Snoring | The Alarm You Can't Ignore
Do you snore? What about your spouse, or maybe your children?
Snoring is frequently viewed as a petty annoyance, or you might even think it's cute in a little one. However, snoring is much more than noise. Snoring can indicate many health complications including sleep apnea, a much more serious condition where the sleeping person stops breathing. Sometimes these sleep stoppages can have serious health implications, and can lead to issues like dental caries/cavities, gum disease, heart problems, stroke, restless legs, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and more.
In children, that adorable little snuffle has been associated with learning and behavioral disorders including ADHD, and they will invariably and up with crooked teeth and long faces.
In the next few minutes, we’re going to talk about snoring and how it can be like an alarm you can't ignore. We'll cover why it happens, how it affects you and your family, and some simple solutions that might just help you catch those precious Zzzs.
Snoring affects people of all ages and it’s estimated that 45% of men and 25% of women snore habitually. Snoring is a sign of obstructed airways. It occurs due to a large volume of air passing through a narrow space, causing turbulence in the soft palate, nose, or back of the throat, which in turn, causes the tissues to vibrate.
🥤Picture it like trying to squeeze air through a tiny straw; it’s bound to make noise. And while it might seem harmless or even funny, snoring can be a sign of a much bigger problem.
There are two factors at play here:
First is that the individual is breathing too noisily and heavily during sleep (overbreathing) and
Second is that their upper airways may be narrow due to nasal congestion or structural issues.
Snorers snore through their mouths, their nose, or both. Snoring through the mouth is the easiest to address. Mouth snoring stops when one learns to breathe through his or her nose during sleep. Stopping snoring through the nose is a bit more complicated but is still very much achievable with the tools we use with our private clients. By learning to unblock the nose, switching to nasal breathing, and normalizing breathing volume, breathing will become quiet, calm, and still throughout the night and nasal snoring will cease.
Why does snoring happen in the first place?
First, let's talk about why snoring happens. Quite a few factors can contribute to it. Here are a few:
👃🏼Nasal Problems: If your nasal passages are congested or blocked, you’re more likely to snore. Allergies or a deviated septum can make this worse.
⚖️ Weight: Extra weight around your neck can press down on your throat while you sleep, making it narrower. This is not to say that skinny people don't snore, some do.
🛌🏼 Sleep Position: Sleeping on your back can cause your tongue and soft palate to collapse to the back of your throat.
🫁 Overbreathing: We will talk more about this in a few weeks when we cover sleep apnea, but breathing in larger volumes of air, more frequently creates a vicious cycle of lower CO2 levels and then leads to collapsing of the airway muscles, which then creates a hyperventilation state and the cycle repeats.
😮 Mouth Breathing: Mouth breathing during sleep also leads to overbreathing and a larger breathing volume as too much air is drawn into the lungs. Not only does the negative pressure on the upper airways increase, but overbreathing also causes the airways to cool and dry out, leading to inflammation and further narrowing of the airways. This combination of larger breathing volume and narrower airways is the perfect recipe for snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. Conversely, several studies have shown breathing through the nose offers a distinct advantage during sleep, resulting in fewer incidences of obstructive sleep apnea than breathing through the mouth. Again, we will talk more about this in our sleep apnea weeks.
Some other medical conditions, as well as physiological factors and lifestyle factors like alcohol/meds can relax your throat muscles too much, leading to snoring.
Treatment for snoring, therefore, is vitally important. There are a few ways to address snoring that are medically intrusive. Those might include things like nose and throat surgery, dental devices, nasal medications, and use of a CPAP which can lead to face remodeling in adults, and improper facial growth and development in children. But before you make an appointment with your doctor, let's look at a few simple solutions that might be a good starting point.
Step 1: Change Your Sleep Position 🛌🏼
Sleeping on your left side can help keep your airway open. You can use a body pillow to maintain this position. There's even a nifty trick: sew a tennis ball to the back of your pajama top to make it uncomfortable to sleep on your back.
Step 2: Lose Weight ⚖️
If you’re overweight, losing even a small amount can reduce the fatty tissue in the back of your throat and decrease snoring.
Step 3: Avoid Alcohol and Sedatives 🍷
These substances relax the muscles in your throat, making snoring more likely. Try to avoid them, especially before bedtime. If you need something to relax your mind before bed, listen to your InnerVoice balancing harmonics and/or use or recommended oils for a deeper sleep. Use CODE: 'SUMMERSPARKSCAN' when you checkout for your free InnerVoice scan.
Step 4: Address Nasal Congestion 👃🏼
If you have allergies or a cold, try using a nasal decongestant or a nasal strip to keep your nasal passages open at night. Our favorite decongestant is a trio of lemon, lavender, and peppermint essential oils or TriEase capsules. Our Buteyko clients also use a nasal unblocking exercise to help reduce congestion.
Step 5: Stay Hydrated 🥤
Drinking plenty of fluids can prevent the tissues in your nose and soft palate from becoming sticky.
Step 6: Practice Good Sleep Hygiene 💤
Make sure you’re getting enough sleep with a well established routine for the evenings. Adults need about 7-9 hours a night. A regular sleep schedule can also help. Use consistent tools like a sleep mask, blue blocking glasses at sundown, blackout curtains or shades, cooler temps. For a good routine, check out Why You Cant Get A Good Sleep at Night.
Step 7: Retrain your breathing habits, and address the root of the snoring problem.
When it comes to correcting mouth breathing in the night, the most efficient and cost-effective way to stop is by using MYOTAPE. Myotape safely brings the lips together to help ensure nasal breathing. It can be worn by adults, teenagers, and children aged 4 years and up and comes in small, medium, and large sizes. I, personally, wear this nightly and wake up feeling much more refreshed when I do.
It (Myotape) took a little while to get used to but now it's part of my bedtime routine and works well. - Sarah
Before we dig in to the idea of retraining breathing habits, let's look at a few questions we can ask ourselves. The first step to improving our breathing is to develop awareness of how we breathe. Are you breathing with your nose or mouth, with your chest muscles or diaphragm? Watch how people around you breathe and you will be surprised that many primarily use their mouth. By breathing with your nose and thus reducing over breathing, you are taking a first key step toward respiratory health and positively impact your stress levels.
Ineffective breathing can cause all of these symptoms. All of them can disappear as you learn to restore your breathing to a healthy pattern. If you answered yes to any of these questions, you can gain significant benefits from joining our Buteyko Restorative Breathing Clinic.
Because dysfunctional breathing is the root of the snoring issues, address the breathing habits themselves. People who breathe correctly, that is through the nose, softly, slowly, and smoothly – do not snore or have sleep apnea. That is why improving your breathing in the day helps you breathe and sleep better at night – usually from the first night.To sum it all up, snoring might seem like just an annoying habit, but it can affect your health and well-being. By understanding why it happens and taking some simple steps, you can reduce or even stop snoring. This will not only help you, but also everyone around you, get a better night’s sleep.
I loved learning about how my breathing impacts many different things! Amy is wonderful at explaining the exercises and she's a wealth of knowledge, along with being super supportive! My life is improved because of this program! - Jennifer, Texas
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