Snoring is universal. At some point everyone experiences it, perhaps because of a head cold or maybe drinking alcohol. People with very infrequent bouts of snoring aren’t usually considered to have a medical condition unless they have other symptoms such as sleepiness during the day. “It’s people who snore frequently that we’re the most concerned about,” says Dr. Marri Horvat, a sleep medicine specialist at Cleveland Clinic.
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Learning about snoring, as well as its causes and risks, can help you better understand if snoring indicates a health problem.
[Read: Sleep Reset 2021: Getting Your Sleep Back to Normal.]
What Is Snoring?
Snoring is a noise that occurs with inhalation during sleep. Each “in” breath produces a sound ranging from soft buzzing to very loud snorting. These sounds come from relaxed soft tissues in the mouth and throat that vibrate as air passes by.
“Just like a stringed instrument makes a sound when it flutters, a throat may make a sound when it flutters. If you can hear it, it’s snoring,” explains Dr. Avram Gold, a pulmonologist and medical director of the Stony Brook University Sleep Disorders Center.
Tissues involved in the vibrations of snoring include the:
— Tongue.
— Uvula (which hangs down from the roof of your mouth).
— Soft palate (tissue just below the roof of your mouth).
Snoring Causes
Soft tissues in the mouth and throat are more likely to vibrate noisily if your airways are narrowed, making you breathe in air more forcefully.
A narrowed airway can be caused by:
— Simply lying down. This makes the muscles in the throat and mouth relax. Lying on your back in particular pulls the throat and mouth tissues downward, contributing to narrowed airways.
— Anatomy. You may have a soft palate that’s longer than average, a deviated septum (a bent wall between the nasal passages), nasal polyps or enlarged tonsils or adenoids.
— Aging. Tongue and throat muscles may become weaker and “floppier” with age.
— Nasal congestion. A cold or an allergy can inflame tissues in the nose.
— Weight gain. “If the windpipe is pushed up by abdominal fat, that pushes the diaphragms toward the nose. Then the throat becomes floppy and more likely to snore audibly,” Gold says.
— Alcohol consumption. Alcohol makes your throat and mouth tissues relax more than usual during sleep.
— Smoking. “People who smoke have inflamed airways. They’re taking irritants into the upper airway all the time,” Gold says.
[See: Steps to Fall Asleep Fast.]
Is Snoring Dangerous?
For some people, snoring is harmless. For others, snoring can be a sign of a potentially dangerous condition called sleep apnea. There are two main types of sleep apnea:
— Obstructive sleep apnea. In OSA, a person’s airway becomes blocked at times during sleep, causing momentary pauses in breathing — until the brain is aroused. Sometimes this can wake the person, who then gasps for air, changes position, restores normal breathing and continues sleeping. This occurs many times per hour throughout sleep.
— Central sleep apnea. “With central sleep apnea, your brain doesn’t trigger your body to take a breath,” Horvat says. The brain fails to signal the muscles that help you breathe, and you experience declines or pauses in breathing, followed by shortness of breath, and then normal breathing — all during sleep.
Both types of sleep apnea can cause you to wake with a sore throat or headache and have excessive daytime sleepiness, irritability or difficulty concentrating.
Both conditions can also lead to high blood pressure and other chronic diseases such as heart disease or Type 2 diabetes, as well as a stroke.
Another Snoring Risk?
One new, debated theory is that snoring can cause health problems even in the absence of sleep apnea. There’s not a lot of evidence about it, and most physicians either don’t know about it or don’t buy it. Gold has become a believer over the years. “Snoring alone is an underrecognized gateway to life-threatening illness,” he says.
What is it about snoring alone that might be bad for health? “It could be that in some people, the early warning system of the brain views snoring as a danger and activates the ‘fight or flight’ response every night. That activates chronic stress and can lead to sleepiness, fatigue, insomnia, metabolic syndrome, stroke, heart attack, irritable bowel syndrome, migraine headaches, TMJ, chronic depression or anxiety,” Gold says.
What You Should Do
Sleep experts agree you should talk to a doctor if you have chronic snoring. Start with your primary care physician, who may refer you to a sleep medicine specialist.
“We’ll get a detailed medical history and try to understand if there are other symptoms that are concerning for sleep apnea” Horvat says.
If your doctor is suspicious that you have health problems related to snoring, you’ll have to undergo an overnight sleep study. This takes place in a medical setting and measures many aspects of your health during sleep, including:
— Breathing.
— Brain waves.
— Eye movement.
— Heart rate and heart rhythm.
— Muscle movements.
— Nasal and oral oxygen flow.
— Sleep position.
— Sleep stages.
While an in-lab sleep study is the most comprehensive way to tell if snoring is more than just noise, home sleep tests are becoming common. Home tests measure just a few of the same health aspects as an in-lab sleep study.
“Home studies are appropriate when we suspect someone has sleep apnea and they have daytime sleepiness but no other conditions,” Horvat says. “But home studies aren’t as sensitive as in-lab tests. So they’re not great for people who have other medical issues such as atrial fibrillation, a history of stroke, heart failure, and/or concerns of central sleep apnea.”
[SEE: Sleep Apnea: 11 Things That Make It Worse.]
A Positive Result
If your sleep study indicates that you have sleep apnea, treatment is the next step. It often involves treating any underlying conditions and using continuous positive airway pressure — a bedside pump that delivers forced air through a face mask you wear all night.
There are also implantable nerve stimulators that help either type of sleep apnea, and oral appliances that can help people with obstructive sleep apnea.
CPAP is sometimes used for people without sleep apnea, but insurance may not pay for the device, which costs about $1,000.
Lifestyle modification may also help. These include:
— Avoiding alcohol before bedtime.
— Quitting smoking.
But don’t assume you can attempt treatment for chronic snoring on your own. Find out if snoring is a sign of other health issues. “Snoring can either be relatively inconsequential or very debilitating,” Gold says. He urges that you see a doctor to sort it out.
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Is Snoring Bad? originally appeared on usnews.com
