Snoring Keeping You Up Late At Night?

Even if you personally are not a snorer, you likely have somebody in your life that is. Snoring is a known relationship-killer, and if you or your partner are suffering from this plague, you’ve no doubt scoured the Internet for information on how to make it stop. Scour no more. Just about everyone snores from time to time, and while it’s not always something you have control over, there are some simple steps you can take to stop the snoring - for good.

Why Do We Snore?

If you’re wondering why you have to be so unlucky to snore, don’t feel alone. Lots of people snore - in fact, up to 40% of all adults snore on a regular basis, according to some studies - even if they don’t always realize it. While your anatomy can influence snoring - people who have large tonsils or extra weight around their necks are more prone to this condition - it’s often beyond your control.

It might be a regular occurrence for you or something that happens every once and awhile. However, no matter the cause, it’s important that you stop snoring for good. Not only can it disturb your sleep, but it could be a sign of an underlying issue, too.

How to Stop Snoring

Before you can learn more about how to stop snoring, it’s important that you first understand exactly what snoring is. Snoring occurs when you aren’t able to move air freely through your throat and nose while you sneep. You might have too much nasal tissue (or nasal tissue that is too loose), causing excessive vibrations that cause that all-too familiar snoring sound. However, it could also be that the position of your tongue is getting in the way of a silent night’s sleep.

Whatever the cause, snoring isn’t something that should be laughed off. Not only can snoring disrupt the quality of your sleep, leading to health problems such as fatigue and irritability (it can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke), but it can also create serious problems in your relationships. Don’t start sleeping in separate bedrooms - here’s how to stop your snoring, and fast.

Change Your Sleep Position

Depending on how frequently and how long you have been snoring, changing your sleep position is often an effective way to stop snoring in its tracks. Consider elevating your head by about four inches. This will allow your tongue and jaw to move naturally forward. While you can elevate your head with your existing pillows, this might be uncomfortable - consider using a specially designed pillow that is made specifically for this purpose.

Similarly, you might want to try sleeping on your side if you tend to be a natural back sleeper. If it’s hard for you to break the habit, consider attaching a tennis ball to the back of a t-shirt. Sleep in that shirt. When you roll onto your back, the discomfort should encourage you to roll onto your side. Over time, your body will naturally adjust to this new routine.

Use an Anti-Snoring Appliance

There are plenty of over-the-counter sleep aids out there that can help you stop snoring. Similar to a mouth guard that an athlete might wear, these can be purchased at most pharmacies - although the better ones are custom-made by a dentist. These help keep your airway open wide by bringing your lower jaw down or your tongue forward while you are asleep.

Clear Your Sinuses

If you only suffer from snoring when you’re sick, you might want to use a saline rinse before bed. You can also use over-the-counter nasal strips to help you breathe more easily.

Keep the Air Moist and Clean

This is a particularly important tip for allergy sufferers. If allergies seem to trigger your snoring, do your best to reduce pet dander, dust mites, or pollen in the bedroom. An air conditioner with a HEPA filter can help. In addition, using a humidifier (which can also be equipped with a HEPA filter) can keep the room moist, which will reduce the swelling in your nasal passages and reduce the likelihood of snoring.

Lose Weight

If you snore and are overweight, losing even just a small amount of weight can reduce the likelihood of snoring. It will shrink the fatty tissue at the back of your throat and may be enough to stop snoring for you altogether.

Quit Smoking

Just as you can’t stop snoring when your nasal passages are congested, snoring may also be more likely if you are a smoker. Among the many other reasons to quit smoking, make your snoring frustrations one of them. Quitting smoking can put a halt to snoring in many cases because it irritates the mucous membranes in the throat and nose.

Watch What You Eat, Drink, and Take

Be careful about what you eat, and not only if you’re trying to lose weight. Eating large meals or eating foods like dairy immediately before bed can worsen your snoring, as can drinking alcohol or taking sleeping aids like sedatives or sleeping pills.

Exercise

Even if you aren’t overweight, exercising can help reduce snoring. It may take some time to see the results, but exercise reduces snoring because it tones the muscles in your body like your legs, arms, and abs. Although it’s not a direct link, this toning can also improve the muscle tone in your throat - which will lead to less snoring.

Practice Some Anti-Snoring Throat Exercises

If you can’t make time to engage in regularly daily full-body exercise, at least try to do some specific anti-snoring throat exercises. Doing things like repeating each vowel out loud for three minutes a few times a day or even contracting the muscle at the back of your throat repeatedly for thirty second intervals can help reduce snoring.

Not one for structured exercise? Blast the radio on your way to work, and start singing. You don’t have to be a good singer for you to improve the muscle control in your soft palate and throat that help to stop snoring.

Consider a Medical Sleep Aid

If you’ve tried all the interventions we’ve mentioned above, it might be time to consider a medical intervention. While you should always consult with your primary physician first, you may be referred to an otolaryngologist or a sleep specialist for a follow-up. He or she might recommend some of the following interventions. CPAP, or Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, machines are some of the most common solutions. These keep your airways open during sleep by blowing pressurized air into a mask that you wear over your face.

It’s often a solution for those who suffer from sleep apnea. If your physician experts that you have issues with the tissues in your throat, he might conduct a procedure known as LAUP, or laser-assisted uvulopalatoplasty. In this procedure, your doctor will use a carbon dioxide laser to shorten your uvula and to make small cuts in the soft palate that surround the uvula. These cuts will cause the tissues around them to stiffen as they heal, thereby stopping your snoring.

Somnoplasty is another solution for those who have issues with the tissues in their throat, such as the uvula and soft palate. This surgical procedure is done under local anesthesia, rarely taking more than half an hour to complete. It involves the use of radio waves to shrink the soft tissues that occur during snoring. While it’s a highly effective procedure that produces nearly immediate results, it often needs to be repeated later on to achieve permanent results. Your doctor might even recommend palatal implants. This is also referred to as the Pillar procedure and requires your doctor to place three small plastic rods into the soft palate. These stiffening rods act on their own to prevent the collapse of the soft palate - which often causes snoring.

Some doctors may recommend procedures like tonsillectomies or adenoidectomies, too, depending on your specific anatomy. Other solutions, like implants, lower jaw-positioners, and custom-fitted dental devices may also be used in severe cases of snoring.

Communicate With Your Family

Communicating with your loved ones might not be a stand-alone cure for snoring, but it’s definitely something you should be doing in conjunction with any of the treatments we have mentioned. Snoring isn’t something that just affects you - having to lie awake at night listening to someone snoring can cause serious feelings of resentment, irritability, and even anger. While sleeping in separate rooms can be a good short-term solution, it can seriously stress a relationship over time.  

Instead, communicate with your family - but especially with your partner - about what problems your snoring is creating. Remember to be patient and to time your talk carefully. Remember too that both of you might be feeling irritable and bitter, and that it’s important to approach the problem in a non-confrontational, solution-seeking way.

Common Causes

Before you implement any of the fixes we have mentioned above, make sure you have a clear idea of why, exactly, you’re snoring in the first place. Here are some of the most common causes.

Age

If you never noticed that you had a snoring problem until you hit middle age, don’t assume it’s just your imagination playing tricks on you. Snoring often creeps up on people as they reach middle age. Why? As you age, your throat becomes narrower and you lose muscle tone in your throat. Unfortunately, despite what many beauty and supplement commercials would like us to think, there’s nothing you can do about getting older. You can, however, implement some simple lifestyle changes (such as following a good sleep schedule) to reduce the likelihood of snoring becoming a problem.

Obesity and Build

Carrying excess weight doesn’t only cause problems during your waking hours - it can also impact your nightly patterns, too. Both poor muscle tone and fatty tissue can make you more likely to snore. Even if you aren’t overweight or obese, too much weight around your neck (which is sometimes genetic but can often be controlled by diet and exercise) can cause you to snore, too.  

Even gender can impact your proclivity to snore. Men are more likely to snore than women because they have narrower throats, larger adenoids, and other traits that make snoring more likely. You’re not totally off the hook, though, ladies - even pregnancy can increase your likelihood of snoring. You are more likely to have bulky throat tissue or extra-swollen sinuses when you’re expecting, too.

Nasal and Sinus Problems

If you’ve ever noticed that you or your partner snore more when you have a cold or sinus infection, you’re not alone. Blocked airways or a generally stuffed-up nose can make breathing difficult and make snoring an unfortunate reality, too.

Alcohol, Smoking, Medications

Alcohol might help you get to sleep, but it’s not going to do much when it comes to reducing the snoring. Drinking, along with smoking and certain medications (such as tranquilizers) can cause your muscles to relax - and lead to more snoring.

Family History

Blame Dad or Aunt Joan for your snoring problem - sometimes, your snoring issues have less to do with your nighttime habits than they do with your genetics. This is true if you have a family history of snoring as well as if you have a family history of obstructive sleep apnea.

Sleep Deprivation

Ironically, not getting enough sleep can perpetuate the issue of snoring - sleep deprivation can cause you to snore more. Too little sleep causes excessive throat relaxation, which leads to snoring all on its own.

Sleep Posture

Lying flat on your back increases the likelihood of snoring because it causes the flesh on the back of your throat to block the airway as it relaxes. Often, training yourself on how not to snore only requires you to change your sleep position.

Types of Snoring

Not all snorers are built alike! Keeping track of your snoring patterns can help you identify why you snore, what your triggers are, and how you can either prevent or stop them. Here are the most common types of snoring.

Closed Mouth Snoring

Closed mouth snoring occurs, as you might expect, when your mouth is shut. It can occur in any sleep position, but it usually indicates that there is a problem with your tongue and its placement.

Open Mouth Snoring

As with the previous type of snoring, this kind of snoring is pretty self-explanatory. Unlike closed mouth snoring, however, open mouth snoring is usually linked to problems with the tissues in your throat.

Back Snoring

Back snoring is one of the most common types of snoring, and luckily, one of the easiest to remedy. It’s usually fixable with some changes to your sleep habits and lifestyle - as well as your sleep posture.

Universal Snoring

Snoring regardless of how, where, and in what position you are sleeping is usually indicative of a larger problem. It tends to be more severe and often requires more intensive medical intervention. Often, snoring that occurs regardless of the sleep position - or is particularly loud - may be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea, a potentially dangerous type of sleep disturbance.

When to See a Doctor

In most cases, snoring is a benign behavior that doesn’t need to warrant more than a couple of quick fixes here and there. The fixes we’ve recommended above are a great way to stop your snoring, even if only temporarily. However, although these solutions work, we always recommend that you seek professional advice from your doctor - particularly if your snoring has been an ongoing issue.

Snoring is often an indication of a more serious condition known as sleep apnea. This sleep disorder causes your breathing to be interrupted multiple times each night. While normal snoring won’t usually disrupt your sleep too much, sleep apnea will - so if you find yourself suffering from extreme fatigue or you stop breathing, choke, or even gasp while you’re sleeping, definitely get checked out. Here are some signs that indicate you might need to see your doctor to rule out any issues:

• Trouble focusing

• Morning headaches

• Daytime sleepiness

• Breathing stops during sleep

• Choking or gasping during the night

• Restless sleep

• Morning sore throat

• High blood pressure

• Poor attention span

• Chest pains at night

Stop Snoring For Good

Make sure you’re keeping track of your sleep patterns so that you can take the most effective steps to stop your snoring for good. Keeping a sleep diary can help - your partner can help you complete it. If you sleep alone, you can even set up a camera to track your patterns. Whatever you do, know that you don’t have to suffer in (not so) silence. Snoring is a common issue - it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, but it’s smart to seek a solution to your nightly problem.

Lisa Czachowski is a professional social blogger and has worked on several online publications including Citrus Sleep. Lisa is an experienced content writer and copyeditor. You will find many of her works throughout CitrusSleep.com that cover a wide array of subjects including sustainability, natural, sleep products, health, fashion and many more. She is passionate about what providing as much information as possible on products you bring in your home and what we wear.

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