Interrupted sleep affects both body and mind. Also for the non-snoring party.
– There are probably quite a few cohabitations that are broken because of snoring. I have several times experienced cohabitations that are on the brink, because one disturbs the other. The relationship is falling apart, says sleep therapist Aleksander Andersen.
He runs the Sleep Clinic in Oslo and says snoring is a frustrating problem, because it is not something you have control over yourself. And that the reasons why snoring is so destructive to couples are many.
– Interrupted sleep is interrupted sleep. The research is conflicting in relation to how bad it is for those who do not snore themselves, but what is certain is that it affects sleep quality and sleep phases.
– If you lie awake for large parts of the night and don’t get good deep sleep, you get the problems that come with it in the longer term. Night is when the body builds itself up. If you are prevented from sleeping, many important processes will be affected, and you will suffer from many health problems. In the extreme, there are real, quite serious ailments.
Try separate bedrooms
The sound of snoring can vary widely in strength. Research on sleep apnea measured a volume of between 46.3 and all the way up to 52.7 decibels (dB) in the worst cases, while the Canadian Sleep Center Dorm reports a range between 40 and over 70 dB.
An ordinary conversation is around 65 dB, while a shout reaches around 80 dB. The scale is such that every time the sound power is doubled, the decibel level increases by 3 dB. The sound effect of, for example, 83 dB will therefore be twice as high as that of 80 dB, writes The Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority on its pages.
To save the relationship and health, separate bedrooms can be a good idea. On the list of health problems and increased risk of diseases that come with a lack of seven to eight hours of sleep, we find diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease and dementia – to name a few.
Andersen says that he is a strong supporter of guarding sleep for all it’s worth in the world.
– It is important for self-esteem, for the body, and for regulating emotional life.
– What measures can help?
– It could be to have separate bedrooms, at least until the problem has been solved. It is not necessary that both suffer. But it’s worst for the person lying awake because the partner makes noise. Then it is better, if you can, to organize yourself differently.
Manual therapy can help
The sleep expert believes that it is best for cohabitation to address the problem of snoring, and recommends that you can, for example, use an app called SnoreLab to help map the extent.
– Then both can take part in it, instead of one complaining or one filming – and the snoring partner thinks “well, I snored a bit then”. But if you see that you snore for three hours during the night, and one hour at a high level, then you understand that it is troublesome for the other person. Everyone has experienced snoring, so you understand it, but seeing it on an app can mean a lot – without creating friction in the relationship.
– The party who experiences lying awake must protect himself. Either with earplugs or separate bedrooms. Many snorers are sent to the sofa by an irritated partner, and that is not an optimal solution. It is best to solve the problem itself. But it can take time, if the solution is lifestyle changes such as losing weight, or receiving treatments that can last for weeks and months.
– What kind of treatments do you mean then?
– It’s about loosening up the muscles in the neck, neck and shoulders. Stress can affect and cause tight muscles, which in turn can limit air intake. Then manual therapy can help to lower the shoulders. Many cases of snoring can be solved by reducing stress and subsequent muscle tension in the neck, throat and jaw.
Changing your sleeping position can also help.
– It can help to lie on your side with sufficient support. But sitting position at work can also create tension over time. There is much that can be done to reduce the chance of snoring.
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Snoring
- Snoring is produced by vibrations/oscillations of the uvula, the free edge of the soft palate and of the anterior and posterior arch of the palate during sleep
- Light to moderate snoring is considered a normal phenomenon. The frequency increases with age. A study showed that around 40 per cent snore regularly, 50 per cent of men and around 30 per cent of all women
- The highest incidence was in the age group 45 to 64 years. Pronounced snoring, which can cause social and family problems, is seen in approximately 20 per cent of the population and almost only among men.
- If you have obstructive sleep apnea, you may stop breathing for a few seconds during the night. This happens because the airways in your throat become blocked
- After a few seconds, you may wake up with a gasping sound. This can occur several times an hour throughout the night and means that you do not get enough deep sleep
- The main symptom is respiratory arrest with frequent awakenings at night. Some people do not notice the stoppage of breathing themselves, and it may be the partner who becomes concerned
- Many will also snore loudly. If you sleep alone, a smart watch or an app on your smartphone can record sleep quality or sounds (snoring and hiccups) during sleep
Sources: NHI, Health Norway
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Can develop apnea
People who snore heavily are at risk of developing obstructive sleep apnea, or so-called respiratory arrest. That’s because muscles and tissues become laxer with age, which can lead to narrower airways.
Harald Hrubos-Strøm is research group leader at the Ear, Nose and Throat Department at Akershus University Hospital and the research group “Sleep Heart and Respiration” (SHEAR) at the University of Oslo.
– It is important to distinguish between snoring and apnea. In the specialist health service where I work, sleep apnea is a disease, while snoring is a condition or nuisance and does not entitle you to health care, he says.
– The central breathing regulation is affected as the disease progresses, he says.
The reasons why one develops apnea are unclear. Hrubos-Strøm says there are four mechanisms that contribute to the disease:
First, anatomy comes into play; some have large airways, others narrow. Some become so fat that the large airways become small due to fat. It’s all about how much room there is for air throughout the night.
– All structures in the respiratory tract are affected over many years by suction forces. We tend to say that when you get older and get wrinkles, you also become more relaxed on the inside. This also applies to the structures in the airways, which become more relaxed and do not have as much resilience.
The second is the awakening threshold.
– Some people wake up easily from not breathing, others don’t. Some can lie for a minute without breathing, others a few seconds. The body constantly makes sure that we don’t suffocate, but this comes at the expense of sleep quality. Through micro-awakening, the muscles in the throat are activated. They wake up enough to breathe, but not consciously.
The third factor is the patient’s central breathing regulation.
– Some people breathe just as forcefully regardless of when they sleep, while others can breathe shallowly and then very forcefully in cycles. It develops with time, and how long you have had the disease. What affects breathing is the diaphragm, which acts like a giant piston and pulls the air through all the soft structures – through the lungs, chest, and upper respiratory tract. The lungs are placed in a box of bones. If it is tight there, you will have a heavy exhalation.
The last point is that we – naturally – relax when we sleep.
– The tissue becomes more relaxed when we sleep, and with time. The muscle tension we have when we are awake disappears to a certain extent when we sleep.
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– Too little sleep is dangerous
One of Norway’s leading sleep experts is Professor Bjørnar Bjorvatn at the Department of Global Health and Community Medicine, University of Bergen. In 1996 he founded the Bergen Sleep Centre, and from 2011 he led the Center for Sleep Medicine at Haukeland University Hospital.
He has no doubt that a partner who snores can pose a health risk to the other partner.
– Little sleep is of course dangerous. Even a night with little sleep increases the risk of falling asleep behind the wheel – for example, he says.
– Too little sleep over time increases the risk of anxiety, depression, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, infections, cancer, dementia, and probably a wide range of other diseases and ailments, he continues.
– All people need sleep to function normally. I am writing a book on this very topic.
– There is no doubt that the bed partner is also disturbed by snoring. It’s not easy to sleep next to someone who makes loud noises!
He believes that there is a group of people in particular who will be negatively affected by their partner snoring.
– Naturally, people who initially struggle with sleep and who are sensitive to noise have the biggest problems. This means that many of my insomnia patients have chosen separate bedrooms, simply to remove a disturbing factor.
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– Can be very loud
Harald Hrubos-Strøm is now working, among other things, on a research project where they investigate whether strategic training of the neck and jaw muscles can improve tone (muscle tension journ. note) also when you sleep.
– The working hypothesis is to train during the day, to see if it can help tone at night. There are some studies that indicate it can help with snoring, but they are poor. So we want to find out if that is true, and if it can have an effect on apnea.
Hrubos-Strøm is fascinated by the anatomy behind snoring.
– Sleep apnea and heavy snoring can be very loud. The sound you produce is low-frequency and has more energy than high-frequency sounds, he says.
– What fascinates me about the disease is the mechanics behind it. We have a diaphragm that acts like a piston at the bottom, which draws air through soft, squishy structures so that it generates sound. The uvula becomes swollen and severe, and you feel sore in your throat when you wake up – almost as if you are about to get an infection.
Sore throat, sleepiness during the day, concentration problems and headaches are some of the symptoms of apnea.
A lesser-known symptom is that you have to urinate at night.
– Sleep apnea patients do not experience a drop in blood pressure at night, and therefore produce more urine when they sleep. It is relatively common to have apnea when rowing. In an article from 2010, they calculated the incidence in ordinary Norwegians between 30 and 65. 1 in 10 has more than 15 respiratory arrests per hour.
Hrubos-Strøm encourages those with symptoms to get examined, with a view to treatment.
– If you have symptoms that bother you, at night or during the day. Or if you make noise, so that you disturb your bed partner. We often hear that apnea patients are satisfied when they can move into the bedroom again.
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