enemy in sleep

Snoring: The enemy of a good night's sleep

Features - February 20, 2008


Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Snoring can kill. A street singer in Bandung recently killed one of his friends who snored because he couldn't stand the incessant sound that disturbed his sleep.

Snoring can also destroy a happy marriage. Mini, not her real name, has filed for divorce because she cannot stand her husband's snoring, which disturbs her sleep every night.

"The sound is like that of a chain saw. I'm stressed as I cannot sleep. I cannot take a rest during the day as I must work," Mini told Norman Miguna, president director of the Immanuel Hospital in Bandung, West Java.

The results of a survey conducted in the U.S. indicate that around 31 percent of people who experience sleep disturbances have serious problems in building relationships with other people.

Ati Laksamana, 51, asked her husband Leks, 55, to find a solution for his snoring, which has become progressively worse during their 26-years of marriage.

At night, Ati has to sleep a distance away from Leks because her husband's loud snoring makes it difficult for her to sleep.

Ati says her husband snores more when he is sleeping soundly after a full, tiring day. Leks is the regional secretary of the West Java province and is therefore very busy with his work and travels a lot. His snoring becomes worse when he has a cough.

"His snoring has become all the more terrible, especially now as he also coughs a lot. It is getting scarier," Ati told The Jakarta Post.

Leks said he once saw a television program about a sleep laboratory that could provide a solution to snoring problems. He thought of how his wife would always be disturbed by his snoring.

"I want to get rid of this snoring. I take pity on my wife as her sleep is disturbed every night," Leks said.

Teguh Widjaya, coordinator of the sleep laboratory at Immanuel Hospital, said snoring is just one of more than 100 disturbances that a human being might experience when he or she is asleep.

Sleep disturbances can afflict both young and old. Even babies experience sleep disturbances. About 30 percent of a human's life is spent sleeping. But have we ever calculated how much of this sleep is free from disturbance?

The quality of our sleep actually determines the quality of our lives. Medically, disturbances or confusion in the metabolism of the body that occurs during sleep affects body metabolism during the day. People who do not sleep enough or who do not sleep calmly can often wake up with a headache, therefore causing a disruption to day-time activities.

Research indicates that sleep disturbances can give rise to various ailments, such as hypertension, heart trouble, unstable emotions that may develop into psychosis and impotency.

"Feeling tired when you wake up means the heart is throbbing fast, which may cause hypertension, poor memory and unstable emotions," Teguh said.

Sleep disturbances, Teguh added, may be classed into three groups.

First, dyssomnia, which is characterized by the patient feeling excessively sleepy, finding it difficult to sleep and also finding it difficult to maintain sleep (often waking up). People often think that they wake up from their sleep because they need to urinate. In fact, they need to urinate because they wake up from their sleep.

Second, parasomnia, which is characterized by the patient making undesirable physical movements during his or her sleep, for example, by sleep walking, sleep talking or suffering nocturnal leg cramps.

"Sleep walking is a sleep disturbance that usually occurs to children while nocturnal leg cramps usually attack adults," said Teguh, who is also a pulmonologist.

Third, sleep disturbances that are related to certain ailments, such as psychosis (mental illness), anxiety (excessive worry), asthma, epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, dementia or degeneration of the brain function.

Leks and Mimi's husbands are just two from the 4 percent of the male population in the world who snore in their sleep. It is estimated that only 2 percent of the female population in the world suffers from this sleep disturbance.

There is also research to suggest, Teguh said, that people living in the Pacific region, including Indonesia, have a greater chance of suffering sleep disturbances

source from http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20080220.T01