In almost every family there is a person who snores regularly at night. There can be several reasons for the appearance of unwanted sounds, and any of them can be effectively combated.
Causes of Snoring
During sleep, the soft palate and tongue relax. If a person breathes through his mouth at that moment, then the passing air causes the tissues of the larynx and pharynx to vibrate. The vibrations produced and give rise to sound.
Other causes of snoring include nasal congestion or an uncomfortable head position on a pillow. Then a person just needs to clear the sinuses or choose a comfortable position.
Interesting fact: Snoring can be of any volume. There have been cases when a person made sounds of 112 dB. For comparison, the plane takes off with a noise of 130-140 dB.
Sometimes snoring helps diagnose certain diseases. If before a person did not make sounds during sleep, and then suddenly began to snore every night, should see a doctor. This may be one of the symptoms of a cardiovascular disease or respiratory problems.
There is a stereotype that mostly adult men snore, but this is not so. The problem is often found in women and children.
Types of sleep
In order for the body to rest after physical and mental stress, a person needs to sleep. In this state, the body reacts poorly to the environment, the processes in it are slowed down.This allows you to accumulate energy for further activities.
From a scientific point of view, sleep is divided into two stages: slow and fast. The latter begins 15-20 minutes before the final awakening. During it, the activity of the body increases, the eyes under the eyelids move, the person gradually begins to hear the noise surrounding him. In fact, with a quick sleep he wakes up smoothly.
Slow sleep has a more complex structure and consists of four stages.
The body falls asleep, the pulse and temperature decrease. During this period, a person begins to doze and can see short dreams. At the same time, he realizes that he is lying on the bed and trying to sleep. It is easy to wake him up.
In the second stage, the activity of the body continues to decline, it is already harder to wake a person. He already ceases to realize that he is lying on the bed, and begins to see full dreams. Almost no different from the second, but a person falls into an even deeper sleep. The last stage of slow sleep, during which it is very difficult to wake the sleeping person. It is at this stage that sleepwalking can occur.
In time, the steps in total take approximately 100 minutes. Thus, to go through all the cycles of slow and fast sleep, a person needs about 2 hours. After that, they begin anew, but with each subsequent lap, the time of REM sleep increases. Because of this, the longer a person sleeps, the more likely they are to wake up.
Why doesn't a person wake up during snoring?
Already at the first stage of slow sleep, a person weakly reacts to the environment.Brain activity ceases to decline, and the body reacts only to sharp and unexpected sounds from the outside. If a person snores regularly, his brain begins to perceive these sounds as a natural environment and does not wake up. For example, a similar phenomenon occurs with people living near the railway. Hearing the sound of wheels during sleep is a common thing for them, and the brain does not see anything unusual in this.
A person does not wake up from his own snoring, because the brain perceives it as a natural noise. When a person makes sounds during sleep, the body does not react to them in any way, since they are not considered an unexpected factor. Moreover, if he hears snoring every night, he may wake up due to his absence, as he may consider this a violation of comfort.
