Many people cannot believe that how a seemingly harmless thing like snoring can cause so much hidden problems.

Life can become unbearable with a snoring family member. Imagine having to suffer through the snoring while trying to get some sleep after a day's work.

Hence during sleeping hours, anyone who is anywhere near someone who snores will suffer. It may be other family members living in the same house; it may be neighbours in an adjoining house. With noise levels from snoring reaching the same decibel level as a jet engine - this noise can travel, even through walls. It is not just the partner of a snorer who suffers.

For anyone affected by snoring, the lack of sleep over an extended period of time can have an emotional and mental impact which is often hidden and not considered. It can be impossible for the partner of a snorer to get to sleep, let alone stay asleep.

Snoring has been known to cause marital breakdown and divorce. People have been evicted from their homes because of the noise nuisance caused by their snoring. Snoring has ended friendships between housemates. The daytime lack of concentration due to sleepiness that follows a disturbed night of inadequate sleep has caused people to lose their jobs. Snoring and the lack of sleep not only causes and lack of concentration but it causes also causes poor memory.

The lack of sleep caused by having a loud snorer in the house can lead to a wide range of emotional and mental health problems :

1. depression and anxiety

2. exhaustion

3. frustration

4. anger and feelings of violence

5. helplessness and anguish

6. desperation

7. resentment

8. low levels of confidence and self esteem

For those who snore or who are affected by snoring it becomes dangerous just to drive a vehicle to work and operating heavy machinery or work in an otherwise potentially dangerous environment is a real no-no. Do not be tempted to underestimate these sometimes hidden emotional and mental problems that snoring causes.

Snoring puts the lives of the snorer and others at risk simply because of the knock-on effect the resultant daytime sleepiness causes.

Whilst a lot of attention is paid to the physical problems of snoring, the hidden or emotional problems of snoring are often ignored or not considered. For the snorers themselves there is the embarrassment of sleeping in public places. The paradox is that snorers will do what they can to avoid the embarrassment of sleeping anywhere in public but because they are so sleep deprived they can and often do fall asleep at the most inopportune times - usually waking themselves after a very short period by the volume of their own snoring.

It is important that the root cause of snoring is identified and, were possible eradicated - for the sake of the physical health of the snorer but also for the sake of the mental health of everyone around them.