Snoring: main causes and prevention

Pre­ven­tion of snor­ing, it would seem, is not a mea­sure of first impor­tance. But if you dig deep­er, then snor­ing itself is not only an aes­thet­ic nui­sance, but also a phys­i­o­log­i­cal res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­or­der that can adverse­ly affect human health. A sim­i­lar low rat­tling sound can be heard dur­ing sleep, both from men and women. Tak­ing this defect as an absolute­ly safe, nor­mal human con­di­tion, many risk los­ing sight of the devel­op­ment of a dis­ease that is dan­ger­ous to health. Mea­sures to pre­vent snor­ing, its caus­es and con­se­quences will help pro­tect your­self from the con­se­quences.

Snoring Prevention: Possible Causes

Pre­ven­tion keeps peo­ple healthy. The unpleas­ant “rum­ble” emit­ted by a per­son dur­ing sleep, called snor­ing, is not just an incon­ve­nience, but pos­si­bly a symp­tom of the devel­op­ment of patho­log­i­cal process­es in the body. The mech­a­nism of snor­ing is a vio­la­tion of the anatom­i­cal struc­ture of the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, as a result of which the move­ment of air is some­what dif­fi­cult. The air, pass­ing through the nar­rowed chan­nel, cre­ates more pres­sure on its walls, which con­tributes to the occur­rence of vibra­tion, accom­pa­nied by the rat­tling “rum­ble” so famil­iar to many. This means that pre­ven­tion should be aimed at elim­i­nat­ing these prob­lems. What rea­sons may pre­cede such a vio­la­tion?

The caus­es can be both past ill­ness­es, and phys­i­ol­o­gy fea­tures or an unhealthy lifestyle.

The most pop­u­lar rea­sons are:

• Uneven growth of car­ti­lage tis­sue in the area of ​​the nasal sep­tum. The cause of such a vio­la­tion can be not only con­gen­i­tal struc­tur­al fea­tures, but also phys­i­cal injuries in this area;
• The devel­op­ment of benign for­ma­tions — polyps. By them­selves, polyps are harm­less, but their too intense growth can lead to block­age of the air­ways, nar­row­ing the space of the chan­nel for air to enter the lungs, there­by cre­at­ing an oxy­gen defi­cien­cy for the body’s sys­tems.
• Too nar­row air­ways can be giv­en to a per­son from birth;
• The tongue of the palate is anoth­er rea­son for snor­ing. Its increase cre­ates a bar­ri­er that pro­vokes the appear­ance of vibra­tion.

Most of these prob­lems can be solved with minor surgery. There are also rea­sons of anoth­er type — func­tion­al, among them:

• severe fatigue;
• Decreased mus­cle tone of the body;
• Smok­ing;
• Chron­ic lack of sleep;
• Some forms of obe­si­ty;
• Decreased thy­roid func­tion;
• The state of alco­holic intox­i­ca­tion;
• Nat­ur­al aging process.

Most of the exces­sive stress on the body does not go unno­ticed. Alco­hol, exces­sive fatigue, the use of cer­tain med­ica­tions weak­en the tone of the mus­cles of the tongue and palate, which can lead to tem­po­rary snor­ing (which will pass after the body recov­ers), or per­ma­nent (more dan­ger­ous, requir­ing dras­tic mea­sures). Treat­ment and pre­ven­tion can solve both types of prob­lems.

Snoring and gender: female snoring

Of course, the cause of wom­en’s snor­ing can be any of the above fac­tors and even their whole com­plex. But there are some rea­sons that are char­ac­ter­is­tic only for the female body.

Let’s talk about them in more detail.

One such rea­son is menopause. This peri­od of a wom­an’s life is char­ac­ter­ized by hor­mon­al changes. The lack of estro­gen pro­duced con­tributes to the thin­ning and weak­en­ing of the mus­cles of the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract, which can pro­voke the appear­ance of snor­ing or exac­er­bate exist­ing ones.

The appear­ance of polyps is a rather rare thing for the female body, but over­weight in the weak­er sex caus­es breath­ing dif­fi­cul­ties much more often than in men.

Healthy lifestyle and features of male snoring

The weak­en­ing of mus­cle tone in the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract is the main cause of snor­ing. All com­mon caus­es can be relat­ed to the pri­ma­ry sources of its appear­ance. There are no num­ber of rea­sons that affect only male phys­i­ol­o­gy. But accord­ing to sta­tis­tics, exces­sive drink­ing and smok­ing are more often the cause of male snor­ing.

Anoth­er dan­ger­ous con­se­quence of dis­or­ders that pro­voke snor­ing is sleep apnea. Apnea is a process in which dur­ing snor­ing in a dream, breath­ing stops, which is restored only after a sig­nal from the brain about a lack of oxy­gen. This prob­lem sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the qual­i­ty of sleep, which leads to chron­ic fatigue. The same rea­son helps to reduce the release of testos­terone by the body, since the body pro­duces this hor­mone in the phase of deep sleep.

Preventive measures against snoring

Pre­ven­tion mea­sures are aimed at pre­vent­ing the weak­en­ing of the tis­sues of the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract.

• Since any mus­cles need train­ing, spe­cial breath­ing exer­cis­es can be per­formed for the res­pi­ra­to­ry mus­cles.
• Spe­cial­ized ortho­pe­dic items are also used to pre­vent snor­ing.
• Cor­rect posi­tion dur­ing sleep. Sleep­ing on your side is espe­cial­ly use­ful in this mat­ter, it is extreme­ly impor­tant that the pil­low be as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble, help­ing the head to take the cor­rect posi­tion dur­ing sleep. The choice of ortho­pe­dic acces­sories for sleep­ing, as well as the adop­tion of the most com­fort­able and phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly cor­rect pos­ture for sleep­ing, will be ide­al.
• Lead­ing a healthy lifestyle. This method seems to be sim­ple, but in fact the most dif­fi­cult. Lead­ing a healthy lifestyle is not a mat­ter of a few days or a week. Com­pli­ance with the rules of a healthy diet, dai­ly phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, suf­fi­cient qual­i­ty rest, adher­ence to the regime, the absence of bad habits require con­sid­er­able willpow­er from a per­son. How­ev­er, this method of pre­ven­tion is often the most effec­tive.
• In the pres­ence of sur­gi­cal prob­lems that pro­voke snor­ing, pre­ven­tive mea­sures are usu­al­ly not effec­tive enough. In this case, anoth­er kind of inter­ven­tion is need­ed, name­ly treat­ment.

Human health: prevention and treatment of snoring

Treat­ing pre-exist­ing snor­ing can be treat­ed in three ways:

• The use of pre­ven­tive mea­sures;
• med­ica­tion;
• Sur­gi­cal.

Pre­ven­tive mea­sures will give the prop­er result if snor­ing is a con­se­quence of exter­nal fac­tors lead­ing to a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the con­di­tion of the body.

Med­ica­tions that help strength­en the tone of the mus­cles of the nasophar­ynx allow solv­ing the prob­lem of treat­ment and pre­ven­tion in a short time. But they often work tem­porar­i­ly, with­out elim­i­nat­ing the caus­es of snor­ing, which can be many. At the same time, for women dur­ing menopause, this is almost the only solu­tion to the prob­lem.

Con­gen­i­tal fea­tures, cur­va­ture, polyps and oth­er prob­lems of this kind require sur­gi­cal inter­ven­tion.

Also, in the fight against snor­ing and its caus­es, not one spe­cif­ic method, but a whole com­plex of them, is often the most effec­tive.

An unpleas­ant “rum­ble” emit­ted by a per­son dur­ing sleep, called snor­ing, is not just an incon­ve­nience, but a symp­tom of a per­son hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, which can threat­en human health and which requires com­pe­tent treat­ment and pre­ven­tion. You need to be sen­si­tive to your own health, observ­ing a healthy lifestyle, as a pre­ven­tive mea­sure against almost all dis­eases, and the body will def­i­nite­ly respond with grat­i­tude.