There are several causes of snoring in many individuals and majority of these causes are induced by the lifestyle they engage in. For instance if you are fond of smoking, eating junk food that will do nothing but add fat in your body and drinking of excess alcohol, you can’t help it but snore. This article looks at some likely factors that may cause you to snore.

Smoking - if you have never thought of it, it is a wonder. Of course, smoking contributes to snoring in a big way by clogging your throat with particles and contaminants, causing unneeded relaxation of already relaxed throat and nasal passage muscles, and also by irritating you to sometimes cause infection or inflammation.

All of these symptoms can cause snoring in their own right; but when they act together, snoring is almost guaranteed. There are chances that you may not snore as a smoker, but if you smoke you may want to quit while you are ahead so that you don’t damage your respiratory system and decrease your air movement through the nose to cause you to snore permanently.

Weight loss - definitely a snore cure that solves the snoring problem. Losing weight is guaranteed to lessen the fatty tissues in your throat and reduce your snoring therewith. To lose weight, you need exercise, and when you exercise, you further add to your chances of not snoring because you also tighten up your loose muscles so that passing air does not scrape against them to cause noise.

Alcohol consumption - you don’t even have to be an alcoholic; if you drink a lot, or if you drink close to when you are going to sleep, you will snore because your breathing passages will loosen their muscles and the tissues will all crowd in to complicate your snoring problems. The simple cure for this is to avoid alcohol within two hours before sleep; nothing more. When you need to sleep better, the simple snoring solutions are always the best.

Treating snoring naturally by changing your lifestyle has in most cases been a real success. The changing of your life style include losing weight if necessary, to get sleep at the same hour every evening and to get enough sleep every night, it is recommended that the sleep position to be on one side and not on the back. Maintaining the main position during sleep will also benefit. You may maintain the same sleeping position this way: you will stitch a tennis ball on the middle of the back of your pajama. In addition, your bed should be easily inclined by putting some bricks under it at one side.

Quit smoking would also help you to stop snoring gradually. Quitting smoking is essential because it can reduce the inflammation of the airways that lead to the flattening of the airways. Besides that, avoid drinking alcohol and taking sleeping pills before going to bed would also help to stop your snoring problem while sleeping. I have heard many people are using corticosteroids to decongest airways, but these substances would not be recommended at all for long-term use.

If your snoring annoys the sleeping partner, he/she can use earplugs or ambient music to cover the noise from your snoring. If after following the natural methods the snoring is still present, it is recommended that you should see a doctor. The doctor could give you some extra test that will indicate the presence of the sleep apnea or of the obstructed airways syndrome. In this case, you might not have other solution, but surgery.

If you are not snoring but you want to prevent it, you can do the following things. You should avoid alcohol consumption along with sedative drugs that slow the rhythm of the breath. Healthy light diets, physical exercise and maintain the body weight as close possible to the normal weight can prevent snoring.

There are two types of snoring: breathe snoring and mouth snoring. There are some snoring exercises, which may be fun. You can snore voluntarily and then you can cover your mouth and try to breath through the nose. You can study the cause of your snoring and see what exactly determines you to snore.

If the sound of the snore comes from the depth of the throat, you should consider that you sleep with your mouth open. If still after closing your mouth, there is no improvement then make some breathe exercises.

Mandible advancement device is similar to the mouth guard used by the boxers to protect themselves in contact sports and it helps to keep your tongue safe not to fall into your throat. Remember if stop snoring solutions naturally cannot help you, then you can try surgery methods.

Many people like to drink wine, beer or other alcoholic beverages after work or in the evening, and because of the muscle (and mind) relaxation that occurs, may believe that alcohol helps them sleep.

Ironically, while a few drinks may bring on a sleepy state, they will disrupt the normal sleep cycle and create very restless sleep. The reason for this is that once asleep, the body starts to metabolise the alcohol and this affects brain activity. Alcohol in the blood stream actually disrupts the normal sleep cycle which involves cycling four or five times a night through deep, restful sleep and more active periods of dreaming and high brain activity. Alcohol disturbs the sleep pattern and makes it erratic.

Studies have found that alcohol consumed six hours before bedtime disrupts the second half of the sleep period. Active? alcoholics experience specific sleep disturbances such as needing increased time to fall asleep, frequent awakenings and poorer sleep quality as well as daytime fatigue. Further, these people undergo a vicious cycle when they try to stop drinking since an abrupt reduction or end to drinking usually triggers alcohol-withdrawal difficulties as well as pronounced insomnia and sleep disturbance.

Beyond withdrawal, sleep patterns may never return to normal in people with alcoholism. After years of abstinence, alcoholics tend to sleep poorly, with increased nighttime wakefulness contributing to daytime fatigue.

In addition to the effects of alcohol on the brain, drinking high quantities of any beverage before bed is going to increase the need for urination during the night, creating a further sleep disruption.

The occasional evening of drinks is not a problem, but a pattern of heavy drinking can set up insomnia problems. It can also lead to sleep apnea where the throat’s soft tissues can relax to the point of obstructing breathing during sleep.

Cutting back on alcohol consumption, or stopping it entirely is advisable for people keen to restore restful sleep.

Patients with undiagnosed or untreated obstructive sleep apnea are especially vulnerable to the effects of sleep deprivation and even legal doses of alcohol when it comes to lowered driving performance and increased risk of vehicular accidents, according to new research to be announced on May 19 at the American Thoracic Society’s 105th International Conference in San Diego.

Andrew Vakulin, a Ph.D. candidate at the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, and colleagues investigated the effects of sleep restriction and moderate alcohol exposure on patients with OSA with respect to their performance on a simulated driving task.

Driver sleepiness is already known to contribute to about one in three car accidents, and OSA patients are known to be at greater risk. However, the extent to which OSA exacerbates the effects of normal sleepiness or alcohol consumption on driving ability was not previously known.

“We found that patients with OSA had a significantly poorer performance than their peers without OSA on the driving task after sleep restriction or alcohol exposure, even though the alcohol dose was clearly within the limits imposed by most state laws about equal to having two drinks for a woman or three for a man over the course of an hour,” said Mr. Vakulin.

Patients with OSA were recruited following a standard diagnostic sleep study at the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health prior to commencement of treatment. Healthy volunteers were randomly recruited from the community through newspaper advertisements and were matched by age and sex to the patient group. There were a total of 38 OSA patients and 20 healthy individuals tested.

All subjects completed a 90-minute mid-afternoon simulated driving course after normal sleep (about eight hours), sleep restriction (about four hours) and consumption of alcohol (to blood alcohol levels of approximately 0.05g/dL). The road course simulated a country night-time drive on a predominantly straight dual-lane road with bends occurring at 10 minute intervals, each taking approximately 30 seconds to negotiate. There was no oncoming traffic or traffic lights.

After sleep restriction, individuals with OSA performed significantly more poorly on steering than the 20 healthy individuals. Subjects with OSA were also more likely to crash than control subjects after undergoing both sleep restriction and alcohol exposure.

“While this research could only ethically examine driving performance in a simulated setting, it raises some red flags that have strong real-world implications,” said Mr. Vakulin. “In OSA patients, microsleeps [brief episodes of sleep] and prolonged eye closures (greater than two seconds) were significant predictors of having a crash incidents with adjusted odds ratios of 19.2 and 7.2, respectively.

“Clearly this data indicates that people with suspected or untreated sleep apnea should avoid driving if they have not had a full night’s sleep, and should avoid driving after consuming even a small amount of alcohol,” said Mr. Vakulin.

Source: American Thoracic Society (ATS)