Can Your Bed Partner's Snoring Make You Sick?
© Kerrin Leon White
Just recently I came across a study published in a journal that most people probably don’t have on their coffee tables--or even most doctors on their bookshelves: Health Care for Women International. The article, entitled “Adverse Health Effects Among Women Living With Heavy Snorers,” written by Jan Ulfberg, MD, Ned Carter, PhD, Matts Talback, DSc, and Christopher Edling, MD, PhD, comes from Sweden.
The essence of the study was a mailed questionnaire that asked two groups of women about their health and sleep. It asked about indicators such as: sleep habits, insomnia, fatigue, excessive sleepiness, depression, morning headache, illnesses, medications, stress, smoking, drinking, height, weight, number of children at home, their own and their husband’s snoring, and whether they slept in the same bedroom. It included the Epworth Sleepiness Scale, eight questions about the likelihood of dozing off in situations inappropriate for sleep.
One group of women consisted of spouses of 500 male patients (ages 30-64) referred to a sleep laboratory because of suspected obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), on the basis of snoring and excessive daytime sleepiness. Of these 500 women, 304 (70%) responded, but only those aged 30-64 (267, or 61%) contributed to the data analysis. When their husbands were tested, all proved to snore heavily, but only 97 (32%) were diagnosed with OSA.
The second group of women came from a random sample of 1,000 women aged 30-64 drawn from the county tax register of all residents. Of these, 728 (73%) responded; all turned out to be living with a male partner. These 728 made up the control group. This group was subdivided into those with and without a spouse who snored (203 and 525, respectively).
Wives of the patients slept in a separate room more often than women in the control sample (26% vs. 11%). About twice as often as controls, wives of patients reported problems with insomnia, daytime fatigue, daytime sleepiness, awakening unrefreshed from sleep, and morning headache.
In the control sample, women partners of male snorers also reported, two to three times more often than partners of non-snorers, insomnia, fatigue, daytime sleepiness, awakening unrefreshed, and morning headache. In other words, these women showed the same pattern of difficulties as the wives of patients.
Similar patterns occurred for wives of patients who had OSA versus wives of patients who only snored heavily, without having OSA. Surprisingly, similar patterns also occurred for those sleeping in the same versus separate bedrooms.
The authors considered their study to be the first demonstration that women living with heavy snorers have more symptoms of this type than women living with non-snorers. However, at least one other study by the same group and one by a different group of researchers have supported the point that the noise of snoring can disturb a woman’s sleep and have a variety of related ill effects on a woman’s health.
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