Does Your Partner Complain About Your Snoring? How To Monitor Your Sleep at Night
Do you get tired of hearing your partner complain about your snoring at night? While you may see it as a minor annoyance your partner should be able to get over, persistent snoring can be a sign of a condition called sleep apnea. This condition isn’t harmless and can lead to a variety of health issues if it isn’t treated.
To help improve your sleep quality and reduce your risk of high blood pressure and other conditions linked to sleep apnea, here’s how to monitor your sleep at night. If you find out that you have sleep apnea after all, you may want to consider investing in a Resmed nasal mask or another type of CPAP mask.
What a Minute, Do I Really Snore?
It’s easy to doubt that you’re really snoring when you’ve never heard yourself snore. But that’s the nature of snoring. It occurs while you’re sleeping, so it’s not unrealistic to assume that you’ll never hear yourself snore.
However, if your partner says you’re snoring, you probably really are. Either that or your partner is mistaking his or her own snoring habit as yours. To get to the bottom of things and determine whether or not you need a CPAP face mask, here are a few ways to monitor your nighttime breathing and snoring.
3 Ways to Monitor Night Breathing & Snoring
It may seem like there’s no way to monitor your breathing and snoring while you’re asleep, but there are tools designed for this very purpose. They include:
- Holter monitor
- Snoring apps
- Sleep monitor watches
A Holter monitor is used in some instances to diagnose issues with sleep. Though a Holter monitor’s primary purpose is to detect changes in heart rate and rhythm, it also gives clues to sleep patterns. This is because sleep apnea is often linked to atrial fibrillation and people with severe sleep apnea are more likely to experience significant ventricular arrhythmias. Your doctor will let you know if this is a good nighttime monitoring tool for your situation.
Snoring apps can be downloaded directly onto your phone and let you know if you snore (and how often). These apps measure and record your rate of breathing so you can determine whether you should ask about CPAP masks or if you’re getting through the night just fine.
Sleep monitor watches are worn on the wrist. Some fitness watches have sleep tracking capabilities (which you may need to pay extra money to access). It’s important to note that most of these monitors only provide estimates as to how much sleep you’re getting.
These tools can be very helpful if you aren’t sure whether you snore and you want to find out in a quick and inexpensive way. But for more precise information about your sleep habits, you may want to enroll in a professional sleep study. These studies hook you up to a variety of monitors that keep track of your brain waves as you sleep. A legitimate sleep study will help you find out if you have sleep apnea or not.
