Why does your own snoring usually not wake you up? Mine, [am told by those who hear it, can be especially loud.
Snoring is where a person makes a snorting or rattling noise when they breathe during sleep.
The noise comes from the soft palate and tissue in the mouth, nose or throat vibrating.
Some people snore infrequently and the sound they make isn't particularly loud, while others may snore every night, loud enough to be heard in the next room.
Healthcare professionals use grading systems to assess a person’s snoring. The higher the grade, the more severe the snoring is.
First, one snores most loudly when deeply asleep and hardest to arouse. We live in bodies so noisy they interfere with our reception of external information, and we are equipped to ignore our own noises such as breathing. We subconsciously subtract such noises from the signals we hear in order to deal with our world.
Our signal-filtering processes can have peculiar side effects, as anyone can tell when hearing a recording of their own voice. Not only is the sound unfamiliar, but even the accent. Sound cancellation enables us to sleep through our own snores, whereas a bedfellow’s snore or the merest rustle might arouse us. However, even our own snoring awakens us if a recording is played back or an inadvertent grunt breaks its rhythm in a way our ’cancellation software’ cannot neutralise.
But during the roughly 80 percent of the night that people are not in deep sleep, their snores can wake them up dozens of times; they just don't realize it. A big snort will typically wake a person for only a few seconds, not long enough to fully awaken or to remember it the next morning, says Clete Kushida, the president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. As a result, snorers remain oblivious of their interrupted sleep. And if the wife was lucky enough to doze off at the same time as the snorer did, she's probably oblivious to the interruptions as well. But ignorance isn't bliss: This type of fragmented sleep can significantly increase sleepiness during the day.
Even without waking us, severe snoring commonly interferes with sleep quality because of noise and airway interference. Research shows that many snorers, not only adults, forfeit healthily deep sleep. Some decades ago, staff at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, showed that children suffering from snoring, or sleep apnoea, benefited from positive-pressure air supplies that held the respiratory passages open.
Treatments for Snoring
Treatment can improve snoring in some cases, but a complete cure isn't always possible.
Lifestyle changes, such as losing weight, are usually recommended first.
Anti-snoring devices, such as mouth guards or nasal strips, may help prevent snoring.
Surgery may be an option if anti-snoring devices don't help. This often involves removing the soft tissue that causes snoring, or preventing the tissue from vibrating by causing it to tighten.
Surgery for snoring is usually regarded as a treatment of last resort. It's important to be aware that surgery can often have a limited effect that doesn't last longer than one or two years. It can also cause unpleasant side effects or complications.