According to a recent survey, 3 out of 5 senior adults aged 65 years and over snore. Looking at these numbers, it’s easy to see why snoring is a popular topic of jokes, but in some cases, snoring may not at all a laughing matter.
What is snoring
Snoring is the grating, snorting, rumbling sound made in the nose and throat when a person is asleep. The volume of this sound can range from a low murmur to something like the thundering of jet engines.
The respiratory system as a musical instrument
Have you ever played, or seen someone play, a wind instrument like a flute, saxophone, or tuba?
The musician blows air through the mouthpiece of the flute and uses their fingers to open and close holes in the instrument’s body. This affects the amount of air vibrating inside the flute and produces pleasant musical sounds.
Snores are produced in pretty much the same way, with the respiratory system in place of the flute and the sounds nowhere near as nice.
How it’s made: A snore
Your respiratory system is made up of the nose, mouth, throat, windpipe, lungs, and diaphragm. Snoring happens when muscles toward the beginning of the respiratory system — in your nose, mouth, and throat — relax too much when you fall asleep.
In older adults, this may happen because age reduces muscle elasticity, or a muscle’s ability to snap into place and stay there.
As muscles relax, they sag and spread and take up space, crowding the trachea or windpipe, and narrowing the space through which air can flow through.
When you inhale, air needs to go past the muscles and soft tissue crowding the airway. The soft tissue may include your adenoids, tongue, tonsils, the soft palate (at the back of the roof of your mouth), and uvula (the little dangly thing at the back of your throat).
As air pushes and shoves its way past the muscles and tissues blocking the airway, it causes them to vibrate and produce the sound we recognize as snoring.
Some reasons for chronic snoring in senior adults
Chronic snoring means you snore frequently or regularly, or almost every time you are asleep. There could be any number of reasons for developing this chronic condition.
- Sleep apnea
Sleep apnea is a breathing disorder in which a person might stop breathing several times while asleep. It is a dangerous disorder as the repeated interruptions in breathing cause oxygen levels in the blood to drop.
When the brain and other organs and tissues do not get enough oxygen, their cells begin to die. New replacement cells may not form quickly enough, which leads to permanent tissue loss. This can put you at risk of stroke, brain damage, and heart disease.
The most common kind of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea. Researchers estimate nearly 3 out of every 5 senior adults are at high risk of developing the disorder, and the threat grows with increasing age.
- Being overweight
Obesity has an impact on how well you breathe when asleep.
When you gain weight around the face and neck, the excess fat doesn’t just sit on the surface. It also collects in nasal passages, in spaces and crevices around the ear and mouth, and in front of the windpipe in your throat. It is known as pharyngeal fat.
Having a lot of pharyngeal fat around your neck, where the windpipe is, may cause you to snore more intensely. To check if this might be a factor in your snoring, measure the circumference of your neck. More than 13 inches for women, and 14 inches for men, is considered obese.
- Sleep position
You’re more likely to snore if you sleep flat on your back. Thanks to the pull of gravity, the soft tissues in your mouth and throat, and any deposits of pharyngeal fat, easily collapse and fall into the back wall of your throat, blocking the airway.
Because of this, the air you breathe struggles to go under and past the tissues blocking its path.
Imagine a tunnel spread with thick, heavy blankets, and you must go through it by crawling under those blankets. You lift a section of blanket, scoot forward, and repeat the slow struggle until you reach the end.
Is snoring an illness
Snoring itself is not a disease. Rather, it is an indicator or warning that something isn’t quite right with your health. Along with sleep apnea, snoring may also be a symptom of sinus infections or allergies.
How to stop snoring while sleeping
There is no particular treatment for snoring, but you may be able to reduce the frequency and volume of your snoring by making some lifestyle changes:
- Avoid alcohol or other sedatives such as sleeping pills as they cause muscles to relax.
- Quit smoking. Here are some resources that can help.
- Sleep on your side. Some people stitch or tape objects like a tennis ball to the back of their pajamas. This way, if you unknowingly turn on your back, the discomfort forces you to roll back to your side again.
- Add a pillow to lift your head up a bit more.
- Try oropharyngeal exercises to strengthen the muscles in and around your mouth and throat.
- Check your medications to see if they have relaxant properties. Also, some meds can dry out the nasal passages, which makes the soft palate vibrate louder.
- Bring your weight down by following a healthy diet and exercising more. Walking is the best way to start; aim to get in 6,000 steps a day.
Talk to your doctor
If you have been told you snore, speak to your doctor about it at your next appointment — be sure to bring your partner along as they may give the doctor a better idea about how loud you snore!
Your doctor might perform a physical examination of the nose, mouth, and throat. They may also advise a sleep study to rule out potentially life-threatening disorders like sleep apnea.
During a sleep study, patients are monitored overnight to check for different body functions such as breathing patterns, oxygen levels, and heart rate. The study is usually conducted in a specialized sleep laboratory, but it may also be conducted in your home, as you sleep in your bed, using remote monitoring devices.
