Thanks again to NCBI ROFL, who finds these hilarious things and posts their abstracts for all the world to see, and for Sci to giggle over and then run around trying to find hilarious pictures of didgeridoos.
So, let’s talk about your snoring problem.
And then let’s talk about your musical stylings on the didgeridoo.
Puhan, et al. “Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial” British Medical Journal, 2006.
And to get an idea of what this whole study must have sounded like:
(Dang, this guy is really good…)
First off, let’s talk about snoring. In this case, we’re not referring specifically to SNORING, but snoring as a symptom of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a syndrome in which you have pauses in your breathing during sleep, causing you to miss one or more breaths. Symptoms of this include heavy snoring, as well as things like hypoxia, and if it gets bad enough, you can actually die. However, most people just suffer from pauses in breathing, while their partners suffer from lack of sleep (due to the constant snoring and possibly due to poking their partner until they breathe again). The patients with sleep apnea suffer from lack of sleep as well, they often have trouble falling asleep, and also suffer from a lot of daytime sleepiness due to the constant interruptions they get during the night.
A lot of the problems which cause snoring and other problems with sleep apnea are associated with temporary airway collapse. Basically, the airway is not strong enough to stay open, and when it collapses, obviously air can’t get through. This is also why sleep apnea often affects people who are overweight, as the increased weight creates increased soft tissue around the airway, making it more likely to collapse.
For people who suffer severe hypoxia during sleep (which means your blood oxygen levels get low) doctors often prescribe a CPAP. which is a machine used to create positive pressure, and help the airway to stay open. But a lot of people are borderline and don’t necessarily need a CPAP. What to do with these people?
Well, this group decided to have them try the didgeridoo.
Why the didgeridoo, you ask? Well, the didgeridoo requires a lot of training in specific types of breathing (known as circular breathing) which may help to strengthen the muscles and stiffen the airway. So the idea was that if you train people to play the didgeridoo…maybe it’ll help.
And so they did. They gave a bunch of people didgeridoos and free lessons, and asked them to practice for at least 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week.
And what do you know, it WORKED! The patients who were instructed in circular breathing (as opposed to those who did nothing) and how to play the didgeridoo got improved sleep (and so, by the way, did their partners) and suffered significantly less from daytime sleepiness. They also showed less disturbance in sleep. Sounds pretty good!
The authors hypothesize that the didgeridoo lessons helped to train the muscles of the upper airway, making them stronger and thus less likely to collapse at night. But of course, it’s a bit more invasive to test upper airway strength than it is to give a sleep test, so more studies are going to have to be done on what exactly is going on.
And so, you might say, that’s cool, but what if you don’t want to play the didgeridoo? Well, Sci hypothesizes that the changes these scientists saw with the didgeridoo were the result of the training the patients received in learning and practicing circular breathing. This is a technique that is used to create a single, unbroken tone, and you do it by breathing IN through the nose and OUT though the mouth at the same time. Go on, try it. I’ll wait.
…
Hard, huh? Well, ok, Sci can’t do it. Apparently the technique involved is like drinking from a water fountain. Maybe Sci fails at water fountains, too.
But many musicians CAN, and not all of those musicians play the didgeridoo. Some play other instruments, including the flute, the saxophone, the trumpet, the chanter part of bagpipes, and even the harmonica. Apparently there’s one guy who can hold a tone like this for NINETY MINUTES. In fact, if an instrument is not your thing, certain types of chanting and tone holding in singing can also use this technique.
Sci would like to see more studies done to see if the didgeridoo is necessary, or if just training in circular breathing is enough to help. And she wants to see what’s exactly causing this phenomenon. But in the meantime, if your partner snores, and you’re at your wit’s end, maybe they need a didgeridoo for their birthday. It probably couldn’t hurt!
Puhan, M. (2006). Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial BMJ, 332 (7536), 266-270 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38705.470590.55
