A Serious Look at the Facts
Many jokes have poked fun at the problems created by adult snoring. Yet adult snoring is really nothing to laugh about. A snoring adult could be producing audible evidence of obstructive sleep apnea.
The loud and often annoying noise associated with adult snoring is created during the breathing process. Snoring typically fills the night air when a certain sleeping person inhales. The sleeping and snoring individual has allowed air to vibrate their soft palate and uvula (flap in the back of the throat).
Studies have shown that adult snoring is not an uncommon sleep problem. About 45% of adults snore now and then. The adults counted within that 45% tend to be either overweight or elderly. In other words, weight and age represent major contributors to the occurrence of adult snoring.
Yet those factors, while important, should not be seen as the only factors that can presage arrival in the home of nighttime snoring. Other physical factors can make a person more apt to snore while sleeping. In addition, certain life style choices can cause a person to become a snorer.
Because smoking obstructs the airways of the smoker, smoking represents a lifestyle choice with an unpleasant message. A choice to continue smoking means that a home s daytime smoke could be replaced at night with the sounds of snoring. Smoking does more than obstruct the airways; it also increases the size of the mucous membrane. That fact strengthens the link between smoking and adult snoring.
The drinking of alcohol has also been linked to snoring. Almost everyone knows that alcohol allows a person to feel more relaxed. It thus relaxes the airways of the person who has had the alcohol. Those relaxed airways have a greater tendency to create a noise whenever a sleeping adult inhales.
Still, lifestyle choices should not be viewed as the only additional cause of adult snoring. Certain medical conditions could predispose an adult to physical traits that encourage the appearance of snoring. Allergies, dry nose, large tonsils and large adenoids would all pose as a sort of barrier to the inhaled air. For that reason those conditions could cause certain cases of adult snoring.
Individuals who have an unstable sleeping pattern could eventually make it rather hard for others to sleep. An unstable sleeping pattern has the ability to set in motion the development of unstable breathing, and that in turn could lead to snoring.
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