New Study Uncovers the Beliefs Behind Behavior of Poor Sleepers

Difficulty Sleeping

I do my best to stay up (no pun intended) on the latest research and findings regarding sleep-related disorders and their treatments. New results out of Ryerson University in Toronto don’t surprise me — that taking sleeping pills or drinking alcohol is not a long-term solution for dealing with insomnia.

The study was conducted by Heather Hood, a PhD student in clinical psychology and lead author of the study, along with Dr. Colleen Carney, director of Ryerson's Sleep and Depression Laboratory, and graduate psychology student, Andrea Harris.

Hood is an insomnia therapy specialist and had previously researched the link between anxiety disorders and “safety behaviors” — things people do to self-treat a disorder. With the new research, Hood and her associates wanted to examine the relationship between insomnia and safety behaviors, such as taking sleep medication or drinking alcohol before bed. Specifically, they wanted to uncover the belief systems of poor sleepers: how much a person with insomnia believes that their behaviors are helping them sleep, even if those behaviors are not helping them sleep at all.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 48 percent of Americans report occasional insomnia. And a recent Harvard Medical School study determined that insomnia costs U.S. companies about $63 billion a year due to missed days and poor work performance. Clearly, lack of sleep and insomnia are an American pandemic, and the efforts of Hood, Carney and Harris to help uncover the beliefs behind the behavior of poor sleepers was resulted in some very important information.

For the insomnia/safety behavior study, the researchers asked 397 Ryerson University undergraduate students to complete an online survey that asked about their safety behaviors. The questionnaire also asked how often they performed their nightly rituals, and how much they felt they needed to fall sleep. They were also asked how they defined insufficient sleep, and to what extent they went to in order to avoid feeling tired.

The results of the study, published in the December 2011 issue of Behavior Therapy, found that 40 percent of the students polled were poor sleepers who were likely to use safety behaviors, such as taking sleep medication or drinking alcohol, which in fact, not helping them fall sleep. They also observed that the poor sleepers felt dependent on these behaviors and believed they helped them sleep, even though the behaviors were actually compounding their sleeping problems. The students who did not experience sleep problems often didn't think of anything — they simply fell asleep.

Based on the research, Dr. Colleen Carney, director of Ryerson's Sleep and Depression Laboratory, believes that poor sleepers who engage in safety behaviors are actually disrupting their sleep in the long term. These safety behaviors are driven by unhelpful beliefs about sleep, but people suffering from insomnia or poor sleep feel they need to do these things to help them fall asleep.

Dr. Carney’s conclusion: That cognitive behavior therapy — not taking a pill or a drink of alcohol—is the best long-term treatment for insomnia and other sleep disorders.With cognitive behavior therapy, patients are taught to work with their physiology to help develop good sleeping habits and learn how to fall asleep naturally, rather than relying on chemicals. In our pharmaceutical society, that seems like a rogue idea … but I believe it’s the right one.

Mending Your Relationship When Snoring Rips You Apart

Snoring is a major cause of couple's unhappiness.

Although in this blog I generally discuss the health consequences of snoring, I’d like to bring to light another serious side effect, which is the devastation snoring can wreak on marriage. Often I meet with married couples in my practice who are at their wits end. Both partners are exhausted…the snorer because of the toll snoring takes on their body, and the spouse whose health is impacted dramatically from their partner’s snoring because of the daytime fatigue brought on by their inability to get a healthy full night’s sleep.

According to a new study by the British Lung Foundation (BLF)¹, loud snoring forces more than a third of couples to sleep in separate beds at night. The foundation polled more than 2,500 adults through an online survey in the United Kingdom this past Spring. Even more drastic for these couples is the fact of the 39% who admit they sleep apart, a full third (33%) claim it has become a permanent sleeping arrangement. Certainly sleeping apart from your significant other all the time can’t be healthy for the relationship. In addition to the noise of snoring creating distance between couples, snoring can also be a factor that leads to sexual dysfunction in men, according to a study² that was reported in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

When couples feel that snoring is ripping their marriages apart, it is often because they are both tired, irritable and tense. If they have been sleeping separately, most likely their relationship has eroded, and their communication has faltered. Certainly the lack of intimacy—not just physically, but the relaxing interactions between companions such as pillow talk—has worn them down.

How intrusive is snoring in a marriage? In 2006, a study from the Rush University Medical Center in Illinois3 determined that couples have a high divorce rate when the husband snores due to sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is the most serious of the many causes of snoring because it causes the snorer to stop breathing multiple times throughout the night, which can lead to heart and lung issues, high blood pressure and stroke. For years many snorers were reluctant to seek treatment because some of the most common treatments involved cumbersome sleep masks or surgery. Thankfully, today there are a number non-invasive in-office techniques that successfully treat the varied types of snoring such as the Pillar® Procedure, Balloon Sinuplasty™, and more based on the individual cause of your snoring.

Although I’m not a marriage counselor or sex therapist, patients who come to the Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center are taking a positive step to mend their relationship and hopefully will not become one of the statistics of divorce due to snoring. They are not only mending their relationship, but they are taking control of their health, leading to a more fulfilling life.

My marital advice to snorers? Seek treatment and enjoy getting close to your partner again.

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1. The British Lung Foundation, 14 June 2011, Survey of over UK 2,500 adults aged 16 and over through TNS between 28 April – 3 May 2011, completed online through an OnlineBus.
2. Hanak, V., Jacobson, D. J., McGree, M. E., Sauver, J. S., Lieber, M. M., Olson, E. J., Somers, V. K., Gades, N. M. and Jacobsen, S. J. (2008), ORIGINAL RESEARCH—MEN’S SEXUAL HEALTH: Snoring as a Risk Factor for Sexual Dysfunction in Community Men. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 5: 898–908. doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2007.00706.x
3. The Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center, Illinois: The Married Couples Sleep Study, January 2006

Help for Couple’s this Valentine’s Day: Cupid’s Arrow or a Cure for Snoring?

Cure for Snoring?

Cupid could use some help from snoring treatment this Valentine’s Day. Snoring is a major cause of couple’s unhappiness according to the Etap Hotel Group of Europe, which recently conducted a poll of 4,000 couples. Of the three most aggravating factors that drive couples apart, noisiness is the most common complaint, together with hogging the bed covers and restlessness.

Results showed that snoring forces many of couples to sleep in separate rooms. According to the study, nearly a quarter of the couples studied feel resentment towards their partner as a result of lack of sleep, which causes arguments between almost half of couples. Those who do share a bed lose out on an average of 70 minutes sleep a night.

When a partner snores, according to the Etap study, in over a quarter of relationships the couple’s sex drive suffers and one in 20 people would consider leaving their partner because they snore.

When a partner snores, it causes the other person to lose much needed sleep. Even just mild sleep deprivation can cause serious health issues. As a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has found, even five consecutive nights of four hours or less of sleep per night has the same negative affects on the brain and body than total sleep deprivation. Someone else’s snoring can take a real toll on your health.

If your spouse’s snoring keeps you up at night, you’re not alone. It is an issue that affects people from all walks of life, including the most famous celebrities. It has been reported that Tom Cruise, Sid Owen and Kevin Jonas sleep separate from their partners because of their snoring. Recently Helena Bonham Carter admitted that Tim Burton, her partner has a deviated septum that causes him to snore loudly. They have two adjacent houses in London, and Carter stated that his snoring is one of the reasons she enjoys having her own house.

If you’re in the New York Tri-State area, schedule an appointment at the Manhattan Snoring & Sleep Center, New York City’s top medical practice for snoring and sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment. The center’s medical/surgical snoring specialists offer the latest techniques to treat snoring and sleep apnea including minimally invasive treatment for deviated deptum, the Pillar Procedure, Balloonplasty™ and even provide the Home Sleep Test for patients for whom an overnight sleep lab is not an option.

Disclaimer:
 This article is intended for general information only is in no way intended to be a substitute for receiving direct medical advice from a medical professional, their diagnosis or treatment. Use and access to this website or any of the links contained within the site do not create a doctor-client relationship. If you have any questions regarding a medical condition, or if you suspect you may have a snoring disorder.

Roll Over and Stop Snoring! Truth or Wives’ Tale?

Many people think it’s an old wives’ tale—that rolling over from your back to your side when you’re sleeping will stop your snoring. Maybe it’s because wives are usually the ones poking their snoring husbands to roll over in the middle of the night! But just like many myths, there is a hint of truth to the tale.

To start, we must first understand why we snore. During sleep, our throats relax causing the tongue to fall into the airway in the back of the throat. Snoring is caused when there is an interruption to the free flow of air through the nose and throat causing a vibration that produces the sound of snoring. There are many reasons why air may block breathing so people can snore for many different reasons. There are many factors that can trigger the interruption of airflow including a person’s weight, whether they smoke, take certain medication, or have allergies. Physical causes can include if someone’s had a nose or throat injury or if they were born with narrow passages, and more.

For some people, gravity produces an increased amount of obstruction from the tongue occurs when they sleep on their backs, which is described as “positional snoring.” This type of snoring explains why snorers often complain about being "frequently assaulted" throughout the night by their spouses, and implored to roll over.

If you’re a snorer whose favorite sleeping position is on your back, a simple solution to keep you off of it is to sew a ball into the pocket of a t-shirt that is then worn backward during sleep, keeping you off of it and sleeping on your side or stomach. If you feel muscle strain in your lower back when you sleep on your side, many people feel more comfortable when they sleep with a pillow between their knees. Some positional snorers also improve when the head of the bed is elevated or they sleep on an extra pillow.

So there definitely is truth to the wives’ tale, but unfortunately, not for everyone. If you have tried keeping off your back when you snore and it’s not working, there may be other physical factors that are causing it, and it makes sense to have a snoring specialist examine you to discover the reason. Snoring can be more than an annoyance, and can negatively affect your health as well as daytime productivity.

If you’re in the New York City area, contact us today at the Manhattan Snoring and Sleep Center to set up your appointment and start your treatment.