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Getting rudely awakened by your man’s loud snoring when you need your beauty sleep can be a real pain. If he’s keeping you up all night with his snoring, it could have dire effects on your quality of sleep, warns Dr Stephen Lee, a specialist in ear, nose and throat surgery, and consultant at Raffles Hospital.
Inadequate or poor-quality sleep can cause you to become irritable and short-tempered. Your concentration and alertness may also take a hit, and you may have trouble functioning properly at work the next day or even risk getting into a road accident.
Snoring is due to a narrowing of the airway, explains Dr Lee. If the cause can be identified and treated, it is preventable. However, if it is not addressed, it can overlap into a medical condition called obstructive sleep apnoea.
Read also: Could your mattress be the problem or is it a medical issue causing your insomnia?
To help your partner stop snoring, here’s what you need to do.
1. Uncover the reasons behind the habit
For example, is he overweight? Does he usually go to bed extremely tired? These are just a couple of the possible causes of snoring.
If he is overweight, Dr Lee suggests he slim down. Losing weight may not completely cure your boyfriend of his snoring problem, but it can certainly help reduce it.
2. Skip the anti-snoring products
There are many products on the market that claim to help with snoring, but Dr Lee says that these are mostly ineffective. Surgery is one treatment option for snoring or sleep apnoea. This is advisable if your man has tried to address his snoring using the continuous airway pressure method without success, or if he has an obstruction that is causing him to snore, such as big tonsils or adenoids.
Read also: 10 simple ways to improve your sleep
3. Don’t shy away from seek professional help
“He should see a doctor if his snoring is extremely loud, if he feels tired when he wakes up in the morning, if he does not feel fresh after more than seven hours of sleep, if he finds himself dozing off easily or feeling sleepy during the day, or if he suffers from severe snoring along with hypertension or heart disease,” adds Dr Lee.
This story was originally published on Shape.com.sg.
