be healthy

Karen Barrow

Medical reviewer:

Medically Reviewed On: February 13, 2006

Published on: February 13, 2006

It is a scene that has played out in countless bedrooms for years; a wife tries to fall asleep as her husband snores loudly next to her. The wife angrily shushes her husband, tries to roll him over and ultimately leaves the bed for the stiff couch in the living room. Often, the husband barely notices his raucous rumblings, but can his snoring be hurting their marriage?

"This is a frequent problem within marriages that nobody is paying enough attention to," says Dr. Rosalind Cartwright, founder of the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and director of a new study looking into this topic.

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 may be as common as diabetes, but it often goes undiagnosed, as the person with sleep apnea rarely hears his or her own snoring. However, it does make people tired during the day as it prevents people from entering into a deep sleep. Left untreated, the oxygen deprivation caused by sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, memory problems and impotence.

Another often-ignored side effect, however, is the impact sleep apnea has on the snorer's bed partner.

"Couples who struggle with sleep apnea have a high divorce rate," says Cartwright.

A peaceful night of sleep, therefore, may be the secret to a successful marriage.

For one couple in Cartwright's preliminary study, a husband's snoring woke his wife over eight times an hour. This exhausted his wife and caused a lot of tension at home.

"The strain on the marriage was evident, the couple was fighting all the time," says Cartwright.

The husband tried two weeks of at-home treatment for his sleep apnea, consisting of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine that blows air through the breathing passage, keeping it open throughout the night. The mask of the CPAP machine is less-than-sexy, but following treatment, the wife's quality of life measure jumped from 1.2 to a 7, and her self-reported sleepiness score dropped from a 12 to a 6. More importantly, marital satisfaction scores increased from a 3 to almost a 6.

Similar results were seen in other couples, as well, and Cartwright is now expanding her research to include more couples in the hopes of proving that sleep apnea treatment can create better marriages.

"It's beautiful to see couples getting along so much better," she says.