Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, pay Brain Stuff Lauren vogal bomb here. Almost half of all adults snore. Loud and persistent storing may be a symptom of sleep apnea, a serious sleep condition that requires medical attention. But is it true that most snoring problems can be fixed just by sleeping on your side first? A quick snoring primer. Snoring is the result of an obstruction of the breathing pathways during sleep. As you drift off to sleep, your mouth, tongue,
and throat relax. The soft tissue in your throat can relax to the point that it partially blocks your airway. As air passes through this restricted space, it causes the tissue to vibrate, producing detail tale rumble. The narrower that your airway is, the more forceful the flow of air will be, which increases the vibration of the tissue and makes your snoring sound even louder. The root causes of
snoring vary from person to person. Obesity is a common underlying reason for storing because at sus weight on the neck and chest compresses breathing pathways. Other causes can include allergies, they cause congestion, and inflammation that tighten airways in the nose and throat, and drinking alcohol before sleep, which relaxes the throat muscles. And some people are just born with an extra thick soft palate or a low hanging nuvula that obstructs airflow to the throat. So where does sleep
position come into all of this? Sleep experts agree that sleeping on your back exacerbates snoring. That's because when you're asleep, your tongue, soft palate, and throat muscles automatically relax, and if you're sleeping on your back, those relaxed muscles will sag downward and backward, increasing the odds of an obstructed airway.
Sleeping on your side is most effective on true tongue snorers, where the chief cause of the obstruction is a relaxed tongue blocking your airway, But turning on your side won't necessarily solve the snoring problem if it's an allergy or obesity issue. The trouble beside sleeping is a cure is
that unconscious people are terrible at following directions. If you are partner has a hard time maintaining a side sleeping position, you might try using pillows to prop them up, or place a tennis ball under their shirt in the middle of their back to remind them to turn over with their permission, of course. Today's episode was written by Dave
Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. To find brain stuff, laptop cases and other brain stuff, check out our shop at t public dot com slash brain stuff, and to find more on this and lots of other RESTful topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.