Help Hubby Sleep: Don’t Vacate the Bedroom

Attention wives whose husbands snore at night: you hold the key to shutting him up and aiding in treating his sleep apnea.

Not long ago, you might recall a comment I made about CPAPs ruining relationships in the bedroom due to their “unsexy” factor. The Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine, or CPAP, is a device used by people with obstructive sleep apnea who have a problem that causes their airways to collapse during sleep. Their breathing essentially gets cut off multiple times during the night. With a CPAP, the airway stays open so breathing is possible. Sleep becomes much more restful and solid. Untreated sufferers of sleep apnea never feel fully rested, which can result in chronic sleep deprivation that can be life-threatening.

The CPAP is the best strategy we have now to treat apnea, and I encourage people to use it, even though it may not be the most attractive thing to put on at night (or sleep next to). But there’s more to the story now.

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago just published a study in an industry journal showing that men whose wives sleep with them in the same bed are more likely to keep using the CPAP.

In fact, one of the authors of the study points out that a woman who has vacated the bedroom—to sleep soundly elsewhere—before her husband has been diagnosed and treated can help her husband’s treatment if she returns to sharing the same bed again. The chance of his continuing to use this very successful treatment is 60 percent higher than if she sleeps alone.

Clearly, a man prefers to get his wife to join him again… even if it means donning the CPAP and taking control of his snoring so she can rest peacefully beside him. And I predict that if a sex study were done to compare notes between those who sleep separately versus those who sleep together… the couple who sleep together wins. Er, has the better sex life.

You see, CPAPs can come off in seconds. Motivating a spouse in another room on the other side of the house isn’t so practical. And now we know that it’s also not as easy to motivate oneself to use a CPAP regularly without a spouse close by.

Proof that a couple that sleeps together, CPAPs together, among other things.