Smoking and Snoring

Aw, come ON! Smoking? Do we actually need a page on smoking and snoring?

Is there anybody left who (doesn't work for a tobacco company or government and who) thinks smoking is a good idea?

Even the kids who take up smoking know better. They're just young and stooopid and think they're immortal and that stuff that applies to every other human who ever lived - or will live - somehow doesn't apply to them. They're so far into lala-land that they think smoking and snoring won't be a problem for them either.

But you... you're a mature, probably middle-aged, adult. You do know better.

Well... if you're still smoking, then maybe that "mature" label was a little premature.

C'mon. Really? Are you really gonna get all huffy and try to defend it? Yeah-yeah, it's your right and nobody else's business what you do in private... blah-blah. Yeah. You'll show them! Coff-coff-coff-.... HACK-coff-coff.

Snoring? Remember?

Yeah, snoring. Smoking causes snoring. Ok?

No, it's not the only cause. No, for most people it won't cause them to snore if that's the only contributor they've got.

But most people - who snore - have at least a couple of contributors (overweight? out of condition? sleep-deprived? drinker? allergic?). Chances are, you do too. Smoking and snoring go together when you've got other risk factors already pushing you toward snoring.

When we say "risk factors", we mean it the same way that researchers and doctors and bureaucrats mean it when they talk about disease "risk factors". Because snoring is a nasty thing that actually is doing you damage (and not just to your relationship with whoever else lives and sleeps at your house).

But let's rant about smoking some more...Never mind that you're teaching your kid(s) to smoke... what? You thought they didn't know? Bullshit. They know, and you know they know. And they're gonna follow the example. "Don't do as I do. Do as I say!" never really works, and you know it. If you are doing it, you are telling your kids that it's ok.

It's not like you don't bring the smell home with you. It's only smokers whose noses can't smell stale smoke and ashes on their own clothes, stale smoke on their own breath, etc. Everybody else knows as soon as you walk by. They just don't say anything.

Didn't you ever notice how people sit up straight when you lean close to tell them something? It's not that they're paying extra attention to your enthralling words. It's that they are trying to get away from your smoker-breath, and the back of their chair is in the way. Look closely when you loom in. They actually stop breathing for a bit, hoping the cloud of fumes will blow past them before they have to inhale again.

But... but... Snoring?

Yeah. Sorry. We're down on smoking for any number of reasons - one being that that's how Dad died. Lung cancer, metastasized to his brain - killed him a few years ahead of the emphysema that was already making his life a misery. He snored.

Boy did he snore.

Funnily enough, he snored less and less after the emphysema really kicked in and he couldn't smoke anymore. He actually outlived (if you can call it living) several of his cronies who also smoked and also went out whimpering from lung cancer or gasping from emphysema. But his last dozen years were progressively more miserable as he could do less and less. The lung cancer was almost a mercy.

But yes, all those chemicals and particles in the smoke do affect your throat on the way to coating your lungs. They cause damage to the cells and they damage the nerves. Both of those (and other) effects contribute to the extra flaccidity in the throat that causes snoring and apnea.

Apnea. Ah, the fond memories. Mom had fond memories too, and countless sleepless nights due to Dad's struggles to resume breathing, until enough of us kids had left home that there was a spare room. Mom got better sleep in her later years with Dad banished to the spare room. Then, he wasn't around any more to make any kind of noise, and she had several years with no crotchety old husband. Not sure if that was good or bad. It did mean she had no-one to drive her around after her eyesight went.

The smoking and snoring material is pretty thin here

Yes, there's not much to say that hasn't been said a million times. You'll ignore this, too, even though you came looking for it. We learned that from Dad. Smokers will keep looking and looking for the tiniest bit of a hint of validation so they can justify not stopping, just a little longer. And longer.

When you're ready, you'll stop, and your wife will notice that not only do you smell better, you snore less. Your kids will notice that Daddy developed some willpower, and if they still have enough time at home, maybe they'll internalize that instead of what you've been pounding into them by example for years.

Oh... if you've been smoking and snoring for years, they've also learned that, along with smoking, snoring is not a big deal. It's what Daddies do.

But if you quit, you'll also notice hundreds of smells you haven't noticed for years, and that food actually has subtle flavors, and so on. You know... quality-of-life stuff.

But not yet. Right?

Jeez.

Here's a tip for the kids - yours

If you do decide to quit, it's probably going to be a struggle. If it somehow miraculously doesn't feel like chewing glass for a few weeks, that'll only be because you get yourself addicted to some patch or gum instead. Either way let your kids see what's going on. Don't try to hide how hard it is or how expensive it is. Let them see that Dad is struggling and this is not anything easy to do.

Meanwhile, gotta be cool, right?

It's not like it's cool anymore, if it ever was.

Even 1940s and 1950s movie stars who looked cool while smoking were already cool people (or good actors who could play cool), so damn near anything that (say) Jimmy Dean or Humphrey Bogart did was bound to be cool.

Cool people can do most things in a cool way (or so we perceive it). Uncool people doing things that cool people do just look geekish and "trying too hard".

If you were already cool, you didn't need to smoke. If you weren't cool, then you didn't become cool by starting to smoke, and all those years were wasted. So was all that money.

This was a wasted page

We wish we could have done better, but how much of a page does it take to say:"Snoring is just one more of a thousand reasons why you shouldn't smoke. Don't smoke" ?

And we do have that axe to grind about parents smoking around kids (a couple of our brothers got hooked... thanks, Dad)

We're really sorry we couldn't offer some magic here - if not a magic cure, then at least some magically persuasive talk. It kinda hurts that we can't.

Well..... maybe there's one thing.

We do find that when we're in shape, other temptations have less power. Your writers here (especially one) are addicted to carbohydrate treats (dessert by any other name) and when we went on a low-carb eating style, we found it became ridiculously easy to ignore the call of carbs and sweets. Strangely, it also somehow became easier to fight our other favorite, lifelong addiction - procrastination.

We dunno. Maybe, for some of you, a switch to low-carb eating (just stop eating anything white, anything processed with sugar or flour) will also give you some leverage to finally quit smoking.

Remember, you came here about smoking (it's a smoking and snoring page), and going low-carb (or at least non-processed for you blood-type A folks) will help with the snoring. That seems like cheating, because it's our advice on another page, but we have seen a lot of positive effects in so many directions that it's not a totally vain offering.

That's it. Harangue over. We'll stop. Smoke break.

Toke break and hash brownies for munchies!! Whoops! Did we say that out loud?

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If this page wasn't where you wanted to be, then from this 'smoking and snoring' page, go back to the home page.

Or, return to the snoring section intro page page where we have a table of links to all the other snoring-related pages in this section of MHT.

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