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Snoring and Your Marriage |
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Written by Duke
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If you live with someone who snores, you know the drill, especially wives. You try to fall asleep as your husband snores loudly beside you. You poke, prod, and try to get him to roll over but end up leaving the room for a spare bedroom or the couch to try and get a good night's sleep. Usually the husband doesn't even notice. Can this snoring be hurting your marriage?
Dr. Rosalind Cartwright, founder of the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, is the director of a new study looking into how snoring can affect your marriage.
Obstructive sleep apnea, a medical problem caused when the soft tissue in the back of the throat collapses during sleep, is often the cause of snoring. The disease may occur in both genders but is most common in obese, middle-aged men.
Sleep apnea is a common disease but is generally undiagnosed since the person with the problem doesn't hear themselves snore. It does tend to make people tired during the day since the person is deprived of the deep sleep necessary for a restful night. If it goes untreated, the oxygen deprivation caused by sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, memory problems and impotence. It can also cause problems with the snorer's bed partner. Couples who struggle with sleep apnea have a high divorce rate says Cartwright.
For one couple in the study, the husband's snoring woke his wife more than eight times in one hour. With the exhausted wife, there were tensions at home and the couple started fighting all the time. The husband sought treatment consisting of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine that blows air through the breathing passage, keeping it open. After the treatment, the wife's quality of life including a better night's sleep increased tremendously as did the couple's marital satisfaction.
The moral to this story: A good night's sleep may be one of the secrets to a successful marriage.
For more information go to canoe.healthology.com
Original story by Karen Barrow
Submitted by TKDLady |
