Tue, Aug 19, 2025|Dr. David Eifrig

Your Nightly Snoring Isn't Harmless

It's not just the long, hot days of summer making you feel wiped out...

The real culprit behind that tiredness could be coming from your bedroom.

Snoring is incredibly common... Roughly half of us regularly snore in our sleep, according to the American Medical Association.

But if you think your nightly snoring is harmless... think again.

Aside from annoying your poor spouse, your chronic snoring could do a number on your body. That's if your nightly arias are due to sleep apnea.

That buzzing chainsaw sound comes from the inhaled air causing tissues in the back of your throat to vibrate.

But if your throat muscles relax a tad too much so that your airway is partially or even fully blocked and your breathing completely stops for more than 10 seconds – and it happens several times each hour – your snoring is a sign of a disorder called obstructive sleep apnea ("OSA").

Left untreated, sleep apnea can really do a number on your body by ramping up your risk of...

High blood pressure
Heart attack and stroke
Heart disease
Depression and anxiety
Type 2 diabetes
Cognitive decline

What's more, a small study of 37 older adults (aged 73 on average) published in May's issue of Neurology found that OSA is associated with damage of the small blood vessels in the brain leading to degeneration of the parts of the brain responsible for memory. Researchers observed that these brain changes were significantly linked to drops in oxygen levels during rapid-eye-movement, or "REM," sleep (which is when a lot of the memory consolidation occurs).

And unfortunately, many folks don't even realize they have sleep apnea...

According to the National Council on Aging, around 39 million Americans have OSA, the most common form of sleep apnea.

But it's also estimated that as many as 9 in 10 folks are completely unaware that they've got OSA.

Today, I'm going to cover some sleep-apnea basics so you know exactly what you're up against...

Hopefully, this will encourage you to take your snoring seriously and remedy your sleep apnea before it causes major problems.

What is sleep apnea?

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder where your breathing periodically stops and restarts while you're asleep. It occurs when the airway in the back of your mouth becomes very narrow or closes when you breathe in.

The obstruction generally wakes you up because you can't breathe. However, the waking period is typically so short that you don't remember it. This pattern of airway closing, snorting or gasping, waking, and falling back to sleep can occur as often as every two minutes throughout the night, in some severe cases.

In addition to these micro-disruptions, sleep apnea reduces the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream, which has a detrimental effect on your organs (including your heart), tissues (like your muscles), and brain.

The three main types of sleep apnea are OSA (which was mentioned earlier), central sleep apnea (or "CSA"), and treatment-emergent CSA.

OSA is the most common form of sleep apnea. It occurs when the muscles in your throat relax so much that they obstruct your airway when you breathe in.
CSA stems from a signaling problem in the brain, which causes your breathing muscles to malfunction.
Treatment-emergent CSA describes a situation when someone who is being treated for OSA starts to develop CSA.

How do I know if I have sleep apnea?

One of the hallmark sleep-apnea symptoms is snoring... And most likely, someone else will have to tell you that you snore, since it happens while you're asleep.

But an easy way to find out is by using an app on your phone that'll record your snoring while you sleep. One such app is called SnoreLab, and it's available for Apple and Android phones.

SnoreLab will let you play back your snores and will categorize whether your snores are relatively loud or quiet. You can also use SnoreLab for free (just hit the "skip" button in the top right corner of the screen when they ask if you want to "go premium" while signing up).

All you have to do is plug in your phone, get the app started, and put it next to your head while you sleep.

As for wearables, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two of the biggest smartwatch brands – Samsung and Apple – to detect OSA.

Keep in mind, smartphone apps and gadgets aren't designed to officially diagnose sleep apnea... But they could illuminate an issue that's worth bringing up with your doctor.

Other signs that you might have sleep apnea include:

Breathing lapses while sleeping
Gasping for air while sleeping
Frequently waking with a dry mouth or headache
Getting up more than twice a night to pee
Trouble staying asleep
Night sweating
Teeth grinding
Lack of attention
Irritability
Daytime tiredness

If this sounds familiar, talk to your primary-care doctor about what the next steps might be. Chances are you'll need to undergo some sleep monitoring to get a clearer picture of the issue.

This sleep monitoring could be done in a doctor's office during a sleep study or at home. During the monitoring, you'll be hooked up to polysomnography equipment that will monitor your heart, lungs, brain activity, and breathing patterns.

Once you have the results of the polysomnography session, you will know how to best proceed.

If I have sleep apnea, what can I do about it?

First, you'll want to participate in a sleep study and get a formal diagnosis. This will help shed light on your sleeping issues. It will also help you get monetary support from your health insurance company for certain types of treatment.

One potential treatment option is getting a continuous positive airway pressure ("CPAP") machine, which helps keep your airway open while you sleep. Most insurance plans will cover part of the costs of a CPAP machine.

Another way to treat your sleep apnea is with exercise. Studies show that regular aerobic exercise reduced participants' apnea-hypopnea index score (or "AHI" score, a measure of sleep-apnea severity) by an average of nearly six points.

This means that participants experienced six fewer sleep-apnea events per hour, on average. This is enough of a difference to change your sleep-apnea level of severity from severe (30-plus events per hour) to moderate (15 to 29 events per hour), from moderate to mild (five to 14 events per hour), or from mild to normal (less than five events per hour).

Researchers have also found that combining resistance training with aerobic exercise tends to improve sleep-apnea outcomes even further.

Additionally, certain face exercises can help strengthen the muscles in your throat to help improve your sleep apnea. Here's a 14-minute YouTube video in which an ear, nose, and throat surgeon walks you through five throat-strengthening exercises. And check out this Sleep Foundation article on some additional mouth and throat exercises.

And if you know you have sleep apnea already and use a CPAP machine, make sure you're cleaning the machine and all its parts every day with warm water and soap. This will reduce the accumulation of germs inside the machine and help boost its operating efficiency.

Also, make sure you're using your machine consistently. And keep a humidifier in your room during this time of year to help combat the dryness in the air.

Don't let your snoring go on unchecked. Find out what's really happening in your airway while you sleep and take these steps to make sure you're breathing as well as possible.

What We're Reading (and Viewing)...

Here's to our health, wealth, and a great retirement,

Dr. David Eifrig and the Health & Wealth Bulletin Research Team
August 19, 2025