Is snoring suffocating your marriage?

Have you ever thought about how snoring affects your relationship with your partner? A prime symptom of OSA is snoring, plus frequent periods of gasping for air or tossing and turning. All that racket robs your partner of sleep, often leading to a shorter fuse the next day and heaps of resentment as well.

“Heaps of resentment” – not a phrase you think of when picturing marital bliss.

Can we talk about sleeping together?

Patients commonly seek out first time help for their sleep apnea when a partner threatens to (or actually does) kick them out of bed. It’s incredibly common. A U.S. poll of a thousand adults by the National Sleep Foundation found that 31% of those who live with a partner will resort to earplugs or even separate bedrooms for relief from disruptive snoring. That’s almost a third of us.

Maybe it’s time to pick up a marital aid…

Not that kind of marital aid! We’re not here to tell you how to handle intimacy, but the fact is the divorce rate for couples where one or both suffer from sleep apnea is frighteningly high. If loud snoring is driving a wedge between you and your partner, therapy with a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine may offer the aid you need. It’s the most proven and most prescribed treatment for sleep apnea, and your partner will thank you for making the leap.

Home Sleep Test

Save your marriage with CPAP

The sneaky thing with OSA is that many who have it have no idea what’s going on. They feel tired, sure, and over time the effects pile up. But the little stoppages in breathing that cause them to lose sleep are usually not enough to fully wake them up, so they spend a whole night in bed, snoring away, and wondering why they’re so tired the next day. Their spouses, on the other hand, know exactly what’s making them tired – getting woken half the night by all that snoring!

Study after study has been done on the subject. Researchers at The Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center found clinical evidence that sleep deprivation in partners of people with sleep apnea put a strain on marriages – in one case study a woman was woken up over eight times an hour by her husband’s snoring. Okay, maybe it doesn’t take a research scientist to figure out how that could drive people apart…

What’s encouraging from the study though, is that when the snoring partner started CPAP treatment, their spouse’s quality of life shot up remarkably. They reported reductions in daytime sleepiness, and great gains in nighttime sleep efficiency and marital satisfaction.

Want to get back in your bed?

If you’re thinking it’s time to get serious about snoring – if you’re looking to get back in your own bed or address the problem before you find you’re no longer welcome there – Apnée Santé is here to help.

Home Sleep Test

And where does the solution start? In bed!

To find out if CPAP treatment is right for you, you can do a home sleep test in the comfort of your own, well, wherever you’re sleeping. Reach out to any of our clinics and we’ll give you an initial consultation within 48 hours, then set you up with a simple, easy-to-use home sleep test to confirm if you have sleep apnea. If you do, we’ll enlist the help of a compact, whisper-quiet CPAP machine to stop your snoring, improve your sleep and get you on the path to brighter days and a happier marriage.

From personal experience, since the snoring stops immediately with CPAP, your spouse might start to feel the benefits of your treatment even before you do! What’s more, once you’re set up, our care for life program means we’ll stick with you, give you tips to make the most of your CPAP therapy, and be there if you have questions or need help with your equipment.

Care for life program

Fallen off the sleep wagon?

Have you tried CPAP therapy but fallen off the wagon? Not to worry! If you had success with CPAP in the past but later found it wasn’t really working for you, it probably isn’t your fault. Patients’ needs can change over time, and equipment wears out and becomes less effective. Since these things happen gradually, you aren’t likely to notice the subtle changes night by night until eventually you just feel like CPAP isn’t really doing the trick anymore.

Ill-fitting or poorly functioning equipment can actually make your sleep worse, so without checking in with the experts from time to time, it’s easy to feel like your therapy used to work but now somehow just doesn’t, and decide to pack it in. But that doesn’t mean your sleep apnea has packed it in too. If the snoring is back, and the exhaustion is back, it’s time to get yourself back on track.

Whether your equipment originally came from us or you got it somewhere else a long time ago, our respiratory therapists will be happy to consult with you and help get your therapy working again. If your shoulders are getting sore from all the “Roll over and be quiet!” shoving at night, or you’ve dropped off your CPAP and are feeling the old tired feelings coming back, we can help.

Apnée Santé provides this online information for education and communication purposes only and it should not be construed as personal medical advice. Information published here is not intended to replace a consultation with a physician regarding your medical care.