Snoring is caused by the soft palate in your mouth obstructing airflow, when the soft palate obstructs air from your mouth, nose or a combination of both it causes different pitches and volumes of snoring. Soft palates generally cause snoring when they are too large or too long making it very easy to obstruct airflow. When breathing through your nose, air enters onto the top of the soft palate then when the air speeds up it pulls the soft palate down toward your throat, obstructing the airflow. The soft palate is a muscular part of the roof of the mouth or hard palate. It is shaped like a sheet attached hangs loosely in the back of the mouth.When breathing through the nose and mouth at the same time, the air crosses on both the top and bottom of the soft palate. This causes your soft palate to flap between the throat and mouth obstructing airflow from both sides. These vibrations and movements in the throat and air flow obstructions cause sound waves. Louder snoring is caused by resonance in the throat.
Anatomy is the main reason why some people snore more or louder than others. Some people are simply born with the physical characteristics that cause them to snore louder. The physical characteristics that cause snoring are associated with mouth and nose structure. Having a low, thick, soft palate or enlarged tonsils can be structural differences in the mouth. The nasal structures or problems that can cause snoring are congestion, nose shape, colds, allergies, or sinus infections. Colds and allergies can cause swelling in the tissues of the throat and a blocked and stuffy nose. Small or congested nostrils can prevent breathing through the nose and in turn cause them to breathe through their mouth making it more likely for them to snore. Allergies can cause snoring due to inflammation or congestion of the nasal passages, making it less likely to be able to breathe through the nose.
Sleeping position affects snoring due to how relaxed the muscles in your throat are, when sleeping on your back the throat muscles are relaxed more. When your throat muscles are more relaxed it is easier for the soft pallet to move around and cause airflow obstruction.
Other factors that can lead to snoring, are things done before bed such as drinking alcohol, eating or taking medications like tranquilizers, sleeping pills or antihistamines. Medications and drinking can cause the throat muscles to relax more than usual which causes snoring. Eating before going to bed can cause snoring because the food has not yet had time to digest, causeing the food to sit in your stomache and put pressure on your diaphragm.
A few ways people that are affected by snoring can try to stop snoring are losing weight and improve their eating habits, not taking tranquilizers, sleeping pills, or antihistamines before you go to bed. Also not having alcohol, heavy meals, or snacks for at least four hours before going to bed can also help people stop snoring. Going to bed at the same time every night, sleeping on your side and propping the head of your bed up at least four inches can also attribute to not snoring. Life style changes such as propping your bed up and sleeping on your side change how gravity affects the muscles in your throat and mouth that can cause snoring.
Watch this short video to quickly discover more causes and ways to aviod snoring.
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/snoring Title: Sleep and Snoring Source: WedMD Access Date: October 16 2011
This web site is about the causes and health risks of snoring. It talks about how snoring can cause poor sleep resulting in being tired and having no energy throughout the day. The creator of this web site is a well known health care information site on the internet. This site was useful for me in the fact that it gave me information on the causes of snoring, but the section on health risks was not useful since that was not a part of my assignment. This source I found to be very credible, since WebMD is a very popular and well known site for health issues. Also WebMD is known for helping people with medical concerns and containing useful and correct information.
http://www.zanondental.com/StopSnoring/tabid/2228/Default.aspx Access Date: October 16 2011 Title: The causes of snoring Site: Zanon Denture and anti snoring clinic
This site contained answers to common asked questions about snoring like do men or women snore more, why do some people snore louder than others and how does being overweight affect snoring. This website was not very useful in the fact that it just answered the questions, it did not give any explanation or reasoning as to why. The source was also not that credible because it just didn’t seem right, since it only provided answers not explanations it made me unsure whether or not the information was even correct.
http://www.aaoms.org/sleep_apnea.php Access Date: Oct 17 2011 Title: snoring and sleep apnea Site: American association of oral and maxillofacial surgeons
This site contains a very large amount of information including treatment options, symptoms of sleep apnea, behavioral changes that can help stop snoring, and different surgeries that may be necessary to treat snoring. This site was very helpful, it contains very useful information on what can cause snoring and how to stop snoring. I found this website to be very helpful in the fact that it is a surgery centers website, written by surgeons and doctors that specialize in snoring and fixing snoring.
http://www.medicinenet.com/snoring/article.htm Access Date: October 25 2011 Source: MedicineNet.com Title: Snoring
This site was much like my other articles in the fact that it contained causes of snoring. However this website contained sleeping positions, which most the other ones did not. This source was useful in the fact that it explained how sleeping positions can cause snoring, however the other information on this site was basically the same as the others and I did not need it from this site. The diagram on this site also helped me, even though I did not include it into the report I found it very helpful to visualize the information. I found this site to be credible since it is a medical site. The site is written by doctors so it’s more reliable than information just written by anyone.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/09/snoring-health-problem-or_n_831022.html Title: Snoring: Nuisance Or Serious Health Problem? Author: Catherine Pearson Publisher: Huffington Post Year: 2011
This web article was about how snoring can cause sleep problems that may need medical help, how to know if going to the doctor is necessary. It contains information on how many average Americans snore and what can be done medically to try and prevent snoring. This article was not very useful to me due to the fact that it was mostly about whether or not it would be needed for people to go to the doctor to get their snoring cured. It was also about the many diseases connected to snoring, which is not what I needed to know for this assignment. I found this source to be relatively credible compared to most internet articles since it actually had an author and a publisher instead of most article that don’t contain any information on where they came from or who they came from.
http://www.freedomfromsnoring.com/Help-Stop-Snoring-Limiting-Eating-Before-Bedtime.html Access Date: October 26 2011 Title: Help Stop Snoring, Limiting Eating Before Bedtime Author: Max Taylor Site: Freedom from Snoring
This site is about how different foods before bed or large meals can cause snoring. It discusses how food sitting in the stomach can cause pressure on your diaphragm causing people to snore. This source was useful in the fact that it explained why eating before bed can cause snoring, the other sites I visited stated that eating before going to bed can cause snoring but not why. I was unsure whether or not I found this site reliable, the information seemed to be reliable but the way that it was presented was a little disorganized and unprofessional.
http://www.britishsnoring.co.uk/snoring_types/nasal_based_snoring.php Access Date: October 26 2011 Title: Nasal Based Snoring Site: British Snoring & Sleep Apnoea Association
This website was about how different shapes and swelling in nasal passages and nostrils can cause snoring. It discussed how small nostrils or stuffy noses can prevent people from breathing through their nose making them breathe through their mouth, in turn causing them to snore. This source was useful to me in that I learned about the different nose deformations that can cause snoring, and why people snore more or louder during allergy seasons since their nasal capacities swell. I found this site also confusing in terms of credibility, the information seemed thorough and well written, but the site wasn’t put together in a very professional manner.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4mp1QANogY&feature=related Site: youtube.com
This is the site that I received my video from, it contains information on causes of snoring and how to stop, it also contains diagrams of the mouth and throat. This video is very helpful in explaining the causes of snoring. This site is only relatively reliable in the fact that anyone can post videos and no sources are needed, however the video seemed to go along with the facts that I learned from other credible sources.
Article Title: Snoring source identification and snoring noise prediction Journal Title: Journal of Biometrics Year: 2007 Volume Number: 40 Issue: 4 Page Range: 861-870 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2006.03.022
This article was about the scientific reasons for snoring; it was an explanation of models of the human head and neck to investigate snoring. The content was extremely scientific and contained multiple diagrams and pictures to illustrate how snoring happens. This article was only remotely useful to me, the diagrams and illustrations were helpful but the content in the article was very complicated and hard for me to understand. The information that I did understand was very useful, but there was not much from the information I could understand. I trusted this article because it had very thorough explanations that went into a detail very well. Another reason why I found this article very reliable was the fact that the references were all included after the article, and they were all very credible medical and science books.