Snoring and Breathing Problems: What's Happening in Your Airway

Most people treat snoring as a punchline or something to be embarrassed about. Neither reaction is much use. It is a mechanical problem with a physical cause, and the cause is worth understanding before you spend money trying to fix it.

What is actually happening in your airway

When you fall asleep, the muscles holding your throat open relax. Your tongue drifts back. The soft tissue at the back of your throat loses tension and goes slack.

Air still has to get through. It just has less room to do it in. As it squeezes past, the loose tissue starts to flutter, the way a flag does in wind. That flutter is the sound.

The relationship is simple and it explains almost everything about snoring: the narrower the airway, the faster the air has to move, and the louder the vibration gets. This is also why snoring gets worse on your back, worse after a drink, and worse when you have a cold. Each of those narrows the space a little further.

Snoring is the sound of a narrowed airway. The narrowing is the actual problem.

Where snoring ends and sleep apnea begins

This is the distinction that matters most, and the one most articles blur.

Simple snoring means the airway is narrowed but air is still moving. Oxygen levels hold steady. You wake up reasonably rested. The person beside you does not.

Obstructive sleep apnea means the airway closes far enough that breathing stops, sometimes for ten seconds or longer, sometimes hundreds of times a night. Blood oxygen drops. Your brain registers the problem and partially wakes you to restart breathing, usually with a gasp or a snort. You will not remember any of it. You will just feel destroyed the next day and have no idea why.

Nearly everyone with sleep apnea snores. Most snorers do not have sleep apnea. If you want the fuller picture on causes, we cover it in why people snore.

What narrows the airway in the first place

Your nose is blocked

Some people only snore during allergy season or with a sinus infection. Others have a structural reason: a deviated septum, nasal polyps, or a collapsed nasal valve. When the nose cannot move enough air, you switch to mouth breathing, which drops the jaw and narrows the throat behind it.

Muscle tone is low

The muscles of the tongue and throat can relax further than they should. Deep sleep does it. So does alcohol, and so do sedatives and sleeping pills. Muscle tone also declines naturally with age, which is why snoring tends to arrive or worsen in your forties and fifties.

There is more tissue than there is room

Extra weight around the neck presses inward on the airway from the outside. Enlarged tonsils and adenoids take up space from the inside, which is the most common cause in children. Swollen tonsils are worth ruling out before assuming anything else.

Your jaw sits back

A smaller or set-back lower jaw carries the tongue back with it. Plenty of people with perfectly normal weight and clear noses snore for this reason alone, and it is the one most often missed.

Throat and tongue exercises worth trying

This is called myofunctional therapy. The idea is to build tone in the muscles that go slack at night, so there is less collapse to begin with. It has been studied for snoring and mild sleep apnea, and it is free.

It is also slow. Give it eight to twelve weeks of daily practice before deciding whether it did anything, and understand that it helps some people and does nothing for others.

• Tongue pressPush the flat of your tongue up against the roof of your mouth and hold. Work up to three minutes a day.
• Tongue brushPress your tongue flat against the floor of your mouth and brush the top surface with a toothbrush. Five strokes, three times a day.
• Cheek hookHook a finger inside one cheek and pull outward gently while pulling the cheek muscle inward against it. Ten reps per side.
• Lip puckerPurse your lips tightly as though kissing, then move them left, right, and up. Ten reps.
• Balloon breathingInhale through your nose, then blow out through your mouth into a balloon without removing it from your lips. Five breaths, twice a day.
• Held swallowHold the tip of your tongue lightly between your teeth and swallow. Five reps.

If you want the version aimed specifically at airway collapse, we have a fuller set in exercises for sleep apnea.

The devices you will run into, and what each one is for

Worth being blunt about one of these: BiPAP is not a snoring solution and never was. It shows up in a lot of snoring articles because the words look similar. If you snore and you do not have a diagnosis, it is not the aisle you are shopping in.

You are probably not the one who noticed

Snorers rarely hear themselves. Occasionally someone wakes themselves up gasping, but that is the exception. Almost every person who ends up doing something about their snoring does it because somebody else finally said so.

Which is why this stops being a health footnote and turns into a household problem. Separate bedrooms. Shorter tempers. Someone lying awake doing arithmetic on how many hours they have left. If that is where you are, we wrote about it here: how to deal with a snoring partner.

When to stop self-treating and see a doctor

Exercises, positioning, and a mouthpiece are all reasonable things to try for ordinary snoring. None of them are the right answer if the airway is actually closing.

Book an appointment if the snoring comes with witnessed breathing pauses, gasping, choking, unexplained daytime exhaustion, morning headaches, or blood pressure that resists treatment. Our guide on how to raise sleep problems with your doctor covers what to bring and what to ask for. For the wider view of causes and options, see snoring causes and solutions.

Common questions

VitalSleep is an FDA-cleared Class II medical device intended to reduce snoring. It is not intended to diagnose or treat obstructive sleep apnea, central sleep apnea, or any other medical condition. Individual results may vary. This page is for general information and is not medical advice.