Anxious people who have mortgages, overdrafts and a hard-earned lifestyle to maintain are likely to be in for months of disturbed nights' sleep and drowsy, lacklustre days. Insomnia, the conviction that someone has that he or she is not getting an adequate amount of sleep, is not just a modern problem. Until comparatively recently, the prevalence of insomnia was not, as it is now, determined by the would-be sleeper's level of anxiety, but by the temperature, humidity and with it the fecundity, appetite and number of bedbugs, lice and other forms of insect life. People then rarely slept alone: in smaller houses, several often slept in the same room, even in the same bed. That may have been great for warmth, but it was paradise for hungry insects. Even those who managed to sleep despite itching skins would then, as now, be kept awake by snoring, whether their own or others in the room.

Newsweek also published an article today on the risks of snoring. As it turns out, snoring could be more of a health issue than it is a nuisance.

But the nightly racket is more than a potential relationship strain. According to the latest research, an increasingly older and heavier population may make this condition an even greater a health risk than we previously thought.

Sleep apnea, in which the airway becomes blocked or, less often, the brain fails to properly control breathing during sleeping, can be viewed as one extreme of the snoring spectrum. Soft or sporadic snoring, which is not generally considered a health hazard, would be at the other end. As the sound and persistence of a patient's snoring grows, so do the health concerns. A study published in the March 1 issue of the journal Sleep found that loud snorers had a 40 percent greater risk than nonsnorers of suffering from high blood pressure, 34 percent greater odds of having a heart attack and a 67 percent greater chance of having a stroke.

Read more on the dangers of snoring here...

Are you or is someone you know a snorer? Click here to read Slate's article on which snore remedies actually work.