Obstructive Sleep Apnoea gets a lot of press, and for good reason.

This condition, where the throat closes over and breathing stops, sometimes hundreds of times a night, is scary, and has dire consequences.

These include high blood pressure or heart problems.

As the Mayo Clinic advises, sudden drops in blood oxygen levels that occur during Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) increase blood pressure and strain the cardiovascular system.

Having OSA increases your risk of high blood pressure, also known as hypertension.

Which is why OSA increases your risk of recurrent heart attack, stroke and irregular heartbeats, such as atrial fibrillation.

Loud snoring is the main symptom of OSA, although you can have OSA without snoring.

Still, there’s an important question here: Can plain old snoring cause similar problems to those caused by OSA?

Snoring is the resistance of airflow through the upper airway due to relaxed tissues.

Breathing may not stop, but airflow is dampened. That can’t be good.

Aussie scientists have an answer

Flinders University sleep experts conducted a nifty experiment to see if snoring affected blood pressure.

They analysed data from 12,287 participants, most of them overweight middle-aged men.

The volunteers, recruited globally, used under-the-mattress sleep sensors and home-blood pressure monitors between July 2020 and April 2021.

They also collected about 28 nights of sleep and snoring recordings.

And at least five separate blood pressure measurements over the recording period for assessment of uncontrolled hypertension outcomes.

And the findings?

They found that people, “particularly overweight middle-aged men who regularly snore at night are more likely to have elevated blood pressure and uncontrolled hypertension”.

What the researchers say

Lead author was Dr Bastien Lechat from Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute and the College of Medicine and Public Health.

In a prepared statement he said: “For the first time, we can objectively say that there is a significant connection between regular night-time snoring and high blood pressure.

“We found that 15 per cent of all participants in the study, who were primarily overweight men, snore for more than 20 per cent of the night on average and that this regular nightly snoring is associated with elevated blood pressure and uncontrolled hypertension.”

He said the results “emphasise the significance of considering snoring as a factor in health care and treatment for sleep-related issues, especially in the context of managing hypertension”.

Hypertension, the name given to long-term high blood pressure, “can lead to serious health problems such as heart failure, stroke, heart disease or kidney disease”.

Why is this happening?

Professor Danny Eckert, Director of Sleep Health at Flinders University, was senior author of the paper.

He said: “We observed that in those who snore regularly the risk of having uncontrolled hypertension was almost double.”

He said this risk almost doubled again in people who snored regularly and had sleep apnoea.

So why does this happen with snoring? The obvious answer is that impaired airflow puts a strain on the cardiovascular (CV) system.

However, Professor Eckert, in an email responding to questions, said there were three possibilities, and they’re pretty intriguing.

He wrote:

• Snoring can disrupt sleep or worsen sleep quality, which in of itself is associated with adverse CV consequences
• Snoring results in increased work of breathing. This causes greater negative intrathoracic pressure swings (inside the chest) which places afterload on the nearby heart, which can also yield adverse CV consequences
• The snoring vibrations may directly cause atherosclerotic plaque formations in the nearby surrounding blood vessels. He cited “a nice Australian-run study that supports this pathway”.

The researchers advise: If you experience snoring along with signs of inadequate sleep, excessive sleepiness or observed breathing issues during sleep, it’s advisable to have a conversation with your doctor or a specialist who may recommend a sleep study.