Do you often feel tired during the day and don’t know why? The reason may have to do with what happens when you’re asleep. If you snore, your sleep may be interrupted many times during the night, leaving you tired as you go through your day. Taking steps to eliminate snoring can help you get the rest you need so you’ll have the energy to be productive at work and present for the people you love.
Defining Snoring
Understanding snoring can help you stop it. What happens when you snore? As you breathe during sleep, air travels across tissues in the upper airway at the back of your throat. If the airway is collapsing on itself, the tissues vibrate when air reaches them. This produces a sound that, if loud enough, can wake both you and your sleep partner.
Light snoring, or snoring every once in a while, may not be a cause for concern. Almost half of adults snore at some point, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. For 25 percent of them, however, snoring is a regular occurrence. Left untreated, frequent snoring can have major consequences for health and quality of life.
What Happens When You Can’t Stop Snoring
Sleep is your body’s chance to restore itself and process the day’s information. These functions can’t take place—at least, not fully—without good sleep, and snoring can stand in the way. Heavy snoring that frequently interrupts your sleep can affect many aspects of your life and health, including:
- Daytime alertness. You may feel drowsy during the day if snoring prevents high-quality sleep. Daytime sleepiness can make driving dangerous and affect your ability to concentrate on work.
- Disease risk. Snoring can be a symptom of sleep apnea. This condition, in turn, can increase your risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Poor sleep can also affect your mental health.
- How you feel when you wake up. If you snore, you may be more likely to have a dry mouth or sore throat in the morning.
- Your relationship with your sleep partner. Your snoring may irritate your spouse or partner and prevent them from sleeping well. They may even resort to sleeping in another room or ask you to do so.
Factors That Can Contribute to Snoring
To help you stop snoring, your primary care provider or a sleep specialist will consider your risk factors to find out why you may be snoring and identify changes you can make to improve your sleep. Some risk factors you can’t change. Men, for example, are more likely to snore and develop sleep disorders than women. You may also be more likely to snore if you have a family history of snoring.
Other risk factors for snoring include:
- Being overweight, which can narrow the airway
- Drinking alcohol, which can cause the airway muscles to relax too much during sleep
- Large tongue
- Nasal congestion
- Overbite or “retrognathia”
- Sleeping on your back
For some people, sleep apnea is why they snore. This condition, in which breathing momentarily stops and then resumes during sleep, can cause loud snoring and gasping. Obstructive sleep apnea, which is the most common type of sleep apnea, happens when tissue in the back of the throat collapses, briefly pausing breathing or reducing airflow into the lungs. Just because you snore, however, doesn’t mean you have sleep apnea.
Lifestyle Changes to Reduce or Stop Snoring
Why continue feeling exhausted during the day—not to mention frustrating your sleep partner at night—when there’s so much you can do to control or stop snoring? Start by seeing your primary care provider or a sleep specialist, who can pinpoint the cause of snoring, recommend steps to reduce it and provide tips to help you sleep better.
You may be able to reduce snoring by changing some of your habits, although the nighttime noise may not stop completely. A good way to start is to lose weight if you’re overweight. Excess tissue in the soft tissues in the neck can narrow your airway and cause snoring. Weight loss of as little as 5 percent can decrease snoring, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
Other helpful changes you can make include:
- Change your sleep position. You may be more likely to snore when sleeping on your back. Sleep on your side instead.
- Decrease drinking. Avoiding alcohol may reduce snoring because alcohol relaxes the throat muscles, which can make you snore.
- Treat nasal congestion. To help clear your nose, use a saline rinse before bed, take an antihistamine or, if you have allergies, take your allergy medication.
- Using an oral appliance. An oral appliance made by a trained dental sleep specialist may help.
- Wear a nasal strip at night. Adhesive nasal strips can help cut down on snoring by opening up your nasal passages.
Medical Treatments to Help You Stop Snoring
Lifestyle changes don’t work for everyone, especially if their snoring is severe. Your primary care provider may refer you to a sleep disorders specialist if they think you may have a sleep disorder. You may need to have a sleep study so the specialist can better understand what may be causing your symptoms.
If you have obstructive sleep apnea, the sleep disorders specialist may recommend using a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine while you sleep. This device sends pressurized air through the nose or mouth to maintain pressure evenly throughout the airway and act as a pneumatic stent in the throat and upper airway. This helps you breathe better and reduces snoring.
A CPAP machine isn’t right for everyone. Fortunately, several other options are available to reduce or stop snoring. Your sleep disorders specialist may send you to an otolaryngologist or dentist to be fitted for an oral appliance. Still, other procedures can help by using palatal implants or heat to reduce vibration in the soft palate, which is the back part of the roof of your mouth.
Whatever treatment is most effective for you, the benefits will be well worth the effort. By controlling or eliminating snoring, you can sleep more soundly and tackle your day with more energy, and so can your sleep partner.
Listen to a Podcast About Sleep Apnea
Sleep Apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder that happens when your breathing repeatedly stops and starts while you’re asleep. In this podcast, Dr. Peyman Otmishi, medical director of the UM Shore Regional Health Sleep Laboratory, talks about how you can overcome sleep apnea to get the rest you deserve.
More to Read
- How to Overcome Sleep Anxiety and Insomnia
- The Connection Between Not Getting Enough Sleep and Mental Health
- Trouble Sleeping? How to Overcome COPD Sleep Challenges
- Expert Tips on How to Sleep Better
Medically reviewed by UM Shore Regional Health Sleep Disorders Center team members.
