Can Your Bed Partner's Snoring Make You Sick?

Can noise disturb sleep? To a certain extent, it depends on characteristics of the noise. If it soft, and especially if it constant, like the sound of an air conditioner, the sleeper can usually adjust to it, and sleep well. Consider, on the other hand, the barking of a dog, the boom of a jet aircraft overhead—or the snoring of a bed partner. If the noise is loud, variable, or episodic, it is more likely to cause awakening. It is also more likely to cause a phenomenon that occurs without the sleeper’s awareness, and is apparent only on laboratory study of sleep: the so-called “arousal,” which really means only a lightening of sleep. However, these arousals, which occur without consciousness, can also disrupt the continuity of deep sleep and its ability to make you feel well rested.

All the symptoms that spouses of heavy snorers reported two to three times as often as spouses of non-snorers represent typical manifestations of poor sleep and resulting sleep deprivation.

This study concerned only women. Men do snore habitually almost twice as often as women—41% of men versus 28% of women in one large study of 4000+ people. Still, that leaves a lot of men living with women who snore. There is no reason to expect a man to suffer less sleep disturbance as a result of his snoring than a woman does as a result of her husband’s snoring.

And what if both snore? We would expect that each disrupts the other’s sleep, resulting in both suffering similar symptoms!

And, by the way, there is mounting evidence that snorers also often suffer sleep disruption, similar to that of people with sleep apnea, as a result of the obstruction to free inflow of air, which causes the snoring!

Returning to the question posed at the beginning of this article, I suggest that, once you become aware of the process of sleep and the factors that influence it, you will find the answer obvious: “Yes, your bed partner’s snoring can make you sick.”

If the finding of this study is, on reflection, obvious, why do it at all? Sometimes “obvious” conclusions prove incorrect. Moreover, obvious conclusions, even correct ones, sometimes fail to draw the attention that they should. Many people still think of snoring as something merely funny. The point is now becoming clear and urgent that snoring causes illness, both