Snoring Can Actually Kill You

The other night I couldn’t sleep. My friend was sick and I was keeping him company. He fell asleep immediately after he took his meds. Here’s the problem: he snored. And he snored unusually loud for a long time. I thought there might be something wrong with him.

The next morning when I told him about what happened, he didn’t share my concern. “Really? I thought snoring means I sleep really well, or that I’m exhausted.”

Many believe that when someone is snoring, it means they’re either exhausted or having a nice deep sleep. But Yanti Mulyani, a 35 year-old Bogor resident and ex-snorer, believes differently. “I think people with obesity tend to snore. I recall snoring a lot when I was fat,” Yanti told me.

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At first, Yanti wasn’t aware of her snoring habits. She only realized it later after a friend told her about it. She didn’t notice something was wrong in her sleep. “I slept soundly. I didn’t feel any significant difference in my sleep patterns when I snored. Except for my partner, he’s annoyed with the sound,” she told me.

People tend not to take snoring seriously. I got in touch with Andreas Prasadja, an expert in sleeping disorders. We met at his sleeping lab, in Mitra Keluarga Kemayoran Hospital, North Jakarta.

Inside the lab, a series of breathing tools hung on the wall. I saw patients come and go. I never thought there are many people who suffer from sleeping disorders, and that they go through intensive care and treatment.

As it turns out, snoring isn’t a sign you sleep soundly. When somebody snores, it’s a sign that something is wrong. This condition is called sleep apnea. Twenty percent of Jakarta residents suffer from this condition, according to research by Indonesian Society of Sleep Medicine. Sleep apnea happens when your respiratory tract narrows or closes off, which causes you to reduce or stop your breathing, which can lead to death. This condition usually goes unnoticed, since few people notice what they do in their sleep.

What makes sleep apnea a silent killer is people’s misconception. Snoring is more dangerous than smoking or having high cholesterol, according to research published in the medical journal The Laryngoscope.

“In our society, snoring is still considered normal, especially since the person snoring doesn’t feel anything. They might feel strange when they wake up, and sleepy during the afternoon, but they won’t feel anything in their sleep,” Andreas told me.

Andreas said that sleep apnea can cause hypertension, diabetes, cardiac disease, stroke, depression, impotence, and death. When sleep apnea happens to a pregnant woman, it may lead to premature childbirth, fetal disorders, and other pregnancy issues.

According to Andreas, foreign literature shows that sleep apnea patients make up to 14-16 percent of the population in Western countries. But populations in Western countries are mainly caucasian, which means they have longer necks and bigger jaws than most Asians. About 20 percent of people in Asian countries suffer from sleep apnea, where a majority of the population have smaller jaws and longer necks than Westerners.

Does snoring have anything to do with body weight? Andreas said no. It’s caused by external factors, such as smoking or vaping, which lead to a swollen respiratory tract.

“Bear in mind that the cause is narrow respiratory tract. As we get older, [our respiratory tract] gets more flabby. And we can’t fight aging,” Andreas told me.