I thought we could continue our discussion on the previous post about whether the concept of a snoring solution exists. The thing that really irks people about this the most is that they don’t understand why they start producing the snoring sounds when they sleep. The real question that pops into their head is why doesn’t it happen while they’re awake or while they’re at the gym. Why is it so limited toward sleeping? These are questions that medical science struggled to answer for the longest time. They just couldn’t figure out the root cause of it all and that is precisely the reason why you wouldn’t of learned about this in school growing up or from your parents because they never had any information to really give you.
You should be able to recognize that the sounds you hear are coming from your throat. Actually medical science was very quick to identify exactly what was happening in this case. You have loose tissue and mucus in your throat area. As you breath this all starts vibrating and you end up with sounds. Surprisingly knowing this information hasn’t helped out anyone at all. The reason for that is that you have this tissue and mucus in your throat at all times. It doesn’t matter if you’re asleep or awake, it is there. You’re obviously breathing 24 hours a day, so why does it suddenly vibrate and create snoring sounds only when you go to sleep?
This question has plagued scientists for a long time because they weren’t able to explain why. Like all logical investigating, you’re going to study the area of the throat to see if you can find clues. Even though this is the most logical thing to do, it actually set back the research a lot. Just because the sounds are produced in the throat area, doesn’t mean that they were caused in anyway by something in the throat.
Other theories came out to try and explain it. Something like being overweight was viewed as a very probable cause. It is true that if you’re overweight you’re more like to suffer from a snoring problem. But the reality is that a lot of people that are skinny snore. This didn’t answer any questions for them. It didn’t help them in anyway. A doctor can’t tell someone that is skinny to lose weight because it is just stupid.
There was also a theory about getting much more sleep at night. It is true that a lack of sleep can really improve your odds of snoring. It’s a fair assumption because I’ve experienced it many times before. Yet again, it didn’t explain why people who got +9 hours of sleep each night would do it too. I think this is something that you could easily pick up on too. I know some pretty lazy people that sleep long hours and they definitely snore.
You have to remember how such theories came out as factual methods. Typically what would happen is that they would have a medical study. They would get 100 people that snored to participate and they’d start collecting information. They probably noticed that a higher number of people were overweight and put two and two together. The same thing could be said about the lack of sleep theory. They probably measured the sleeping time of most snorers and found that they didn’t get a full night of sleep each night. It isn’t concrete science, just an estimated guess.
It is okay to do this sort of thing to try and give science an idea of where they should be looking for the problem, but a lot of people really need to understand that these things are nothing more than probabilities and nothing more.
The best thing that medical researchers did was stop looking for a solution in the throat area because there was nothing to find. As they start focusing on the mouth area they started to learn a lot more about what was really happening. In fact there are a few things that happen and they all work together to create this entire problem of you creating snoring sounds. I’m going to spend a little time going into detail on each of the reasons.
The first reason is due to your tongue. It seems like an odd thing, but the whole thing is caused due to the muscles that hold your tongue in place. You might not realize this, but it is your tongues position is set primarily by muscles. It keeps he tongue much closer to the front of your mouth for eating and things like this. The problem is when you go to sleep. Sleeping causes your muscles to relax and this causes your tongue slide back closer to the throat. This sliding back actually causes a narrowing in the throat area for air.
The second reason is due to the position of your jaw. Your jaw follows the same rules as your tongue and the position of it is controlled by these muscles. The problem is that when you sleep the muscles start to relax and this causes the jaw slide back and rest on the throat. This actually creates a lot of pressure on this area and essentially squeezes the throat.
When you put these two things together you get the perfect condition for snoring sounds. The jaw creates a lot of pressure on the throat and squeezes it. When you breath in a certain volume of air, but through a smaller space you’re going to end up with more pressure and faster speeds. The position of the tongue leads to more wheezing like sounds. The two make all that you’re going to hear and that is the entire issue. Essentially the tube that is your throat is much thinner and air has to travel through it at a much faster rate. This means that you’re going to experience much more violent types of vibration and that is the whole issue right there in a nut shell.