Photo credit: Ketut Subiyanto
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
Snoring can be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea, a condition often associated with obesity. Sleep apnea comes with life-threatening cardiac and respiratory health effects, including increased mortality. It can also be life-threatening if you snore so loudly that it bothers your neighbor. One Pennsylvania man’s snoring bothered his neighbor so much that they fought and one stabbed the other to death.
Sound insulation, a white noise machine, and/or earplugs are all more reasonable solutions to the problem of snoring noise. If one of the neighbors had contacted me, that’s what I would have suggested. It’s a tragedy that this neighbor dispute resulted in death.
