Video: Causes of Snoring

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Snoring is caused by the reverberation of soft tissues in the back of the throat that happen to obstruct the airway. Learn how severe snoring can lead to sleep apnea, which is a complete obstruction of the airways, with health information from a physician's assistant in this free video on medical conditions.

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Video Transcript

Snoring is actually reverberation of soft tissues in the back of one's throat, that occur as you're trying to breathe. This most often occurs when one is sleeping, because when you fall asleep, the soft tissues in the back of the throat and the tongue relax, closing off the airway in your throat. This can result in complete airway obstruction,which is apnea. A lot of people have what we refer to as sleep apnea, because it does occur when they are asleep, and the soft tissues have relaxed, obstructing the airway passage. In people who are unconscious, if you hear them snoring, that means that their head and neck need to be realigned, to allow more openness of the airway, so they can breathe easier. There are other techniques to avoid the soft tissues relaxing and closing off airways, such as continuous air pressure machines, or C-Pap, that force air into the airway, to keep soft tissues pressed out of the way, due to pressure. There also are splints that otherwise you can use, that are inserted in the throat and nasal passages to prevent this, but snoring is basically the sound of a partially obstructed airway, and when the airway is completely obstructed, there's no breathing and no air moving, therefore no snoring.

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Causes of Snoring

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