person’s snoring has several causes. Yet a single surgical procedure can generally only treat one of them. So you come off the surgeon’s table having been anaesthetised and cut up… to find you still snore.
Surgery is so hit-and-miss that it’s rarely offered – even in some first-world health systems.
Facial attachments
For each of the causes of snoring there’s a contraption you can strap to – or insert into – yourself.
Facial attachments – tapes, inserts or other contraptions – sometimes have a positive effect on the snoring.
And there are examples of facial strapping or mouthguards partly reducing snoring.
But these methods are workarounds – not remedies. Any positive effect they might offer lasts only if, every night, you force a physical restriction on some part of your mouth or face.
These attachments are unavoidably very uncomfortable. They can end up causing secondary problems – like soreness in the mouth or disrupted breathing – which occasionally end up being worse than the snoring itself.
On a personal note, I hit my snoring from almost every angle using these methods, trying out a different device for every known cause… hoping to put a stop to all this.
No luck. None at all.
Strips worked for a while and then stopped. Just before giving up on them altogether I used the ones that close your nostrils and force you to breathe through your mouth… but I just woke up suffocating on my own saliva.
Lifestyle changes
Personally, I am a huge believer in lifestyle as a cause of illness – and the remedy to illness.
Snorers are encouraged to lose weight. As a remedy for snoring it’s so hit-and-miss that I think it’s valueless.
On the day my snoring finally stopped I was nearly 40 pounds overweight – the fattest I’d been in my life.
Being fat clearly didn’t stop me ending my snoring misery.
But, as a side note, all that sleep I started having meant I lost most of that 40 pounds – without having to diet.
How?
Because good sleep helps cells renew themselves – which eats up body fat.
And also because tired people have much stronger food cravings – especially for carbs. These cravings tend to go away when your sleep is fully replenishing you.
Other advice is to stop smoking and drink less. And – for sure – losing weight, stopping smoking and drinking less are, in themselves, great things to do.
But don’t expect a noticeable, long-lasting difference to your snoring condition. You’re likely to be disappointed.
But here’s the real problem…
The absolutely worst thing about these artificial treatments is that they never truly address the real underlying cause of snoring or sleep apnea.
Whatever is causing it stays put. How can that be a good thing?
Worse, the causes of the snoring get worse with age. That’s just a fact of life.
In the end, these contraptions simply can’t handle a worsening condition and the snoring becomes as bad – and then worse – than it ever was.
We will never enjoy blissful sleep if we put sticking plaster over the thing that’s ruining our sleep.
Here’s the good news
Snoring is caused by muscle problems in some part of the throat, tongue, neck, face or shoulders. It’s brought on by nothing more sinister than growing a little older.
And these muscle problems can be undone – naturally, without surgery, facial attachments or ‘lifestyle changes’.
Tens of thousands of people have done it. I’m one of them. You can be one of them too.
Remember:
Snoring isn’t natural
It shouldn’t happen. It’s bad for us.
For most of us snoring is something that develops over time. We usually weren’t born with it.
I was exactly the same. For some of my life I didn’t snore.
And then… I did.
So clearly something changed. Something caused my snoring. It didn’t cause itself.
Over time, my snoring changed. It happened more often and it lasted longer each night.
Again, it didn’t change itself. Whatever was causing the snoring was itself getting worse.
To end snoring, we must treat the something that makes us snore. If we remove the cause then the snoring simply can’t happen. Which is obvious, really.
Yet few – but mostly, none – of the standard medical approaches are designed to do this simple thing.
A stroke of luck changed everything
As I said, I no longer snore. Having gone through a steadily worsening situation – and inflicting it on my wife – it was actually she who stumbled on the breakthrough.
How? She took up singing.
Yep, singing.
She attended weekly singing lessons. And one day, having yawned her way through an entire lesson, she explained to her teacher that it was my snoring that was keeping her awake at night…
Her teacher laughed! And then told my wife she had the perfect answer to a snoring spouse.
Which surprised my wife of course… but here’s what the teacher told her.
It turned out the teacher’s own husband was an alternative health practitioner. And he once had a terrible snoring problem.
So bad that she and he used to sleep in separate rooms.
And, over months and years, the snoring got slowly worse – to the point where his physical and mental condition was becoming a health risk. Not to mention a relationship risk.
His name is Christian Goodman. He’d become that desperate to tackle his ongoing snoring that he’d dived deep into the causes and effects of snoring and sleep apnea in an attempt to rid himself of the problem.
He came up empty. No remedy. Not a thing.
One morning, bleary-eyed, exhausted and miserable he explained to his wife – the singing teacher – that the key to ending snoring was to unblock breathing passages.
Because – and this is medical fact – most snoring is caused by some sort of blockage of the breathing apparatus.
The type of blockage varied quite a bit. But in the end, unblocking was the key, the holy grail of snoring and sleep apnea treatments.
The problem is that he didn’t know how to fix those causes of snoring. There were no snoring specialists who could explain how to firm loose muscles while relaxing over-tight ones.
Whereupon his wife told him straight: I teach breathing exercises to my singing students that are designed specifically to unblock blockages. Why don’t you try them?
Christian Goodman had been shocked to realize his wife actually taught this stuff! But he started practising those exercises… and something incredible happened.
On day two he woke up feeling very different. He’d slept. Properly. And, for the first time in years, he felt awake. Not perfect, but much better.
He practised them each day. They’re breathing exercises, by the way – you don’t have to sing at all. But they work wonders.
He went back to the marital bedroom on day four and, the next morning, his wife confirmed: you barely snored at all last night.
Christian was over the moon. So was his wife! These simple exercises were directly affecting the muscles that cause snoring in the first place – and the effect of this was quick and noticeable.
But he was experiencing ‘good’ nights – when snoring was low or non-existent – and ‘bad’ nights when it was still enough to wake them both.
He was improved – but he wanted perfect. He wanted no snoring, no disturbance – just long, peaceful sleep.
So he spent the next 4 months developing additional, more refined exercises.
He tried them out on real people with real snoring and sleep apnea difficulties. Bit by bit, he developed a series of exercises that tackled every one of the varied causes of snoring.
And by the time he had finished, Christian Goodman had a program that he could guarantee would treat every single muscle that had a hand in causing snoring.
His exercises would return those muscles to full proper functioning…making it impossible for snoring to exist anymore.
The program he created is today called The Stop Snoring and Sleep Apnea Program.
It’s an incredibly successful and well-respected program. It’s more than 10 years old now and has tens of thousands of fans because of how it has transformed their lives.
I ordered that program that evening. And within days, I was another one of Christian Goodman’s many thousands of true believers. As I write this, I haven’t snored once for over a year.
Why this program works
Snoring is a sign that something is wrong with your breathing mechanism – specifically, the muscle structures of the throat or tongue – and the muscle complexes nearby.
That’s actually a long list of muscles.
Because it includes the jaw, throat, neck, tongue and face… but also the shoulder and upper back regions.
The exercises in this program tease out each muscle… each cause… and then work on it, improving tone, releasing tension, strengthening weaknesses… returning these muscles back to their original condition.
The exercises can mostly be done while watching tv. They are that simple.
And by working on what causes snoring… the snoring simply cannot exist.
Simple movements, performed regularly are the be-all and end-all of snoring treatments. And thousands of happy people will tell you exactly the same thing!
Simplicity itself
Think you might be too busy to do these movements?
Think again.
Christian created a 3-minute version of the program which you can do while waiting for the kettle to boil.
Although it’s a short session it tackles all the muscular causes of snoring.
If you’ve a little more time… there’s a 7-minute version. This version introduces a couple of additional movements.
Spread the 7 minutes over the day if you have to. A few minutes in the morning. A few more in the evening.
Again, you’re hitting your snoring problem from all directions. So whatever is causing it… is being directly addressed.
It doesn’t need to be complicated
Don’t be fooled by how brief this program can be.
Understand this vitally important point: quantity is not the thing here.
Consistency is the point. Consistency is king.
You’re not going to the gym. This isn’t a sets and reps workout.
If you can spare a few minutes every day – say while you’re in the car, on the bus or watching television – then you have all the time you need to kiss goodbye to snoring.
And this is the thing: these are exercises you’ve never seen before. I actually find it hard to even use the word ‘exercise; to describe them.
Because they are so subtle that they can be done while watching tv with your spouse – and he or she wouldn’t even know you were doing them.
It took me 7 minutes…
My snoring reduced quickly – the first effects were on the second day. My sleeping was easier, less disturbed. I was glad for the quick result.
It took a few more days for the full effect of the exercises to really kick in.
And, actually, my plan originally had been to get familiar with the exercises by doing the 3-minute version for a few days, then the 7 minutes version for a few more days… and slowly work up to something like 20 or even 30 minutes a day.
In truth, I didn’t actually get that far.
5 days into the program I was still on the 7 minutes version when we realized – my wife and I – that I wasn’t snoring anymore.
We knew this because neither of us woke up during that night.
We didn’t wake up during the next night either.
Or any other night since.
So I never did go beyond the 7-minutes-a-day program. Why would I? I stuck with what was obviously working.
To this day I don’t know what those other exercises in the program feel like. I’ve never done them!
I don’t snore anymore. Every day I work through the 7 minutes program and, after 7 minutes, I’m done.
I usually do all 7 minutes at once. Sometimes I split it – a few minutes in the morning. A couple of minutes in the evening. It makes no difference.
More than a year has gone since I started these exercises and I don’t think I’ve snored one single time. My wife has never heard me snore since early last year.
In less than a week I felt significantly better than I had for years.
What was incredible was that I didn’t realize how tired I actually was until I suddenly wasn’t tired.
I had to properly treat the problem before I really understood how bad that problem was.
Today I feel really good all day – even in the late evening. I’m more cheerful, I have much better focus and I just feel… happier in my life.
I’m off the danger list for some pretty nasty diseases too – heart disease, strokes, diabetes… all that nasty stuff that poor sleep makes more likely
Best of all? I never disturb my wife’s sleep with my snoring.
Like I say, we’ve both won!
What about you?
I’m guessing you’re reading this because you’ve decided to act on your own snoring problem.
Of course, I don’t know how far it has progressed in your case. Does it affect only you – or someone else too?
Is it affecting your general quality of life? Your work? Relationships?
Maybe it’s just an annoyance – and you’ve decided to deal with it once and for all.
For me it was all of the above. I’m not saying that everything was falling apart.
But my joy of life – at home and at work – was being noticeably affected by this problem.
I wasn’t prepared to wait around and let my health, my relationship or my career deteriorate to a point where they might be permanently damaged.
I’m glad I addressed this issue when I did. Perhaps I could have done it sooner. Perhaps I should have.
But it’s done now and I’m genuinely over the moon with how perfectly things have turned out.
I’m healthy, I’m energetic and I’m happy.
You could do the same, you know. Use the exact same program that I used… and see how it changes forever how you sleep and how you feel – every single day.
What is ignored doesn’t get better….
Snoring – like most conditions – needs to be addressed if it’s going to get better.
Left on its own it will – like most conditions – just get worse. This is common sense.
Which means whatever discomfort we’re experiencing now is nowhere near the end of the story. There’s plenty more where that came from.
Mood swings become more pronounced. Effectiveness at work is impaired. Health complications – which include risks of heart attack, blood pressure and stroke – become more serious.
I did more than just tackle my snoring difficulties. I obliterated the problem, quickly and efficiently.
I expect never to snore again.
The difference that makes to a person’s life…. Well, when you feel it you’ll know exactly what I mean!
Stop the decline while you still can
The end-game for snorers can be serious – deadly serious.
The connection between snoring, sleep apnea and heart attacks at night is strong.
Harvard in the USA and the UK’s National Health Service have noted the much higher incidence of heart attacks amongst people who have snoring or sleep apnea conditions.
Snoring and sleep apnea are also strong risk factors in diabetes, high blood pressure and strokes. It’s no joke; this condition is a killer.
No way was I going to jeopardise my health because of snoring. I wasn’t going to let my wife and children carry on without me simply because a chronic snoring problem got the better of me.
I acted – and it was the best thing I ever did. It’s your turn now – click here and you can have your copy of The Stop Snoring and Sleep Apnea Program in about 3 minutes.