Snoring happens because when you breathe, the soft tissues of your neck can relax while you're sleeping and when they relax, they can narrow your breathing passage or your airway. When it gets narrowed and then you try to draw in air, as you draw in air, it makes the tissue vibrate and then gives you kind of a vibratory noise and that noise is the snoring.
Anything that narrows the breathing passage is going to cause you to snore, so people that have big tonsils, or people that maybe have a deviated septum or if you have chronic sinus problems and you have a lot of nasal congestion, which can cause it. If you're obese and you have fatty tissue in the neck, that can block the air passage. They also say that drinking alcohol can relax the throat muscles and that can even close up, so those are some of the different things that can cause you to snore.
If you are obese, we would have you lose weight and avoid alcohol. If a person is having a nasal congestion, a lot of the times they have those little nasal strips that you can put on that are adhesive strips that actually kind of open up the nose and improve your ability to breathe. Those are just some of the different things, but since we said that it has to do with the air passage getting blocked, if we can just get the person not to sleep on their back, because their tongue relaxes when you go to sleep and so if you sleep on your side, then you are less likely to snore.
