The following interview was conducted in June of 2006 with the creator of the “Singing for Snorers” program, Alise Ojay (pictured to the left). A huge thanks to Alise for her time and expertise! Be sure to read it all the way through, there’s some wonderful information here!
1. Hey Alise! Thank you so much for your time this morning. You have an exciting program (”programme” in the UK) and some excellent information on a challenge that affects a vast majority of the world’s population. First off, would you share briefly some information about yourself and your background?
Hi Jonathan, thank you for this opportunity to introduce myself and my work to your website visitors.
I love singing. For ten years now I’ve directed a community choir here in Devon (Southwest England), and I also perform in a female a cappella trio with two friends. Further in my background is a degree in Philosophy – so I’m a thinker and questioner; and a professional qualification in Dramatherapy – so creativity and play are also important to me. For the last eight years I’ve been developing “Singing for Snorers”, a programme of singing exercises designed to tone the throat and reduce snoring.
My passion for singing developed about twenty years ago through exposure to different singing styles from around the world, particularly from Eastern Europe and Africa. I heard people singing in ways that I’d never heard before and which thrilled me. I experimented with my own voice trying to reproduce the sounds I was hearing. To reproduce someone’s voice (whether an opera singer or Mickey Mouse), you need to reproduce their ‘vocal set up’ – that is the particular arrangement of larynx, soft palate, tongue etc that affects the kind of sound produced. I suspect it was this vocal experimentation that made me more thoughtful about how singing in different ways can work different parts of the throat.
2. Alright, so what is snoring, and what causes it?
Snoring is the vibration of the soft palate and other loose tissue in the throat during an in-breath. It is caused by one, or more, of a number of possible obstructions in the throat, which makes the in-breath more laboured and forceful, sending any loose tissue into vibration.
A flaccid soft palate flopping back across the throat is often both the obstruction and the source of the noise. Other obstructions can be, for example, large tonsils and/ or adenoids, a particularly narrow throat, nasal polyps, a deviated septum, nasal congestion due to a cold or allergy. In these cases the soft palate may have had sufficient tone to withstand a gentler breath but succumbs to the more forceful obstructed breath. Some people are ‘tongue-base’ snorers and in their case it is the base of the tongue that flops back across the throat and may even vibrate itself. Obesity is the single most common cause of snoring as fatty deposits narrow the throat. Drinking alcohol in the evening further relaxes the throat and increases the likelihood of snoring. Finally, and of greatest relevance to my work, another common cause of snoring is simply advancing age. As we grow older we tend to lose muscle tone all over our bodies unless we exercise vigorously and the throat muscles are no exception. Many people start to snore in mid-life and the snoring gradually worsens over the years.
3. Your program’s title, “Singing for Snorers”, offers a solution to snoring that I imagine hasn’t occurred to a lot of people. Would you tell us about your program? How did you come up with it?
I was talking with a friend who was describing his snoring problem and the impact it was having on his life. I was already directing my choir then, and when he demonstrated his snoring noise, what I ‘heard’ was a lax soft palate. I immediately thought, “Well you could use singing to tone that soft palate … and then surely it would be less inclined to vibrate like that in sleep.”
I initially wrote to my family physician asking if I could try out this idea on his snoring patients. He forwarded my letter to Professor Edzard Ernst at what was then the Department of Complimentary Medicine at the University of Exeter (now part of the new Peninsular Medical School) and to cut a very long story short, in 1999 I ended up running a pilot trial of the principle, and as a result of that experience I went on to design and develop the “Singing for Snorers” programme.
“Singing for Snorers” is a do-it-yourself three month programme comprising of three CDs and an explanatory booklet. You sing along with the exercises on each CD for a month, and the exercises gradually get more demanding on the snoring-relevant-muscles in the throat.
The exercises use simple sounds and tunes which, when you sing them, make you engage the relevant muscles. There are different sounds and tunes to work the soft palate, the palatopharyngeal arch (that’s the arch at the back of your mouth that the little uvula hangs from), the tongue and the nasopharynx.
I use such purposeful sounds to act like ‘press-ups’ for the throat muscles. The tunes are all simple and repetitive so that you can concentrate on the movements in your throat and make the same movement a number of times to really work the targeted muscles. There’s a voice to sing along with – mine! – and I’ve added a variety of more complex and variety-full instrumental backing tracks so that the overall experience of each exercise is more enjoyable and fun.
Here’s an example of a sound I use to move the soft palate up and down. If you say “ung”, you will feel your soft palate come down and touch the back of your tongue, and now if you say “gah”, you will feel your soft palate lift up and away. Now try singing “ung-gah” over and over and you will feel your soft palate going down and up … and probably becoming a little tired!
As you can tell from this example, the sounds have not been chosen for their aesthetic beauty, alas, but rather for their therapeutic action, so you will definitely need a sense of humour and either a secret place or an understanding and supportive family. Once you know what you’re doing the exercises take 12 minutes a day for the first month and 18 for the 2nd and 3rd month.
Many people who have done my programme have chosen to sing through the exercises first thing in the morning as they say they act as a real tonic and are both cheering and enlivening!
Incidentally as a happy by-product of doing the exercises you should find your singing voice becomes stronger and more agile. The diaphragm and other breathing muscles are also well exercised. Indeed a number of my customers have reported discovering a love of singing and have gone on to join choirs.
4. Many people claim that they simply “can’t sing”, is this an important factor in the “Singing for Snorers” program? Do people need to know how to sing?
I’m yet to meet someone who “can’t sing”, though I’ve met a lot of people who’ve said they can’t. With a bit of practice, in a friendly environment, all these so-called “can’t singers” have been able to reproduce sounds I’ve made, at the pitch I’ve made them. Being able to hear and reproduce a tune is a skill we have to learn like any other. It’s a matter of practise, and if you haven’t learnt when young, or particularly for men if you stopped singing when your voice broke and you never learnt how to manipulate your new vocal apparatus, then it can take time and effort to learn as an adult. But it can be done and the rewards are great in terms of the pleasure of singing.
As far as the ‘Singing for Snorers’ exercises are concerned, they will provide an opportunity for such practice in developing an “ear”. Also whilst the sounds do have to be made very precisely in order to be effective, the tunes can afford to be woolly round the edges. Having said this though, the programme is bound to be more accessible, and more enjoyable if you can pitch match (’sing in tune’) more or less. If you are thinking of trying the programme and do struggle to pass a tune between ears and lips you need to be prepared to put in some extra effort. In some cases it might even be worth having a few preliminary singing lessons and really go to town!
In the booklet I give advice about breathing and how to sing with energy but not strain – this is all very important stuff as we’re wanting to put ‘oomph’ into the snoring relevant muscles at the back of the mouth and not to strain the laryngeal muscles further down your throat.
5. On your website, you mention that a clinical trial of your program is currently underway. I noticed that half the patients are chronic snorers and the other half have mild to moderate sleep apnea. Have you found that your ‘Singing for Snorers’ exercises can also be an effective treatment for sleep apnea?
This will be the first clinical trial to test that proposal, and yes, I’m particularly excited to have had positive feedback from customers with sleep apnea. One 82 year old American gentleman customer tells me that his vitality is fully restored now that he no longer feels the need to use his C-PAP machine. On the basis of such feedback it was decided to have two wings in the trial – simple snorers and people with sleep apnea.
6. I understand the trial began in June of 2005 and you expect it to take about 2 years. We’re now in June of 2006, how’s the program been going? Are there any results or bits of encouragement that you’re able to share?
The trial is being run by a Consultant Otolaryngologist and his team in the Ear, Nose and Throat Department at the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital, UK. It is a randomised and controlled trial and will eventually involve 120 patients in two wings of 60 patients each. As I said before, one wing is for chronic snorers and the other is for people with mild to moderate sleep apnea. In each wing 30 people will actively sing along with my “Singing for Snorers” CDs for three months and the other 30 will be controls.
Because I obviously have a personal interest in the trial, I’m being kept well away from the results process until completion! However I have been permitted to say that some people have been very positive about the treatment and seem to have benefited but that it is too early to make detailed comments on how many people, and what type of people it may be helpful for.
7. From your own experience, prior to this trial, who do you think is most likely to benefit from your exercise program?
“Singing for Snorers” tones the throat. That’s what it does. If poor tone or loss of tone in the throat is a significant factor in causing your snoring, for example due to increasing age, then you’re in the category most likely to benefit. For all snorers, having a well-toned throat can only be a good thing since all snoring, whatever the obstruction, requires loose tissue. However, you may only attain a small reduction in your snoring if you have a fixed anatomical obstruction such as nasal polyps. If you are snoring because you are heavily over-weight then combining the singing exercises with diet and aerobic exercise should make a good combination treatment.
Another equally important factor is motivation. As with any exercise programme there does have to be commitment: the CDs, despite their beautiful green, blue and red colours, do not magically confer a toned throat … you have to do the singing regularly and with ‘oomph’ for that. Hence my efforts to make the programme fun!
8. And finally, any parting words of wisdom for those dealing with snoring?
I think the most useful advice I can give is to start by determining the cause of your snoring (there may of course be more than one factor involved) and look for a treatment which addresses that cause.
- End – To learn more, check out Alise Ojay’s website, SingingForSnorers.com!
