Does air pressure change my own snoring or sleep?
I recorded one night of my own during pressure season; loud sound lasted 15 minutes, peaking at 13:00, and I do not write about the cause.
Pressure season is here
The season is turning, and the air pressure keeps swinging up and down from one day to the next. Every time I see that word in the forecast, I get a vague sense of a heavy body, a shallower sleep.
People often say a drop in pressure makes it harder to sleep, that it makes your own snoring worse. Even so, I had never actually looked at my own night's sound.
What I feel and what is actually making noise are not necessarily the same thing. The only way I could think of to check was to just record the night itself, as it happened.
The same feeling shows up around typhoon season and the rainy season too. Every year when this season comes back, I seem to see the same kind of posts. I had no way to check whether I was the only one who felt this way.
I cannot tell in the moment whether it is the pressure, or how I spent the evening before. If I wanted to tell the two apart, recording my own night the same way each time seemed like the only place to start.
So I recorded one night of my own during this stretch of the season, with the phone left in its usual spot. It needs no special preparation.
What was left from the night of September 1
On the night of September 1 I recorded for 8 hours and 41 minutes. What was left on the morning screen: loud sound for 15 minutes, peaking at 13:00. How I felt on waking was "slept well."
For this night I left two tags: went to bed earlier than usual, and slept on my back. Adding a tag does not change that night's numbers; it is only a clue for lining up nights later.
I decide the start and end myself with a tap, so the length shifts a little from night to night. That length, 8 hours and 41 minutes, is not far from usual.
I felt fine, and the loud minutes were still not zero. The number and the feeling do not always agree. That is one of the things a single night's record can show.
Recording a hard night and a good night takes the same number of taps. A bad night does not cost more effort to record; the record works the same either way.
I can put that day's pressure and that night's record side by side on the same date. But this is only one night. I have not gathered several days to compare, so I cannot yet say whether this particular night was different from any other.
This is the first night on record since I entered the current pressure season. I plan to keep gathering more nights while the season lasts.
Recording and your record are free, always. The sound is sent nowhere. Only the loud stretches are kept.
A method that is just placing the phone
What I actually did was put the phone by my pillow and tap once before sleeping. Screen down, in the usual spot. Recording keeps going after the screen goes dark, and I end it with a long press in the morning.
Sound recorded closer picks up louder, so I keep the spot the same every night: not on the pillow itself, on the small table right beside it. No separate microphone, nothing worn on the body.
The screen before sleep only checks the microphone and the free space. Once that is confirmed, one tap starts the night, and it keeps recording until I end it myself.
Being asked for microphone permission only happens once. It can be changed later in settings, and without it nothing is recorded and nothing is lost.
What stays, and what does not
Where the sound goes is explained the same way every time, in one sentence: "The sound is sent nowhere. Only the loud stretches are kept." A whole night's sound is not kept as it is; only the loud 15 minutes and the quiet stretch right after it stay on the phone.
The loudest single moment can be played back in my own ears. The second and third loudest are kept too, and I can listen to them in order. Every other minute of sound is never kept at all.
Recording and keeping the record are always free. The recording stays on this phone for 14 nights and the oldest is cleared automatically; there is nothing to delete by hand.
If there is a recording I want gone, I can delete it myself, one at a time. If I do nothing, the oldest ones just clear themselves.
What about tonight
I have only placed that day's pressure beside that night's record. I am not saying it is the cause. Whether the sound was there because the pressure dropped is not something this one record can say.
What I can say is that my own night of September 1 was loud for 15 minutes. Each time this season comes back around, I plan to put the phone in the same spot and line up a few more nights.
The forecast can tell you more about the pressure itself than I can. What it cannot tell you is what was actually making noise in your own room.
Tonight, is the sound in your own room the same as usual? The answer is not in the forecast. It is in your own record tomorrow morning.
For anything about treatment or making it stop, a doctor is the surest person to ask. All Nagi can do is record the night's sound so you can hear back, in the morning, how long it was loud and when it peaked. No verdicts, only the record.