I Wore an Anti-Snoring Device for a Full Year at Seventy-One: Twelve Months, Twelve Entries

My wife carried her pillow down the hall on a Tuesday last November and said she would come back when the noise stopped. No argument, no lecture. She just moved into the spare room, and I lay there that night listening to a house that had gotten very quiet and understood that this was now my problem to solve.

I ordered a device four days later, at seventy. I am seventy-one now, and I have worn it for a full year — not perfectly, not every single night, but close enough that the app has an opinion about me. What follows is the year in twelve short entries, one per month, with the numbers attached. I kept the numbers because at my age you learn that memory is a liar and a spreadsheet is not.

Two things about me matter for everything below. I have arthritis in both thumbs, which turns a small clasp into an adversary. And I have a neck that has required a rolled pillow for fifteen years, which put the device and the pillow in direct competition for the same four inches of real estate.

Twelve months, twelve entries

November — three hours, then the drawer

First night I lasted about three hours. The thing sits at the throat, and every time I swallowed I could feel it, which meant I lay awake cataloguing my own swallowing. At 1:40 a.m. I took it off and put it in the nightstand drawer. My wife’s old phone, still running the snore app on the other side of the wall, logged 61 minutes that night. I have never been so unimpressed by a number.

December — the twenty minutes before bed

The change that saved it was stupidly simple: put it on while I was still sitting up reading, twenty minutes before lights out, instead of lying down in the dark and fumbling. Wearing it awake is a different experience from wearing it as you fall asleep. The awkwardness burns off while you are still upright and doing something else. Hours worn went from 4.1 to 5.6 in three weeks. Snoring minutes: 47.

January — my wife tied a ribbon through the clasp

By January my thumbs had lost the argument. Two or three nights a week I could not get the small clasp closed without a fight, and a device you dread putting on is a device you skip. My wife — still in the spare room, but speaking to me — threaded a short loop of narrow ribbon through the clasp so I could pull it closed with one finger and a wrist. Total cost: nothing. Total effect: I stopped skipping.

February — the neck roll had to go

I had been sleeping with a rolled towel under my neck for fifteen years, and for three months I tried to keep both it and the device. That was never going to work. The roll pushed the device up under my jaw, the device pushed the roll out of place, and I woke up with a sore neck and a crooked fit. I switched to a flatter pillow with a slight dip, which my neck tolerates and the device prefers. Best week of the year so far: 33 minutes, and the first stretch of nights where I did not wake up thinking about my throat.

March — four skipped nights cost me nine

I caught a cold, and my reasoning was the reasoning of a seventy-year-old man who has earned a rest: I am sick, the nose is blocked, what is the point. So I skipped four nights. The four nights were bad, obviously, but the surprise was what came after — it took about nine days before the numbers came back to where they had been in February. My conclusion, and I have no way to prove it: skipping does not give you a night off, it gives you a week off your routine. I stopped skipping after that, cold or no cold.

April — sweat, and a piece of an old T-shirt

Warmer weather arrived and so did a red mark on one side of my neck, because skin at seventy-one is thinner than it used to be and does not enjoy being pressed on for seven hours. A folded strip of soft cotton under the strap fixed it in two nights. I also started wiping the contact surface every morning, which I should have been doing since November. April average: 31 minutes.

May — two nights in a hotel room with my wife

Our grandson got married in May, and we stayed two nights in a hotel because the drive home was too long. First time we had shared a room in six months. I put the device on in the bathroom, came out, and she looked at it and said, “That’s smaller than I expected.” Then she fell asleep in about six minutes, which she has always been able to do. I lay awake for an hour being pleased with myself. 24 minutes, both nights, and she never once mentioned the spare room.

June — nine days on a coach, one stranger, six hotel rooms

This is the month I want to spend the most time on, because nine days of group travel at my age is the real test — not a night in a tent, but nine nights of unfamiliar rooms, a roommate I had never met, and a bus that left at 7:30 every morning. Details below.

July — the week after the tour

Coming home from nine days of 6 a.m. breakfasts, I went to bed two hours earlier than usual for four nights and my numbers got worse for reasons that had nothing to do with the device. Different bedtime, different room, different pillow. It is the same lesson I learn every few months: the device is one variable among several, and it is not the loudest one.

August — the cable died at 2 a.m.

The charging cable frayed near the plug, which I had not noticed because I plug it in in the dark. One night the device died around two in the morning and I woke up with a dry mouth and a raw throat, which is what my old nights used to feel like. I now charge it at seven in the evening, in the kitchen, in daylight, and I keep a spare cable in the drawer with the reading glasses. August ran 25 for two weeks, then settled at 18.

September — the pillow came back

Ten months in. She carried the pillow back up the hall without any ceremony and said the spare room was cold. She still keeps a pair of earplugs in the nightstand drawer, and I have decided not to be insulted by that. It is a reasonable precaution and I would probably do the same in her position.

October — a year, in one line

Fourteen minutes a night, on a seven-night average, down from sixty-one. Two bathroom trips a night, unchanged, because no device has ever fixed a seventy-one-year-old bladder. Seven hours and twenty minutes worn. And a wife in the other half of the bed.

The year in one table

Seven-night rolling averages, taken from the app and, in the months before I had the device, from my wife’s old phone across the hall. The “nights I woke twice or more” column is my own count, kept on a paper calendar by the bed, because the app cannot see that and it is the number I actually care about.

The quarter-by-quarter slide looks smooth and it was not. There were eleven nights in this year where I scored worse than I did in my first week, and every one of them had an obvious cause in hindsight — a cold, a late meal, a strange bed, a cable. If you looked only at the averages you would think this was a story about a machine. It is a story about a routine that a machine happens to be part of.

Nine days, thirty-four people, six hotel rooms

The tour was my daughter’s idea and I went along with it for reasons that had nothing to do with sleep. Nine days, six hotels, thirty-four people on a coach, and a roommate assigned by a computer. His name was Walter. He was seventy-eight, had hearing aids in both ears, and got up at five whether the bus left at seven-thirty or not.

First night I did what any man my age does with a new piece of equipment and a stranger in the room: I took it into the bathroom, put it on behind a closed door, and came out pretending I had been doing it my whole life. Walter looked at my throat for a second and asked if it was for my heart. I said no, it was for snoring. He said, “Good. I brought earplugs either way.” That was the whole conversation, and it was the last time I was embarrassed about it for nine days.

Walter has a CPAP machine at home and had not brought it, which he regretted by night three. We had a couple of honest conversations about it, and the short version is that they are different tools for different problems. His machine needs distilled water, a hose, a mask that has to seal, and a plug beside the bed; mine needs a USB cable and about twenty seconds. His is more thorough and much more work. He described his as “a commitment” and mine as “a habit,” and I thought that was fair.

The practical problems of the tour were not what I expected. They were: only one free outlet per room, and Walter’s travel CPAP took it; hotel air conditioning that was either arctic or absent; pillows that were all the same wrong height; and a 5:15 a.m. wake-up on day six that made me skip the device entirely, which I regretted by nine.

Nine nights, average 24 minutes, one skipped night. That is worse than my July at home and better than my April, which is roughly what I expected from six unfamiliar rooms. What I did not expect was to come home liking the thing more. Doing the same twenty-second routine in six different rooms, in front of a man I had met on a bus, made it feel less like an appliance I was trialling and more like a pair of glasses.

One more thing from the bus, because it is honest: I fell asleep in my seat on day four, without the device, and snored loudly enough that the woman behind me tapped my shoulder. There is no version of this where a throat-worn device helps you on a moving coach. If you are going to nap in public at seventy-one, you accept the terms.

Seven things I changed because of my age, not because of the device

• A ribbon loop through the clasp. Arthritis and small plastic buckles are not compatible. One finger and a wrist, and I never fight it in the dark anymore.
• Put it on before you sit down, not before you lie down. Twenty minutes of reading does more for the fit than twenty minutes of adjusting in bed.
• Give up the neck roll. It and the device want the same space. A flatter pillow with a slight dip was the compromise my neck accepted.
• Soft cotton under the strap. Thin skin marks easily. A folded strip of an old T-shirt, washed with the sheets, solved it.
• Charge it at seven in the evening, in daylight, with a spare cable in the drawer. I cannot read a small battery icon in the dark and I proved it in August.
• Take your lower plate out first. The fit changes with your dentures in, and I spent two weeks wondering why some nights felt different before I worked that out.
• Read the app once a week, with the text size turned up. Nightly reading made me anxious, and anxious is not a sleep aid at any age.

What a year did and did not fix

Fixed: the noise, mostly. Sixty-one minutes down to fourteen is not a rounding error, and my wife moved back into the bedroom, which was the entire point of the exercise. Also fixed, though nobody warns you: the mornings. I used to wake with a raw throat and a headache and assume that was simply what being seventy felt like. It was not.

Not fixed: I still get up twice a night, and no gadget on my throat is going to change that. I still cannot sleep on my stomach, and on the two or three nights a month I end up there, the fit goes crooked and the number goes up. Dry mouth from one of my blood pressure tablets still produces bad nights that the device cannot reach. And I still have bad nights for no reason at all, because I am seventy-one and some nights are just like that.

What surprised me is how much of the result came from things that cost nothing — a ribbon, a flatter pillow, a piece of an old T-shirt, twenty minutes of reading before bed. The device was necessary. It was not sufficient. Anyone who tells you a gadget alone will fix a sixty-year snoring habit has not done the other half of the work, and the other half of the work is mostly boring.

If you are my age and thinking about this: start in a normal week, not on a trip. Give it three weeks before you form an opinion, because week one is not a fair test of anything. And do not let the small indignities stop you — the bathroom fitting, the explanation to a roommate, the ribbon. They last about four days. The quiet lasts a year.

(Names and a few identifying details have been changed. Every figure here is self-reported from a consumer sleep app and a paper calendar, not a sleep study, and app scoring varies between phones and versions. Snoring varies enormously from person to person and from night to night for reasons that have nothing to do with any product; results differ and are not guaranteed. Nothing here is medical advice, and a device like this is not a treatment for sleep apnoea. If you snore heavily, stop breathing in your sleep, or feel exhausted during the day, see a doctor — especially if you are older and on medication.)