We all know someone who snores, it can be our dad, brother, roommate, aunt, your dog or even you. A lot of people deal with snoring and it can affect the quality of a person’s sleep. It can also affect your roommates and family’s sleeping pattern. Snoring can cause irritability, health problems and exhaustion. Snoring is also one of the most common complaint during divorce trials.
Before you find a remedy, you need to find the source. Snoring can be caused by different factors. Get to the bottom of your snoring problem and find the best cure. Age can be a huge factor to snoring, when we grow older the throat becomes narrower and the muscles in the throat shrink. Gender, men are more prone to snoring due to their narrower air passages. Genetically, some people are more prone to snoring than others due to genetics. The physical attributes that cause snoring (narrow throat, cleft palate) can be passed down to your child. This can cause them to have snoring problems. Overweight, people that have poor muscle tones are more prone to snoring. Sinus problems, problems in the airway can cause snoring. Medication, smoking and alcohol can cause the muscles in the throat to shrink. Sleeping posture, sleeping flat on your back, relaxes the muscles of the throat and prevent flow in the airway.
When you manage to get down to the root cause of your snoring, you may try out these remedies that may soothe your dilemma.
Lose Weight
Everyone is prone to snoring, but overweight people are more prone to it than a thin or normal weighted person. In the past months, your weight has slowly been increasing and you start to snore in your sleep. Even if you managed to snore before the weight gain. Losing a few pounds can help get rid of snoring. Extra weight in the neck area squeezes the throat and its internal diameter. This limits the path airway and closes up the throat muscles which cause snoring. Try to lose a few pounds in the neck area by performing facial and shoulder exercises.
Poor Sleeping Habit
Having poor sleeping habits will affect your body like alcohol. Sleeping very late at night, lack of sleep, fighting off sleep are some poor sleeping habits to avoid. People with poor sleeping habits tend to sleep when their body is over tired. This can cause the muscles in the throat floppier and make you sleep harder and deeper than you normally would. This would cause loud snoring without waking up. Practice sleeping on a schedule. Make sure that you get enough sleep every night and give yourself at least an hour to lay in bed before sleeping.
Drinking Alcohol
Sedatives and alcohol can make the muscle in the back of the throat to relax. This muscle is responsible for your regular breathing and pathways, when it tends to relax you are more likely to snore. People that don’t normally snore are likely to snore when they consume alcohol before going to bed. There really isn’t an advice for drinking alcohol and snoring, but to avoid it. Drinking alcohol five hours before sleeping still has the same effects as it would when you drink it before going to bed. When you’ve drunk alcohol prop your head with an extra pillow to help with your breathing and limit the possibility of snoring.
Sleeping Position
Laying on your back will cause the soft palate and tongue to push towards the throat. This will cause the gurgling and vibrating sound when sleeping. Prevent this by sleeping on your side or by taking a pillow and propping our head higher to prevent the tongue from collapsing to the throat. If sleeping on your side is not enough, you can use a body pillow to prop your body up on your side. This will make a huge difference in your body’s position.
If you tend to roll over in your sleep you can place a tennis ball on the back of your shirt. This will prevent you from rolling over, without waking you up.
Throat Exercises
Improve your throat muscles and reduce your risk of snoring. Perform thirty minutes of throat exercises a day to see a huge difference. Singing can help tone the muscles in the throat. Sounding out vowels, closing your mouth and pursing the lips and pushing the tongue back and forth while pressing on the roof of the mouth are other examples of throat exercises.
Snoring can be a sign of sleep apnea, this condition is life threatening and requires immediate medical attention. Find out if you have a serious health problem. Contact a sleep specialist and discuss with them about your snoring issues and bring your partner/roommate. They can discuss the problem with your doctor more clearly than you can, since they do experience it firsthand. The doctor will discuss with you different treatments to stop your snoring.
