You may have heard your partner, or any other family member, producing vibrating sounds (snoring) while sleeping through the night and wondered what makes people produce such an annoying sound. Snoring can be defined as the sound produced by vibrating structures of the upper airway while breathing. Snoring occurs when inhalation is hindered, which could be due to cold or an anatomical abnormality in the throat or nostrils.
Now the question arises if snoring is a normal or is it an abnormal behavior. Most of the medical experts consider snoring absolutely normal as even healthy persons produce such a dreadful noise, caused by the vibration of relaxed tissues lining the upper airway, while sleeping. When we sleep, all our muscles in our body loosen up, which shrinks the muscle tone throughout the body and decreases the diameter of the airway to block the airflow partially or completely that causes turbulence or vibrating sound.
Due to this instability in breathing, the air flows with gusts and bursts down the airway and scatters in different directions, as it gets the momentum while flowing towards the lungs, and strikes the relaxed, floppy tissues lining the throat to produce vibration. This vibrating sound is called the snoring. Snoring only occurs during the sleep, for when we are awake; the throat muscles keep the airway wide open to move the air smoothly into the lungs.
Snoring is quite common among older people, for our body muscles gradually become loose as we grow old. Fat people too have a tendency to snoring, as accumulate fat makes tissues of the airway heavier and obstructs the airflow.
