Tips for Getting Restful Sleep When Your Partner Snores

No matter how much you may adore your partner, it can be hard to feel affection if their snoring is disrupting your sleep. Trying to get some shuteye while sleeping next to a snorer is more than just a nuisance. Sleeping next to a snorer can also impact your health if you are not getting adequate amounts of restorative sleep. Here are a few tips that you can employ to solve this problem so that you get a good night's sleep.

Distract Yourself

It is easy to focus on the snoring when it is so disruptive. Taking intentional steps to divert your attention away from the rumble may go a long way in helping you to drift off to sleep. The goal is to train your mind to ignore or minimize the sound of the snoring. Good activities to try when trying to distract your mind include meditation, breathing exercises, or listening to a podcast with headphones until you fall asleep.

Lean on the Use of Earplugs, Music, or White Noise

If trying to train your mind to ignore the sound is not working, you may need to lean on the use of earplugs, music, or white noise. While most soft foam earplugs will not eliminate all of the noise, they may be enough to muffle the sound so that you can ignore it. For something more serious, a pair of noise-cancelling headphones will do the trick if you can get used to sleeping with them on your head.

Alternatives to earplugs include listening to music as you try to fall asleep. This distraction may be just enough to drown out the sound of your partner sawing logs. Many people have also found success with using a white noise machine. In addition to purchasing a dedicated white noise machine, you can also download an app on your smartphone. These apps typically offer a wide variety of sounds to choose from, including ocean waves, rain, or static.

Consider Getting Your Partner Treatment

Severe or persistent snoring may necessitate the consultation of a medical provider. A sleep study can determine the severity of snoring while helping to diagnose potential causes of the problem. If the sleep study reveals that the patient has obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), they may be a good candidate for therapy designed to mitigate the snoring.

These treatments include continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) therapy, or the use of an oral appliance such as a mouthguard. Surgery is also a potential solution if other treatments are not successful in solving the problem.

Encourage Your Partner to Change Sleeping Position

One of the oldest tricks in the book when dealing with a snoring problem is to change sleeping position. Most people notice that the snoring is worse when lying on their backs. Stomach or side sleeping tends to reduce the amount of snoring. Sometimes it is as easy as poking your snoring partner to get them to roll over and stop the noise.

If this fails, you may want to look into positional therapy as a treatment option. This type of therapy is specifically designed to help snorers find better sleeping positions. Good examples of this include a head-positioning pillow that aligns the neck to mitigate snoring or a snore-reducing trainer that prevents the snorer from rolling onto their back.

If all else fails, you may have to consider simply sleeping in a different room. This does not mean that you need to switch rooms permanently. However, it does not hurt to have an alternative sleeping area available for those nights when the snoring is so bad that sleep becomes impossible.  

Why is it Important to Address Snoring?

It is important to address this issue as soon as possible. Chronic sleep deprivation leads to fatigue, mood swings, and difficulty concentrating. When it becomes a long-term problem, sleep deprivation has also been shown to raise the risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, coronary heart disease, and more.

For instance, a 2023 study revealed that men who were sleep deprived developed cardiovascular disease 2.3 years sooner when compared to healthy sleepers. The same study found that sleep-deprived women developed cardiovascular disease 1.8 years sooner than their healthy sleeping counterparts.

It may take a bit of experimenting with different strategies to find the solution that works for you. The bottom line is that everyone will be happier if they get a restful night of sleep.

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