The Five Most common causes of snoring

Friday, July 01, 2022

“I do not snore!” Have you ever heard two people arguing about whether one of them snores or not? I have and rarely do they agree on the answer. Snoring has become a social stigma that no one wants to admit to, even if their spouse provides audio to prove otherwise. We need to be educated on what actually causes the snoring to hopefully change our perception to realize that our significant other is really not snoring to purposefully prevent the other from getting a good night’s sleep. Below is a good starting place to better understand snoring.

5 Common Causes of Snoring

1. Mouth Structure

If you have an extra long uvula (soft palate) or enlarged tonsils, the airflow becomes partially blocked. As air is inhaled and exhaled, this blockage creates a snoring sound.

2. Nasal Congestion

When you cannot breathe through your nose, you will automatically open your mouth so that you can breathe. When this happens, your tongue is probably laying on the bottom of your mouth and as a large amount of air is inhaled and exhaled, those snoring sounds are likely to occur. Understand that if your nose is stopped up, you must breathe through your mouth to continue to live. Hopefully, it is short-lived due to a cold or allergies. When you get well, you should go back to breathing through your nose without snoring. If your nasal congestion is ongoing, you can easily get into the habit of mouth breathing and snoring.

3. Body Weight

If you are overweight, you probably have extra fat around your throat which can narrow your airway when sleeping. Losing a few pounds may help eliminate your snoring if that is the only reason that you are snoring.

4. Alcohol Consumption

Alcohol relaxes your throat muscles which may obstruct your airway and result in snoring.

5. Mouth Breathing

If you have no issues like the ones listed above, just breathing through your mouth while you are sleeping is enough to cause you to snore. Your snoring can worsen and lead to sleep apnea if your tongue falls down and blocks your airway. If your tongue “lives” on the bottom of your mouth, then relaxing while lying down can cause your tongue to fall to the back of your throat and partially block your airway. If the day comes that your tongue totally blocks your airway, then you have probably developed sleep apnea.

Check out our stop snoring program: The IJustWantTo Correct My Tongue Thrust program.

Written by: Janet M. Bennett

Janet Bennett, M.Ed., CCC-SLP, is a Speech Pathologist in private practice in Asheville, NC, since 1977. She specializes in treating tongue thrust, a swallowing disorder that can result in buckteeth, an open bite, a lisp, snoring, and other problems that have not yet been made known to most people.