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As innocent children armed with our trusty toolbox of crayons and markers, we often depicted a snoring person as someone lying in bed with a series of 'Z's' casually emerging from a peacefully sleeping body.

However, what we neglected to draw - and again, rather innocently - was the severe underlying damage that was occurring in that ordinary picture.

The Damage is Far-Reaching

Damage to whom? Well, damage to at least one person, and potentially many more. Primarily, snoring has the very real potential of causing health damage to the snorer him or herself.

This damage can range from relatively mild sleep disturbances, to outright fatal Sleep Apnea (described further in this book). Indeed, when looked at under this light, those innocent Z's in our childhood drawings don't seem quite so harmless, anymore.

Yet is that where the suffering ends -- with the snorer? Hardly; and this is where the dilemma of snoring - and it is indeed a dilemma - takes on an added hue of suffering and misery.

To understand this in its painful clarity, let's return quickly to that childhood drawing of the sleeping person (usually a man) slumbering away after a hard day of work, possibly dreaming about something pleasant, as Z's floated up from his peaceful, sleeping body.

Now, how many of us took the time to draw the person trying to sleep next to that snoring partner? Hardly any of us, I would venture to presume, took the time to accurately depict the total anguish that the non-snoring partner of a snorer undergoes on a nightly basis.

But really, that's where a great deal of snoring-related suffering is contained: in the life of someone trying to live (and love!) a snorer. We'll take a deeper look at the tragic dilemma faced by these people later on in this book.