Sari Zayed of Davis, California, made headlines in 1994 when a city noise enforcement officer issued Zayed a $50 citation at 1:30 in the morning after a neighbor complained her snoring kept him awake at night. Zayed got the last laugh. She sued for $24,500 for stress, weight loss and emotional strain, and settled out of court $13,500.
Snorers aren’t trying to keep others awake at night. Most of the time, they don’t even know they snore -- they are after all, unconscious at the time. Some anthropologists have suggested that snoring is a primitive way of keeping beasts away at night. Ear, nose and throat doctors take a different view.
Doctors take snoring seriously. The most serious form is sleep apnea, in which the sleeper actually stops breathing for periods of at least 10 seconds. Hundreds of times a night. During as much as half their sleep time, patients with sleep apnea may show below-average concentrations of oxygen in their blood. A lack of oxygen can cause the heart to pump harder and over time can contribute to high blood pressure.
During REM sleep, the brain sends out an inhibitor that basically paralyzes the body, presumably to keep you from acting out vivid dreams. When a sleep apnea sufferer’s breathing is cut off, the body rouses itself with a jolt of adrenaline. Breathing resumes, the person falls back to sleep and the whole thing starts again. These “micro-arousals” can happen as many as 600 times a night, disrupting a snore’s sleep cycle. Studies have linked their apnea induced sleepiness to an increase in car accidents. A study by the Mayo Clinic also shows spouses of heavy snorers lose an average of one’s hour sleep a night.
People have been trying to develop a snoring cure as far back as the American Revolution when soldiers sewed small cannonballs into pockets on the back of the snorer-offenders’ uniforms so they would not roll onto their backs. Today, more than 300 anti-snoring devices are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Officer.
To reduce your nighttime noise making, try losing weight, avoiding alcohol within three hours before you go to sleep and ironically, getting enough sleep. If that doesn’t work, consult a physician. There are a number of things they can try, such as breathing masks, mouthpieces and surgery.