Is loud snoring dangerous for my health?
Loud snoring is associated with serious health risks: arterial calcification, higher mortality after a heart attack and dangerous daytime sleepiness. If you snore loudly on a regular basis and feel tired during the day, have it checked by your general practitioner.
Loud snoring is more than an annoying nighttime noise. In one study, 64% of heavy snorers had calcification in the carotid artery, compared with 20% of light snorers. After correcting for age, smoking and high blood pressure, a strong association remained. This suggests that heavy snoring is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.1
The cardiac risks go beyond arterial calcification. Among 1,660 patients with a first heart attack, heavy snorers died more than three times as often within 28 days compared with non-snorers. This held after correcting for obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking. Chronic heavy snoring is also associated with cardiac arrhythmias, stroke and elevated blood pressure.2,3
You notice the effects during the day as well. Habitual snorers are nearly six times as likely to be dangerously sleepy in active situations, according to a population study of 1,186 people. A Swedish study with ten years of follow-up showed that male heavy snorers experienced a workplace accident twice as often; for women the figure was at least three times as often. Concentration problems, irritability and depression are part of the broader picture of untreated sleep apnea.4,5
Drinking less alcohol demonstrably helps. Both a large British genetic study (more than 383,000 participants) and a Chinese cohort study (more than 11,000 participants) show that each additional drink per day increases the likelihood of snoring by around 14%. Heavy drinkers had a 38% greater chance of snoring than non-drinkers. The association is considered probably causal, meaning that drinking less can genuinely make a difference.6,7
Do you experience daytime sleepiness or other complaints? International guidelines then recommend a full sleep study to rule out sleep apnea. The standard treatment for confirmed sleep apnea is airway pressure therapy (CPAP), a mask that keeps your airway open at night. Ask your general practitioner for a referral to a sleep clinic.8
All claims are based on the supplied studies (PMID 18788645, 18548824, 8143553, 10573247, 10901116, 38233469, 33183388, 26410986). The evidence is largely observational and associative in nature. For the alcohol association there is stronger causal evidence via a genetic research method. Whether snoring itself is the cause of cardiovascular damage is probable but has not yet been definitively proven through randomised trials.