A Special Report For All Those Mothers Who Care About Us
 
Weddings are a time when perfection abounds. Like some huge Broadway production, weddings are booked way in advance, invitations and announcements sent out months before, cast and crew all assembled and dressed in similar array, and everyone rehearsed and primed for that ultimate moment of magic otherwise known as: The Wedding Ceremony. As Martha Stewart would say, weddings are a "good thing".
 
However, if either the bride or groom happens to snore, weddings may not be such a “good thing” after all. Once the honeymoon phase passes, and the realities of marriage set in, many couples with snoring partners may be faced with more than their share of marital strife. Beyond their marital vows to stay together through “sickness and in health”, they may also need to commit themselves to a lifetime of sleep deprivation. Most likely many of them will be forced to sleep apart shortly after their wedding night.  In a sense what my friend Charlie said may be right. Speaking as someone who has 3 marriageable daughters of his own, he warns that, “Mothers should not let their daughters marry snorers if at all possible...” His wife of 25 years, probably having endured some of Charlie’s snoring herself, emphatically agrees.             
 
Are You Kidding?
Knowing Charlie, (he has a pretty zany sense of humor), he was probably just joking. But even if he was, I couldn’t help but to think that he had hit the problem on the nose (pun intended). Snoring is a major problem for many married couples these days. At best, many couples end up sleeping in separate beds, and at worst they wind up careening into very dangerous health territories that neither of them probably envisioned as they walked down that aisle hand inhand, together and forever. 

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
In my practice, I see many married couples not only “break apart”, meaning sleep in separate beds, but literally fall apart due to the snoring. In fact, in a marriage snoring yields not one but two casualties. One young patient, who recently married, almost lost her hearing as a result of her husband’s snoring. Having put in ear plugs as a last ditch effort to drown out the snoring, they got so tightly lodged in to her ear canal, it caused a major infection which could very well have, if not surgically removed in the operating room, been the cause of severe deafness in her affected ear. Having endured something that awful, it was only natural that she would blame her husband and not his snoring for what had come to pass. Suffice it to say they were not the most happily married couple when they went home that night. 

‘Till Death Do Us Part
Admittedly, snoring is not the only cause for marital discord. Many financial, emotional and even moral differences, can strain a marriage. Yet, snoring is one major source of marital discord if it creates nightly sleep problems for both husband and wife. Even worse, if the snoring happens to belie a sleep breathing problem like obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) sleeping apart may be the least of their  problems. In this case, the snoring may not only be an inconvenience but an ultimate end to life itself. 

Sleep apnea is a sleep breathing condition where slack muscles surrounding a person’s airway can interrupt the natural flow of air into and out of the airway of the sleeping person. In some cases the muscles become so floppy the airway completely obstructs for 10 to even 30 seconds at a time. If you’ve ever held your breath for that long, you must know how difficult that is. But imagine what it must be like for those with sleep apnea where this happens anywhere from 50 to over 100 times a night. How detrimental and frustrating that must be for their autonomic nervous system to readjust and modify what it senses to be a fluctuation in the person’s homeostasis, every time they wake up only to fall right back to sleep only to wake up again, 50 to a hundred times every night, for many years. It’s not surprising then that sleep apnea has been closely linked with many common health problems we see and experience daily like: diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression and even strokes. Yet, the most troubling part of all is that even though 35% of snorers are known to have sleep apnea only a minute fraction (about 1 in 7) are getting treated and diagnosed.

The other more disturbing fact about sleep apnea is that most of them are often unaware of this problem themselves. Being in light sleep mode when they obstruct, and having become almost accustomed to these obstructions, sleep apnea patients don’t notice anything until they’re formally diagnosed in a lab. And even if their bed partners notice, it’s often in their best interest, since those short episodes of silence means that their spouse is obstructing, and when this is happening the snoring stops momentarily, giving the spouse or bed-partner brief but welcome respite from a night of  snoring cacophony. Obviously not something couples bonded in holy matrimony should be relieved about. 
Yet this happens all the time when couples focus on the snoring rather than on the sleep apnea. Instead, they attribute their chronic fatigue or dizziness, inability to focus or concentrate, and their persistent and unresolved throat problems to their loss of sleep from the snoring. The sleep apnea which may be causing all or most of these problems simply gets put aside. In fact, there are even some sleep apnea patients, even after they get a formal diagnosis, to focus on having their snoring resolved rather than look for a solution to treat their sleep apnea. 

Snoring On a Massive Scale
As you are probably well aware, many people, not just newly wed couples have problems with snoring. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 75 percent of adults wake up or sleep apart because of the snoring. However, that statistic is not as bad as the percentage of adults (85%) who suffer from sleep apnea and don’t ever get treated or diagnosed.

This is another reason why snoring is so problematic for young couples. As they head down that aisle in blissful abandon, what many of them fail to notice is that this statistic isn’t just for older middle aged couples.  Although many young people may not think so, sleep apnea can affect anyone, at any age, and even those that are young and fit and otherwise at the prime of their lives. Just as the youth rely too much on their vigor and energy to carry them life’s worst travails, newlyweds often don’t care much about sleep apnea and what it can do to their health.  Since they think this only happens in overweight, middle aged couples, young men and women with spouses who snore just worry about the snoring. 

Yet, just as marital strife doesn’t unfold all at once, sleep apnea doesn’t show up until many months or years later, long after the snoring subsides and long after the weight gain has veered out of control. Therefore, what can seem at first a seemingly benign condition like the snoring can fester, if left alone, and develop into serious airway and breathing problems that may in turn lead to an official diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. 

After seeing this happen number of times, with countless number of my young patients who initially showed no visible signs of sleep apnea, finally get diagnosed with it a few years later, I'm convinced that the scores on these formalized sleep studies tell only half of the whole story. You can be young and fit and at the prime of your life, but if your anatomy is predisposed to sleep apnea (i.e. narrow airway, or snoring habitually), you can get sleep apnea just as much as the next guy or gal who is middle aged and overweight.  As any marital counselor will tell you, the most important thing in resolving any marital conflict is to resolve them at their source.  Similarly, snoring is best addressed by first addressing its source, most likely the sleep apnea, and not by merely covering up the sounds.
 
Marriage Is Not A Sitcom
Unlike that classic sitcom, The Honeymooners, where marital strife begins and ends in one 30 minute episode, most married couples don't enjoy the luxury of flicking off their problems whenever they feel like it.  In this way the problem of snoring and sleep apnea for married couples can’t be resolved with a simple ear plug or by sleeping in separate bedrooms. Therefore, just as my good friend Charlie indicates it may not be such a bad idea for those who are invested in the marital success of their daughters as well as their sons, to forewarn them, if not to help them prevent this ultimate health calamity by taking swift and decisive action. By doing so, mothers may be doing more for the newly married couple than just helping to finance their wedding day.  Mothers who care in this way may be investing in a lifetime of happiness for their children filled with all the goodness and health that young couples can cherish “‘til death do us part”.  Now how’s that for a “good thing”? 

West Side ENT