If you’re one of the millions of people with a snoring problem, you may be wondering what exactly makes you snore. Snoring is a problem that can be caused by a host of factors, and there are many questions you need to ask yourself to help determine the cause, and possible solution to your issue.

Do you only snore when you drink alcohol?
For those who drink alcohol often, you should try to find out if the problem affects you on a sober night. Alcohol, being a depressant drug, can be the cause of a sneezing problem due to the way that it relaxes the muscles in your body. More so than regular sleeping, alcohol can cause the muscles in your throat to relax to a point where there is an airway restriction. If you only snore when drinking, your best bet for fixing the problem is to avoid drinking altogether, or to at least have your last drink more than 4 hours before you go to sleep.

Do you only snore when you lie on your back?
A large proportion of snorers only face the problem when they are lying on their back in bed. The simple solution to this problem would be to train your body towards sleeping on your side. While there are many products for sale to help this issue, they are usually variations on a tried and true method. The basic, simple, and cost effective solution would be to put a tennis ball in a sock and pin it to the back of your pajama pants. The ball will make it uncomfortable for you to sleep on your back, causing you to naturally favor sleeping on your side.

Do you have a weight problem?
Along with the other side effects of obesity, snoring can be caused due to excess weight. This is due to the fact that fat deposits begin to occur in the neck and throat area, which can get big enough to put a strain on the airway, causing restricted breathing that results in snoring. If this is the reason you are snoring, weight loss is the main way to help.

Do you use sleeping pills or anti-histamines?
If you find yourself using these products before bedtime, similar effects to those caused by alcohol can result in a snoring problem. The relaxation of throat muscles is common when taking these drugs, just as they are with alcohol.

Do you have allergies?
Allergies can often result in nasal congestion, which can make it hard for your body to get the oxygen it needs. Unfortunately, since antihistamines also cause issues, one of the best remedies for this problem is to just take a decongestant as opposed to an antihistamine.

While these are a good number of the reasons you may snore, there are also others. If you can’t seem to pin down why exactly you may be having a snoring issue, it may be helpful to speak to a health care professional about the problem. Snoring can be a serious problem, costing you valuable sleep and possibly leading to a serious condition known as sleep apnea.

Snoring is always portrayed as a harmless, silly trait for a person to have. However, few know that there are many hidden dangers in what can seem to be an innocent snore. Snoring is your body’s method of letting you know that it is having trouble getting the oxygen it needs to carry out its basic functions. Also, snoring can mask a greater problem known as obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA.

Obstructive sleep apnea occurs when a snoring condition gets so bad that total blockage occurs in the airway. When this happens, the person is unable to get oxygen, and the body is unable to get any in for over 10 seconds. This can cause the person to wake up in the middle of the night a sweat, wake up gasping for air, or wake up choking. People with sleep apnea often wake up the next morning with sore throats or headaches. This is due to the lack of oxygen that your body is getting. On top of that, the numerous times you wake up in the middle of the night really do damage to your sleep patterns.

Sleep apnea causes a lack of REM sleep, which can result in grogginess and a lack of concentration the next day. Your body is basically not getting the required rest that it needs, because it is too busy being worried about getting oxygen. This can translate to poor performance at work or school, difficulty concentrating on simple tasks, and a general state of irritability that can cause irreparable damage to both your social life and your job.

In addition to the short-term affects of being afflicted with sleep apnea, if the syndrome is left untreated, the sufferer bears a greater risk of heart attack and stroke. Also, significant weight gain can occur during an OSA affliction. Higher blood pressure is often found in people with OSA, as well as a lower blood-oxygen level. This forces the heart to work harder, and can result in such long-term problems as an enlarged heart.

Fortunately, there are ways of helping obstructive sleep apnea. For mild sufferers, simple snoring cures such as not sleeping on your back and losing weight can help to cure sleep apnea. However, for the more moderate to severe apnea sufferers, a process known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, or CPAP, can remedy the problem. It involves a nose mask that delivers air up through the nose, clearing the way for unobstructed air flow. Surgery is also a possible cure for severe sleep apnea, but is only administered after CPAP treatment fails.

So, as you can see, snoring is a problem that you shouldn’t take sitting (or laying) down. Find out if your condition meets the symptoms of sleep apnea, and even if they don’t, do your best to clear your snoring problem so that it does not debilitate into apnea.

Research the common reasons for a snoring condition, and see which of them sound like they fit you the most. Then, search out the proper treatments for these reasons.

Would you like to learn how to aid your snoring problem with simple remedies found around the house? If so, you’re in luck. There are many solutions to snoring offered that require little to no purchasing.

One method of helping snoring at home would be to do soft palate exercises. These help to strengthen the muscles in your throat that contribute to snoring when they are lax. Many have claimed that this approach is a favorable one, and it couldn’t hurt to try. Since a weak soft palate is a common cause for snoring, you can exercise this part of your throat by doing the following workout:
Put the tip of your tongue on your palate. Then, do your best to suck hard on the back of your tongue. When done correctly, you should feel the muscles in your palate straining and tightening. Experiment a little bit, finding the best way to tighten and release your palate’s muscles; once you get the hang of it, you’ll be toning up your palate in no time!

Other advice offered for home remedies includes a solution for those who only snore when they sleep on their back: to stop sleeping on your back! This can be accomplished with little trouble by taking a tennis ball and putting it in a sock. Then, pin the sock to the back of your pajama pants. This will make it uncomfortable for you to lay on your back, causing you to naturally fall asleep on your side. Another similar method advocates sewing objects into the back of your sleeping shirts so that you can’t sleep on your back without discomfort.

Many practices that aid a snoring problem are simply to behave in certain ways; don’t drink alcohol before bed, as this relaxes the throat muscles so much that they can come into contact with the other parts of your throat, causing an obstruction. Also, avoid eating dairy products before bed, as the mucus buildup caused can sometimes clog your throat. If you use a lot of pillows, it might be a good idea to take a few away. The more pillows you sleep on, the sharper of an angle your air way has to conform to. This can cause obstruction, leading to heavy snoring. These home remedies and advice are only a few helpful tips on what you can do; it’s important to know exactly what you’re dealing with so that you can treat the problem correctly.

While taking home remedies, it’s important to know that not every problem can be solved in the home. If your snoring issue is accented by waking up sweating, gasping for air or choking, as well as feeling generally tired in the daytime, there is a chance that you have sleep apnea, a harmful disorder that requires serious attention. If these symptoms sound like what you are facing, it is important to talk to a health care professional and get a polysomnography test. This can determine if you have apnea, which can cause such problems as irregular heartbeats and strokes if left unchecked.

Snoring can touch anyone. So when you are lying there at night feeling whatever emotion snoring causes you to feel; frustration, annoyance, pride, or hopelessness, you should remember that you are one among a very large and varied group. Some very famous people were known to be snorers. Many of the famous snorers have the basic characteristics that many snorers share. Napoleon Bonaparte showed many of the typical signs. He was obese, with a short, thick neck and was believed to have had a nasal blockage. Napoleon was known to fall asleep anywhere, including amongst a group of people. Oddly, there are no records to his snoring, yet history claims he did.

Winston Churchill was a famous snorer. In his later years he was quite badly overweight, drank his fair share of alcohol and enjoyed his cigars. All these are snoring indicators. He was also known for his afternoon naps. Winston Churchill lived to be ninety, which was quite surprising considering his sleep disorder and health habits.

President Grover Cleveland was known to be the second heaviest American president. William Howard Taft, who was believed to have weighed three hundred and thirty pounds, was the heaviest. Cleveland was thought to have weighed about two hundred and eighty pounds. Although there are few notes on his health, he was woefully overweight and his final ten years was known to have a fleshy thick neck. Add to that his love for beer and it certainly is little surprise that he too was known for his snoring.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt suffered from hypertension and sleep apnea, both of which it is believed were factors contributing to his death in nineteen hundred forty five. He was believed to suffer from a sleep disorder that made him more tired than he should be especially in the mornings. FDR was a smoker and known to be a snorer.

Teddy Roosevelt was known not only to be a snorer, but of deafening proportions. One time when he was in the hospital, the other patients complained about the loud noise coming from his room. He, like many of the others, put on a lot of weight later in life. Sadly, he died, at only sixty, in his sleep.

Queen Victoria gained a lot of weight as she aged. A small lady of only five foot two, she was anything but petite with a forty-six inch waist. She was well known to have insomnia. It was actually bad enough that during carriage rides; her ladies in waiting were instructed to gently keep her awake by moving around her pillows, as she was known to fall asleep in the middle of the day and snore.
This is only a small list of historical figures that were known to have suffered the nightly affliction of noise making that is known as snoring. But as you can see, if you are a snorer, you are certainly are in the company of some famous and well-respected people who suffered the same as you.

Studies are beginning to tell us that there is a connection between chronic headache sufferers and snorers. Is the connection in their triggers perhaps?  We are all aware of the fact that certain foods, drinks and other things ones does can all but guarantee a person prone to snoring a symphony for the night. These include drinking milk before bed, having a late large meal, consuming alcohol and having any diary foods late into the evening. The same is true of headache sufferers. They too have foods, drinks and actions that are known to bring on a thumping in their temples that will send them to a dark quiet room until the headache subsides. These often include red wine, chocolate and anything with caffeine in it.

Recently it has come to the attention of physicians and researchers alike that people who suffer from daily headaches are at least twice as likely as those who have headaches only once in a while to also be snorers.  A study was done to compare people who suffered the temple pounding pain of headaches a minimum of fifteen times a month and a control group of people who only had infrequent headache problems. These people experienced less than one hundred and four headaches a year but more than two. The results showed that twenty four percent of those who averaged a headache very other day were chronic snorers. The control group averaged fourteen percent nightly snorers.

Once question this raises is if you control the headaches do you control the snoring or is the process the other way around. Must you control the snoring to help banish the headaches. It has all the signs of a vicious circle. Headache sufferers take pain medications to curb their head pain. The problem is that pain relievers are known to increase the possibility that a person will snore. Snoring has serious effects on how a person sleeps. Snoring can wake up the snorer multiple times during the night and so cause a poor night’s rest. This lack of sleep can then cause headaches.   One other consideration is that those who have difficulty sleeping may hold on to carbon dioxide at night and this can also be a trigger for those who experience headaches.

One thought currently in the field of sleep research is to conduct further studies that can determine the relationship between snoring and headaches. Are the headaches caused by the snoring noise the person is making? This could explain the morning headaches. Another possibility is that the snoring could be caused by some type of constriction relating to the neck that occurred during a headache. This may lead to the person snoring. The only way to study this properly will be to have the subjects go through major lifestyle changes while keeping a diary that will note headaches and snoring episodes. Only time and more research will tell what the answer truly is, but until then there seems to be no doubt these two afflictions are related.

Snoring is the noise made by air struggling to pass through a blocked or obstructed airway. Often the airway is blocked by flabby, relaxed tissue in the throat and there are a number of exercises that can be incorporated into a daily regime that will work to strengthen the muscles and tissues of the neck, jaw and throat to reduce or even cure the problem.

By exercising the parts of the body involved in the physical process of breathing you will make them stronger, more toned and less likely to interfere with the passage of air through the airways. This should improve your problem with snoring.

Any professional singer will know how important it is to practice exercises every day that are designed to keep the airways clear. Singers will work to exercise their tongues, their jaws and their throats – they want to develop strong muscles in these areas in order that they can perform.

As snoring occurs when airways become obstructed or blocked, it makes sense that snorers should consider exercising in the same way as a professional singer to keep their airways and associated muscles and tissue strong and open. Who knows, they may even find that they begin to win the local karaoke competitions as an added bonus.

Following are a number of very specific exercises that can be tried at home –

1. In a very controlled manner, slowly open and close your mouth to its full extent. Make sure your lips meet when closing.
2. Pucker up as if to blow a kiss and hold for 5 seconds before relaxing.
3. Practice smiling, make it big, generous and exaggerated. Once again hold the position for 5 seconds before relaxing.
4. Press your lips tightly together and hold for 5 seconds before relaxing.
5. Press your lips firmly and then pretend to sip a drink making a sipping noise.
6. Stick your tongue right out. Keep it straight and horizontal, don’t allow any drooping.
7. With your tongue sticking right out move it from side to side making it reach each corner of your lips.
8. Practice reaching for your chin with the tip of your tongue.
9. Practice reaching for the tip of your nose with your tongue.
10. Hold a spoon against your sticking out tongue and exert pressure as if to push the tongue back into the mouth. Resist the pressure with the tongue – push back against the spoon.
11. Say ‘Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma’ as quickly as possible being sure to pronounce both letters.
12. Say ‘‘La-La-La-La’ as quickly as possible being sure to pronounce both letters.
13. Say ‘Ka-Ka-Ka-Ka’ as quickly as possible being sure to pronounce both letters.
14. Say ‘Kala-Kala-Kala-Kala’ as quickly as possible being sure to pronounce both letters.
15. Say or sing all of the vowel sounds (A-E-I-O-U) as loudly as you can.

Overcome your snoring problem once and for all – get those muscles of the throat jaw and neck firmed and toned and stop the flabbiness blocking your airways.

Snoring affects your family in ways that you may be unfamiliar with. While snoring can be a problem that affects your health personally, few know about the trauma it can cause to their bedmate. Also, few know that heredity can help to determine whether or not a person snores! These associations can be of interest to families, and should be studied and discussed.

In April of 2006, the medical journal CHEST featured a study by some researchers at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital Medical Center relating to family history and their snoring habits. The results showed that those children of parents, who snore, are three times as probable to snore themselves. In further detail, the study also found that snoring in these children was often associated with the presence of an allergic sensitization, a condition also known as Atopy. The study involved 681 children that were an average age of 12. The study found that children with at least one parent who snored more than three times a week were also three times more likely to snore themselves.

It was also found that children with Atopy were two times more likely to snore at least three times per week then children who tested negative for allergic sensitization. This is an important study to take note of as children who are frequent snorers can often exhibit behavioral problems, cognitive deficits, and metabolic as well as cardiovascular problems. This has been taken so seriously, that the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended every child be tested for obstructive sleep-disordered breathing. (Partial or complete upper airway obstruction during a child’s sleep characterizes this disorder, and snoring is often one of the warning signs). In addition to the findings regarding heredity and snoring, some associations were made in the study about racial effects on snoring. For instance it was found that African American children were found much more likely to have problems with snoring.

Although snoring may be an inheritable condition, that doesn’t mean that there is nothing you can do. There are many ways to fix the problem of snoring, and they relate to the various reasons for which you may snore. Lifestyle changes, health, or oral appliances can be helpful to solving your problem. The first step is to figure out exactly what is making you snore.

As far as your snoring affecting life with your bed mate, there are some very serious consequences. People with heavy snoring patterns can cause their partner to lose as much as 1 full hour of sleep per evening, while waking them up as many as 21 times an hour! This sleep disruption can cause some very serious problems with concentration and irritability. Known as spousal arousal syndrome, this issue is a reason to work towards solving your snoring problem, if not for yourself. According to a recent survey, 80% of snoring couples sleep apart. This shows that snoring can have numerous negative effects on your relationship, especially your sex life. If your spouse is a snorer, it is important that you address the problem so that the two of you can face it head-on, eliminating the need for such drastic moves as sleeping separately.

Sitting down and looking at your lifestyle you know its time for changes. You’re a snorer and it’s becoming an issue between you and your partner. All you want to do is make some simple changes and see if they will improve the racket you make when you go to sleep. To begin with how’s your weight?  If you’re a man and you are even twenty percent over your recommended weight that alone will make you snore.

Not overweight, let’s look closer and see what else you can do to make healthy changes. Changing your eating habits will definitely help. No more big meals, no more rich or fatty meals late in the evening.  No dairy products late in the evening either. Stay away from the warm glass of milk before bed. All these will aid with throat blockage and contribute to another night of snoring.

There is actually a list of foods that doctors recommend you stay away from near your bedtime. Don’t eat dairy, fried foods, chocolate, frozen foods or baked goods; like pizza.   There are also some studies that show that taking vitamin C will make you snore more.  Stay away from alcohol. Drinking alcohol in the evening can promise snoring in the night. The problem is that the alcohol acts like an anesthetic on the throat muscles, which causes them to collapse. It dilates the blood vessels making the fatty tissue in the throat swell. This state of affairs means the airway winds up constricted and that is what makes you snore.

You shouldn’t smoke either. Smoking makes mucous in the throat that will affect the width of the airway. It also hampers the normal activity of the airway.  There is proof that cigarette smoking causes an irritation in the throat and that this is another factor in nighttime snoring.

But somewhere there has to be something you can enjoy that is good for you and does not enhance the chances of you snoring. First, you can enjoy your dinner as long as you don’t eat it too late. As a matter of fact, going out for a special dinner of lobster or scallions not only is a lovely treat, but both are foods recommended as anti-snore/friendly foods. It is believed that they actually tone the trachea thus helping to reduce snoring or sometimes even eliminate it.  Other foods that fall into this odd category of snoring friendly include mustard greens, pears, thyme, horseradish, onions, garlic, leeks and seaweed.

So, you’ve learned that you can’t smoke. You can’t drink. There is a limit on when you should have your last intake of food, and many of those foods you enjoy you shouldn’t eat anymore. The list of snore friendly foods is pretty small and most of them are things to add to your meal not main courses.  You ask yourself is it really worth making all these changes just to stop snoring?  The answer should be a resounding yes. Snoring is not healthy for you or your sleep-deprived partner.

With all the many habits that a person can have one of the most detrimental is cigarette smoking.  Aside from its cancer causing elements, the smell it leaves in your hair and on your clothes, the fact it yellows your fingers and teeth, it is also a major contributing factor in snoring. So, with all these health and lifestyle disadvantages why do people continue to smoke?  Maybe it’s no different than eating chocolate or dinking coffee, it just has many more potential side effects.

If you are a smoker you will have a very high possibility of being a snorer as well. Smoking affects the airways and sinuses causing swelling in the membranes of the nose and the tissues of the throat. It also damages the small vessels of the lungs by blocking them. The nicotine itself also can cause sleep disruptions that can increase the nightly snoring.

Researchers in Europe studied smokers and snoring within a large group of people from twenty five to fifty four years old. They used a study group of fifteen thousand people from five different countries to see what, if any, correlation there is between people who snore and people who smoke.  The results were quite informative though not in the least surprising.  To understand what they were trying to prove one must first understand better what causes snoring.  The air flows along the passageway between the nose and the mouth. Then it vibrates off of the uvula and the rear part of the soft palate. That’s how the noise of a snore is made. Those who snore at least three times a week in a deafening manner are called habitual snorers.

Of the study group twenty four percent of the smokers and twenty percent of past smokers snored compared to fourteen percent of non-smokers who did not. Interestingly the more a person smoked the louder they snored. Second hand smoke also posed a problem. Twenty percent of people who lived with a smoker also snored. The study also noted that more men smoked cigarettes, but it’s the female smokers who seem more likely to snore. The key question is still what does smoking do that makes a person more likely to snore? The feeling is that it irritates the airway. But, other experts believe that the body’s nightly nicotine withdrawal causes disturbances in the person’s sleep patterns, and obstructions in the upper airway.  As well, people who smoke tend to be more likely to drink alcohol.  Alcohol is a snoring trigger and so the two in combination are definitely going to cause you to snore.

Knowing that smoking is so bad for your health and now realizing that it also increases the chances you’ll snore, and potentially have other sleep disturbances, isn’t it worth reconsidering this bad habit?  After all quitting smoking may give you a quiet uninterrupted night of peaceful sleep. Which can   make your days better, improve your relationship and maybe even add years to your life, all while stopping your snoring.

While snoring is commonly joked about as a harmless little annoyance, it can be no further from the truth. Snoring is a blockage of the air ways that our body uses to get oxygen to perform the vital functions it needs to operate. This can be very harmful for the snorer, especially if the air ways become completely blocked, causing a sleep disorder known as sleep apnoea. Snores are a warning sign from our bodies saying that they may not be getting all the oxygen they need. For that reason, snores will wake up those with sleep apnoea. The body cannot get enough oxygen so it does its best to alert you.

Sleep apnoea is characterized by the following symptoms: long interruptions of breathing (commonly more than 10 seconds, caused by the blockage of the air ways), frequently waking from sleep (although the sufferer may not realize that they are), light sleeping that is not conducive to fulfilling your body’s need for sleep, and lower blood oxygen levels. These lower blood oxygen levels cause the heart to have to work harder, pumping more rapidly and causing a rise in blood pressure. As a result, the sufferer often experiences a poor night’s sleep underlined by drowsiness during the day and a lack of concentration. Irritability also is a common trait among those with sleep apnoea, and this can affect personal relationships as well as your work ethic. In addition to these problems, people with untreated sleep apnoea face higher risks of heart attacks and strokes.

Now that you can see that snoring is no laughing matter, it is important to know some of the behaviours which help to keep snoring to a minimum. If you are overweight, the fatty tissues in your throat may be helping the problem, so it is important to get into shape and improve your eating habits. Trying to establish regular sleeping patterns that persist through the week and the weekend can also be helpful to beating snoring. On a daily basis, it is important to avoid alcohol, sleeping pills, and anti-histamines for a good period of time before you go to bed. These substances relax your throat muscles, causing them to buckle and increasing the snoring problem. Sleeping on your side is also a commonly used solution, since many snorers are known to only snore while sleeping on their back. An easy fix for getting used to sleeping on your side would be to sew an object such as a tennis ball into the back of your bed time shirt. This makes it uncomfortable for you to sleep on your back, so you will naturally favour sleeping on your side.

If you feel that the sleep apnoea symptoms described above might apply to you, it is crucial to speak to a health care professional. They can perform a process known as polysomnography, which can diagnose your problem and let you know exactly what is wrong with your sleep. It is a harmless process which is covered by most insurance carriers.