Really? 6am feels very early, but that's what you're recommending?

So what you're trying to do is not fix it on night one, but set up a routine by which people are getting adequate hours sleep at night.

So setting your wake time at around 6am, having a healthy day where people have daylight activity, really to set the daytime for their body clock, and then a relaxing evening, darkness in the bedroom, and a bedtime that's not too early.

So actually pushing back the bedtime to maybe midnight or 1am, so sleep restricting them, can be very effective.

And we call this cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia when it's done in a structured format, often with NHS therapists, sleep, team, or there are online versions of this that people can access.

Is cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia the same kind of thing where you talk things through? Is it therapeutic?

So, Chris, it's really a technique by which people are being asked to have some stimulus control.

So they're people who've got a disordered relationship with the bedroom environment and sleep.

And-I tried this, and I was asleep within a minute and a half, and he was [laughs] like, "You've got, you know, you've, you've got to sort this out." Do you know this test? Like, is that something that the listeners could reasonably try?

So there are objective measures of sleepiness, and that sounds like a good homemade, uh, measure.

There's also one that people do in hospitals called a maintenance of wakefulness test, where it's a controlled environment, and you time how long someone falls asleep.

They're asked to press a button every time they see a red light flashing in a dark room, and that, that times how long it takes to get to sleep.

And we use that very much as a research tool in response to different treatments for sleepiness to see if the, the treatment's been effective or not.

What people often be asked to record if they go to their GP is a subjective measure of sleepiness, and there's the Epworth Sleepiness Scale is a widely used tool for that.

It's not diagnostic of obstructive sleep apnea.

Tell us about other treatments for obstructive sleep apnea.

Are men more likely to snore than women?

Men are twice as likely to snore than women because one of the risk factors for snoring is gaining weight, and men tend to put their weight on around their tummies, uh, so what we call visceral or central obesity, and that correlates very well with the size of your neck.

And a larger neck, particularly greater than 16 inches collar size, means you're much more likely to snore.

I said everyone snores sometimes.

It... for some people, it may just be when they lie on their back or just after an alcoholic drink, but it may be weight change that takes you up the scale to being a more regular snorer.

When does snoring become a problem?

So we're looking at a spectrum, Chris, of simple snoring going to obstructive sleep apnea.

And obstructive sleep apnea is where people recurrently stop breathing overnight.