A snoring partner can completely disrupt your life. Their loud snoring can keep you up most of the night, and if you’re not sleeping, you can find it hard to work, deal with daily frustrations, and even enjoy the things you used to love about life. That can include your partner—you might find them impossible to look at during the day.
Do you sleep with a snorer? This is how snoring impacts the one sharing a bed with a snorer and how couples can cope.
So, what can you do to help yourself sleep peacefully at night? At the Michigan Center for TMJ & Sleep Wellness, we have helped many people in your situation finally find peace. We have tools that can effectively treat your partner’s snoring. Snoring keeping you or your partner up all night? Not only is it a nuisance, but it can also be dangerous. All you have to do is convince them they need snoring treatment. Here’s an approach that we’ve seen work again and again.
Snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea, a condition that stops a person from resting properly during the night. Without effective care, this issue can lead to worsening trouble with fatigue, irritability, and other daily problems. It can also have a serious impact on a person’s physical well-being, as they no longer manage to enjoy the full benefits of a night’s rest.
Approach the Situation with Compassion
We know that your lack of sleep is making you irritable and angry. Your first instinct is to scream and shout at your partner. The odds are good that you’ve already done a fair amount of that, so you know how effective that is . . .
To convince your partner to get snoring treatment, you must be as calm and rational as possible. Here’s why: your partner isn’t sleeping well at night. When their snoring wakes you up, you might look at them enviously and think they’re deep in sleep, but that’s far from the truth. When a person snores, it’s because their body is having difficulty getting enough oxygen.
Snoring is caused by turbulent airflow through the airway. This turbulence creates vibrations in their airway, which is the sound you hear as snoring. What causes the turbulence? Their lungs are trying to draw in more air than their airway allows. This means they’re not getting enough air and not getting restful sleep, no matter what it looks like.
Some patients have alignment issues with their jaw, tongue, and throat. These patients can be helped by using a retainer-like device that helps them breathe more easily. The device pushes the tongue and jaw forward to improve airflow and typically helps reduce snore sounds as well.
So, if your partner is also sleep-deprived, they are also irritable and irrational. If you want to have a productive discussion, you have to be calm, even though you feel that your partner is the one with the problem.
Choose a Good Time to Talk
The worst time to try to find a solution to snoring is in the middle of the night or the morning after neither of you has slept well. Try to find a better time. If you’ve lived with your partner for a while, you likely know when they are most receptive to difficult topics. Set aside time to have a conversation when they’re in the mood to have it.
If you’re lucky, you will find that your partner is receptive to your recommendations, but in our experience, it often takes a few such discussions to bring them around. Don’t give up if the first few discussions don’t lead to a solution. It isn’t just your sleep at stake: it could be your partner’s life.
Understand Sleep Apnea
Snoring is a sign that your partner struggles to breathe during sleep, and if they snore loudly, the odds are good that they sometimes lose that fight.
This is obstructive sleep apnea, when their airway collapses during sleep, cutting off the ability to breathe. Their own throat is strangling them as they sleep, which forces them to wake up to resume breathing properly. They may not fully awaken–it’s common for people with the condition to believe that they are sleeping all night, even though they might awaken hundreds of times a night. You might notice that their snores are interrupted by choking or gasping, and you might be able to tell when they stop breathing, but you can’t always tell by looking at them. For people with severe sleep apnea, the sufferer might be catching their sleep in one- or two-minute snatches all night long, which never lets them achieve the deeper, restorative sleep necessary for mental and physical health.
Because of the considerable disruption of the body’s systems, sleep apnea can have dangerous, even deadly complications. Heart disease, dementia, stroke, and even cancer risk increase for people with sleep apnea. In addition, people with sleep apnea are more likely to be involved in serious accidents, either while driving or at work.
Recommend a Sleep Apnea Test
Now that you understand the seriousness of sleep apnea and its connection to snoring, you can hopefully convince your partner to get tested. Let them know you care about them and that this could seriously harm their health.
Some people don’t want to get a sleep test because they think they have to sleep in a lab. That’s no longer true: a sleep apnea test is easy. Most people can take a sleep test in the comfort of their bed with no need to go to a sleep lab. At-home sleep studies are not only super easy to take but are also billed through medical insurance with most patients only being responsible for a co-pay.
Comfortable, Convenient Treatment Options
Another reason people avoid getting a sleep test is that they think the only treatment option for sleep apnea is CPAP, or “continuous positive airway pressure.” CPAP is a pump-and-mask system that many people find unappealing.
If your partner is reluctant about CPAP, let them know it’s not the only treatment option for sleep apnea. Many people with obstructive sleep apnea can treat their apnea with oral appliance therapy. It even works as a practical approach for treating snoring, with or without sleep apnea. This small mouthguard they can wear while sleeping is easy to use and care for, and it’s so subtle that you might not notice that they have it in. It’s also worth noting that most medical insurances help out with coverage on Oral Sleep Appliances, as long as there is a diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea.
Find Your Sleep Solution If Necessary
So what do you do if your partner won’t get tested for sleep apnea or get their snoring treated? In that case, you have to take steps to protect your sleep. Here are some common strategies that people try to help them sleep with a snoring partner:
- Wearing earplugs
- Using a white noise generator
- Sleeping in a different room
These can sometimes work, though it sometimes takes all three! However, these strategies and others you might try might not work for you. If you’re still unable to sleep at night, you need to consider moving out. This might be a short-term arrangement to help you get sleep and encourage your partner to treat their snoring. However, if your partner won’t treat their snoring to help you sleep, maybe that isn’t where you want to be.
Snoring and Sleep Apnea Treatment in the Detroit Area
At the Michigan Center for TMJ & Sleep Wellness, we’ve helped many people and their partners get deep, restful sleep despite snoring and sleep apnea. We can help you get a sleep test and recommend a CPAP alternative if you are looking for a better way to treat your condition.
To learn how we can help you get the rest you need, please call (248) 480-0085 today.
