What is Snoring? – An Introduction

Causes, Science

What is Snoring? – An Introduction

Partial airway obstruction causes soft tissue to vibrate and make noise.

Nearly everyone snores at some point. Snoring can affect young and old, men and women, and people of all shapes and sizes. Roughly 40% of men and 20% of women snore – that’s over 2 billion inhabitants of planet Earth.

This habit is often shrugged off as annoying and embarrassing but otherwise nothing to be worried about. In reality, snoring can affect so much of life, having physical, mental and social repercussions.

But what is a snore?

Q. What is a snoring sound?

A. Vibrating soft tissue

Snoring is the sound of the soft palate and other soft tissue in the upper airway vibrating. This can include the uvula, tonsils, adenoids, nasal turbinates and other surrounding tissue.

These vibrations happen when air can’t move freely through your airway which causes the floppy soft tissue to flap and make noise.

Q. Why does snoring only happen during sleep?

A. Relaxation

When we fall asleep, many muscles in our body relax. This is true of the muscles in our airway.

Being still in our sleep prevents us from doing damage to ourselves and others by acting out our dreams or walking around when not fully conscious. Therefore our muscles – including those in our upper airway – are paralysed when we sleep.

Because we are lying down while we sleep, gravity compounds this relaxation to set up snoring – whether it’s your jaw falling open, your tongue falling back or your throat giving way to the weight around it.

All of us relax when we sleep – so why doesn’t everyone snore? Snoring occurs when this normal relaxation is added to abnormal airway obstruction.

Q. Why doesn’t air flow freely?

A. Obstruction at various places in the airway

Airflow becomes turbulent when there is an obstruction in the airway causing a partial blockage.

The obstruction can be in several areas in the upper airway, sometimes concurrently [1]:

Tongue. When this falls back, it can block your airway.

Soft palate. This is the soft tissue behind the harder roof of your mouth. Excess floppy tissue here stops air flowing freely.

Nose. The nose is the more efficient way of breathing, and when dysfunctional, mouth breathing ensues and heightens the risk of snoring. Breathing through a partially blocked nose can also create whistling and popping sounds, or even cause suction that collapses your airway.

Knowing your obstruction is the starting point in identifying what causes your snoring.

If you are lucky, there is one cause for your snoring. You can tackle this and sleep quietly. More often than not, multiple factors accumulate to cause your obstruction.

Q. What causes airway obstruction?

A. Many different factors can influence snoring

Understanding what causes your airway obstruction is vital for matching snoring solutions to you. This is what we strive to help with at SnoreLab.

The reasons for snoring are made of lifestyle factors that you can control PLUS physical traits that are beyond your influence.

Factors that you CAN control

Many lifestyle factors need scrutinising if you want to identify the causes of your snoring:

Bodyweight. The heavier you are, the more likely you are to snore as excess weight compresses your airway.

Sleeping position. Sleeping on your back is a big risk factor for snoring. This position allows gravity to compress your airway more than when you sleep on your side.

Allergies. Allergic reactions cause nasal blockage and airway inflammation. Allergy sufferers have trouble breathing through their nose and therefore have to switch to noisier mouth-breathing.

Alcohol. Depressant drugs like alcohol make muscles relax. Relaxed airway muscles are more prone to disrupting airflow.

Smoking. Cigarette smoke irritates the airways, causing inflammation which can lead to obstruction.

Common cold. Similar to allergies, colds mean stuffy noses and mouth-breathing.

Medication. Certain drugs used to control blood pressure, sleeping pills and even some medicated nasal sprays can increase nasal congestion and relax airway muscles.

Factors that you CAN’T control

Unfortunately, in some cases, the obstruction is simply a part of your anatomy and genes.

Certain face shapes predispose people to snoring. For example, those with a pronounced overbite have a recessed jaw which pushes the tongue further back into the airway, making it more prone to falling back and causing a blockage.

Age. Older people are more at risk of snoring. This is because as we age we lose muscle tone in much of our body – this includes the muscles of the airway.

Sex. Men are more likely to snore than women. This is due to several reasons including how fat is differently distributed, contrasts in male and female airway anatomy and hormones.

Hormonal balance. Some hormones are protective against snoring, whereas others confer heightened risk. Menopause is a time in many women’s lives where snoring starts for the first time. This is because of a decrease in hormones that help to prevent snoring.

Thankfully, these uncontrollable elements are usually associated with heightened risk but not a direct cause.

Conclusion

By understanding the basis of snoring you can gain better insight into what makes you snore. Just as snoring impacts upon your life, your lifestyle impacts upon your snoring.

There are many snoring remedies and solutions available, including products that enthusiastically tell you that this will stop you snoring. Many of them do work very effectively, but only if they are well matched to you and your snoring.

Understanding how your snoring works and finding your specific causes is the first step towards healthier, quieter nights.

The Architecture of Sleep

Science, Sleep

The Architecture of Sleep

If you have ever been suddenly woken up, deep into the night, you’ll know it’s a very disorientating experience. When you wake up naturally, you rouse gently in a less confused state. This is because in these separate instances you have woken up in different stages of sleep.

Sleep has two main states, these are crudely defined by the movement of our eyes (but actually have a lot more important qualities and differences):

  • Non-rapid eye movement (NREM)
  • Rapid eye movement (REM)

Having the correct proportions of each of these types is important to getting good and restful sleep.

The Sleep Cycle

Going from being awake to sleeping isn’t like flicking a simple on/off switch. Sleep has different stages and depths where your brain and body go through specific motions.

Within the seven to eight hours that we should be sleeping, we cycle through these NREM and REM stages in ninety-minute blocks …

  • To start, we initially plunge quickly through the stages of NREM sleep and trundle along in deep sleep.
  • After a while, we climb back into lighter NREM, eventually spending some time in REM.
  • We then drop back into deep sleep again at the start of the next ninety-minute cycle.
  • For every cycle, an increasing amount of time is dedicated to REM sleep, creating an asymmetric pattern.

But what happens during these phases, and why are they necessary?

NREM vs. REM Sleep

NREM Sleep

Stage 1 – this is light sleep, the first destination after wakefulness with tiny dream-like thoughts and easy arousal back to being awake.

Stage 2 – here, breathing slows and body temperature drops.

Stages 3 and 4 –this is deep sleep. Any sound, touch or light from the outside world is tightly controlled, with entry to the brain blocked. This is why it is hard to rouse someone from deep sleep.

This is an important stage for growing and repairing the body, increasing blood flow to various tissues, releasing important hormones and re-energizing.

The brain is reviewing the information that it has received throughout the day. Without the mental chatter of consciousness, our brain waves are long, slow and coordinated.

This pattern allows effective communication between different brain regions. Information is selected and pruned to form memories; the important memories being retained by creation of pathways in the brain, whilst needless ones are discarded from our temporary and fragile short-term storage.

REM Sleep

REM sleep is our dreaming sleep. Despite being asleep, our brain activity is very similar to when we are awake – lots of action; short, sharp and cluttered waves of electrical activity.

The exact functions of REM sleep are still not fully understood, but it is thought to be important in memory formation and learning. The memories selected in NREM sleep are now played back to us, helping us contextualize, learn and integrate them into the real world.

Despite being close to waking, our bodies are completely still, a mechanism to prevent us from turning this pseudo-consciousness into potentially risky sleep-walking or acting out dreams.

When deprived of REM sleep, both mental and physical dysfunction ensues. Indeed, when falling asleep after a period of REM deprivation, our sleep cycle patterns shift to snatch back as much of it as possible, favoring longer periods of REM sleep [1].

Side note: Extreme sleep deprivation and REM

In 1959, radio presenter Peter Tripp staged a “Wakeathon” as a publicity stunt. He stayed awake and on-air for 200 hours straight. As he became more and more sleep deprived, his brain started to enter REM sleep whilst being awake – he was dreaming with his eyes open. Tripp started to think he was an imposter of himself. During a bathroom break he opened a drawer which spat out flames, and he thought his assistants were conspirators trying to frame him for a crime he didn’t commit.

Where does snoring come into this?

There are no definitive rules as to when snoring and sleep apnea occur during the sleep cycle, but studies have found certain trends. It is thought that regular snoring occurs more during NREM sleep. This would explain why snorers don’t wake themselves up with the sound of their own snoring.

Obstructive sleep apnea is commonly associated with REM sleep [2], despite this some studies have found just as many cases of worsened apnea during NREM sleep [3].

Why Good Sleep is Important

Science, Sleep

Why Good Sleep is Important

The partner of a chronic snorer loses over an hour of sleep every night [1]. Good sleep can be hard to come by for all parties in a bedroom polluted with snoring, particularly if snoring transitions to sleep apnea.

But why does this matter?

Sleep can seem like a real waste of one third of your life; time spent doing apparently nothing when there’s so much else you could be doing. A lack of sleep however, spells a shortened life and one where your waking hours are severely blunted.

By staying awake and spurning sleep, more time is lost than is gained. We must accept that sleep is vital for health and survival.

Good sleep is healthy

Sleep seems to be a pretty inactive period. On the surface, our sincere lack of movement or responsiveness would indicate that our body is dormant. This isn’t so. It’s very active, just in a different way. During sleep, our bodies and brains are busily repairing, refreshing and rewiring.

If sleep were a miracle drug, everyone would pay a fortune for it as the list of benefits are nothing short of astounding. Sleep:

  • Reduces your risk of chronic physical, neurological and mental disorders
  • Enhances your defenses to infection
  • Diminishes food cravings helping to regulate weight
  • Forms new memories

Good sleep can even make you look better. Cortisol – a stress hormone – increases when we lose sleep and in turn decreases the production of collagen, a protein that gives your skin smoothness.

A study in Sweden asked volunteers to rate the attractiveness of people who had 8 hours sleep against those who had experienced 31 hours sleep deprivation. The sleep deprived people were perceived as less healthy and less attractive [2].

Bad sleep is damaging

The inverse of the advantages of good sleep is the damage that can be done with sleep deprivation. Indeed, multiple studies have shown that getting less than six hours of sleep per night significantly increases the likelihood of an early death [3].

In the short-term, the mental impairment from moderate sleep deprivation equates to the effects mild alcohol intoxication [4]. Extreme sleep deprivation has even been shown to cause hallucinations.

Over a longer period, chronic sleep debt can do irreversible damage to the brain and rest of the body. Importantly, this increases the likelihood of a host of maladies:

  • Stroke
  • Anxiety and depression
  • Dementia
  • Weight gain
  • Heart disease
  • Reduced immunity
  • Cancer

Conclusion

Poor sleep is the underdog of public health. Problems like obesity, cancer and dementia are far more prominent in the public consciousness than problematic sleep is. If you consider that bad sleep has a hand in all of these conditions, you’ll appreciate the importance of getting a good night [5].

If snoring is having an impact upon the sleep quality of you or your partner, these nighttime noises definitely need addressing.

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