Is Snoring Keeping You Awake At Night?

Snoring is to obstructive sleep apnea as thunder is to lightning. They may, but not always, appear together. One may be just an annoyance, but the other may be serious trouble.

With obstructive sleep apnea, muscles of the soft palate at the base of the tongue and the uvula (the small, conical, fleshy tissue hanging from the soft palate) relax and sag, obstructing the airway, making breathing labored and noisy. Collapse of the airway walls blocks breathing entirely. When breathing periodically stops, a listener hears the snoring broken by pauses. As pressure to breathe builds, muscles of the diaphragm work harder. Sleep is then temporarily interrupted, sometimes only for seconds. This, in turn, activates throat muscles and "un-corks" the airway. The effort is akin to slurping a drink through a straw that is stuck in a lump of ice cream. A listener hears deep gasping as breathing starts. With each gasp, the sleeper awakens, but so briefly and incompletely that he does not remember doing so in the morning. Someone with obstructive sleep apnea may stop breathing for ten seconds or longer - dozens, even hundreds of times each night.

Each time breathing stops, oxygen in the blood stream falls and the heart must work harder to circulate blood. Blood pressure rises and over time may stay elevated after breathing restarts. The heart sometimes beats irregularly and may even pause for several seconds. This may account for some deaths during sleep of people who went to bed in apparent good health.