Not only do women snore as loudly as men, they underestimate how often, and how noisily, they do so. But why is this important to know?
Sleep, according to the Upstart Crow, doth “knit up the ravell’d sleave of care”. The Bard had less to say, however, of sleep’s intermittent byproduct: snoring!
So we are grateful for research in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, that confirms what many chaps suspected, but were too afraid to say out loud – not only do women snore as loudly as men, they underestimate how often, and how noisily, they do so.
The study found that objectively measured snoring was found in 88% of the women (591 of 675), but only 72% reported that they snored (496 of 675). In contrast, objective snoring (92.6%) and self-reported snoring (93.1%) were nearly identical in men.
But before you dismiss these findings as a just another small shot fired in the gender wars, there is a genuine point to be made.
According to the authors, there is a social stigma associated with snoring among women. Therefore, women may not reliably answer questions about snoring, which may contribute to the under-diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnoea in women.
