Snoring can be a huge nuisance to those around you, but one California resident was mortified to find that the impact of her snores managed to reach beyond the walls of her own home.
The 57-year-old woman based in Los Angeles County in Southern California was surprised to find a note from a neighbor that was left at her door. It read: “Your snoring is keeping me up. Please fix the problem, I can hear it through the walls.”
An image of the note was shared in a post titled “Well this is embarrassing…” on Reddit under the username u/writinginmyhead and has received more than 9,100 upvotes since it was posted on April 7.
The Reddit poster, who preferred not to disclose her name, told Newsweek: “I opened my front door because I was expecting a package from Amazon. Instead, I found this note.” The neighbors “live right next door to me and we share a wall in our bedrooms,” she said.
Reddit/writinginmyhead
The Health Risks of Snoring and Lack of Sleep
The neighbor in the latest Reddit post is certainly not alone in their frustration over lack of sleep. A third of adults in the U.S. report that they typically get less than the recommended amount of sleep, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society recommend that adults sleep at least seven hours a night. However, over a quarter of adults do not meet this recommendation, according to a June 2022 report from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.
A November 2022 study in JAMA Network Open, a journal published by the American Medical Association, looked at the sleep habits and the prevalence of sleep disturbances among 9,004 U.S. adults from 2017 to 2020. It reported that 30.5 percent experienced an hour or more of sleep debt.
Not getting enough shut-eye comes with some serious health risks. Insufficient sleep is linked with various chronic diseases and conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity and depression. It “can lead to motor vehicle crashes and mistakes at work, which cause a lot of injury and disability each year,” warns the CDC.
Snoring may also be a sign of sleep apnea, a disorder characterized by brief interruptions of breathing during slumber.
People with sleep apnea typically make gasping or “snorting” noises, during which their rest is interrupted.
How sleep apnea can be treated depends on its cause. If there are other medical issues present, such as congestive heart failure or nasal obstruction, it may resolve with treatment of these conditions. Gentle air pressure administered during sleep, usually in the form of a nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, may also be effective for treating sleep apnea, the CDC notes.
“As interruption of regular breathing or obstruction of the airway during sleep can pose serious health complications, symptoms of sleep apnea should be taken seriously. Treatment should be sought from a health care provider,” the national health body advises.
‘So Sorry’
The woman from the latest Reddit post, who is a marriage and family therapist intern working in community mental health, told Newsweek: “I’ve never met them [the neighbors] and the previous neighbors never complained. I’ve lived here almost five years.”
The poster hasn’t contacted her neighbor since receiving the note. “Many of the Reddit users think I shouldn’t at all… I do plan on trying different remedies for the snoring including a sleep study and maybe a CPAP machine if other otc [over the counter] methods don’t work,” the original poster told Newsweek.
A caption shared with the post says that the woman is planning to send the neighbor some ear plugs with a note reading: “I’m so sorry! I’m working on it, but it will be May or June before I can get a sleep study and then maybe a c-pap machine or something. I hope these will help in the meantime. Here’s my phone number to text me if you run out.”
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Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.