Causes of snoring continued...

• Allergies can cause snoring

It’s perhaps not something one would immediately think of as a cause of snoring, but having an allergy can really contribute to the problem, if not function as the main cause. The reason is because allergies often make the insides of your nose and throat swell up, which restricts the flow of air when you breathe. This may not be a problem when you’re awake, as you’re able to control the muscles in your throat and your tongue and thereby breathe pretty smoothly and silently, but when you’re asleep, and unable to consciously control these important muscles, the air is blocked and the sound of snoring is created.

• Consuming too much alcohol

The over-consumption of alcohol can cause or worsen snoring for two reasons. Firstly, alcohol acts as a depressant: it slows down parts of your body, not least your brain’s response mechanism. Plus, when you’re asleep with lots of alcohol in your system, your muscles relax more than they would during normal, sober sleep. And it’s the relaxing effect alcohol has on the back of your throat (the orophanyx) that can cause the blockage problem we’ve been talking about—the biggest cause of snoring.

• Using sedatives can affect your sleep and cause snoring

If you use sedatives to calm or help yourself get to sleep, you’re running the same risk as having alcohol in your system. Snoring is much more likely to occur because, like alcohol, sedatives tend to relax your muscles and cause restrictions in airflow while you breathe.

• Smoking

I bet you saw this one coming. Smoking and snoring go hand in hand so often that it would be a big mistake to ignore this topic. If you’re a non-smoker, always have been and plan to stay that way, you can rest assured that smoking isn’t one of the causes of your snoring. However, if you’re a smoker or have just recently given up smoking, listen up.

There are several reasons smoking can cause or worsen your snoring. The first is that  smoking causes the mucous membranes of your nose and the tissues of the throat to swell up. This creates the airway blockage that is fast becoming a theme of this stop snoring course. Next, smoking damages your lungs and lowers your lung capacity by blocking its small vessels. Smoking also tends to increase the amount of mucous in your throat, which negatively contributes to the airflow problem. The list of problems caused by smoking which can directly affect your snoring frequency and severity goes on. In short, you should just know this: smoking irritates your throat and airway. It narrows your windpipe, especially if you’re a man, and – if you really want to reduce or remove your snoring problem in your life, quitting smoking should be at the top of your to-do list. But this isn’t a guilt-trip or telling off. Smoking, although harmful to short- and long-term health, is also a great pleasure to many people. It’s a part of their lives, like watching sports or doing shopping. The question is, which matters more to you: solving your snoring problem, possibly for good, or smoking? We’ll be coming back to this choice a little later.

• Being overweight or obese can cause snoring

It’d probably be a safe bet to say that you already know that being overweight or obese can make you snore or, if you are already predisposed to snoring, make your snoring frequency and severity much worse. The reasons behind this fact are ones we’ve already covered. When you are overweight, you tend to have more fat in and around your neck. This fat, which bulks up your throat tissue, partially blocks your breathing while you sleep, causing your airway to collapse a little and a loud snoring noise to be produced. Being very overweight also has a tendency to reduce your lung capacity, which can make snoring much worse. Like quitting smoking, solving your weight problem is not something you can do overnight, but it’s also not an impossible goal. Losing just a few pounds can massively improve your snoring frequency and severity and those pounds could be lost in just a few weeks with a few simple alterations in your eating regime. Also, like with smoking, it’s very important not to think: “Well, it’s done now. I’m fat (or a smoker) and that’s something I’ll just have to live with. Hopefully another snoring cure will help me out.” This kind of attitude is a dangerous one, because losing weight if you’re obese or quitting smoking can sometimes be the key to improving or even solving your snoring problem. And if you’re overweight and a smoker, it goes without saying that your snoring problem could be totally transformed by fixing both of these areas of your lifestyle. Not to mention the myriad of other positive effects of quitting the cigarettes or shedding the excess pounds, like: feeling fitter and happier, an increased sex drive, a much lower chance of developing serious health problems, saving money and generally feeling better in yourself. As with smoking, we’ll come back to the topic of being overweight – and how it relates to snoring – later on.

• Abnormal or irregular sleeping patterns

Our bodies like routines and regularity. We get hungry a designated number of hours after our last meal, we grow hair at a steady rate, our biological clocks tick in a specific way. One of the most important routines you can keep is a regular sleeping pattern, especially if you’re a snorer. By going to bed at a specific time and getting up about the same number of hours later all the time, you effectively keep your body rested, which results in calmer nights’ sleep and therefore a lower chance of snoring.

So, you’ve now heard many of the most common causes of snoring. First we covered the physical traits that cause snoring, like a thick soft palate and small naval passages, then we looked at the causes linked to your lifestyle. Soon we’ll move onto how you can cut these causes of snoring out of your life and thereby reap the rewards: a decreased snoring frequency and severity.