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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, pay Brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren vogal bomb here. Almost half of all adults snore.

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Speaker 1: Loud and persistent storing may be a symptom of sleep apnea,

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Speaker 1: a serious sleep condition that requires medical attention. But is

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Speaker 1: it true that most snoring problems can be fixed just

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Speaker 1: by sleeping on your side first? A quick snoring primer.

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Speaker 1: Snoring is the result of an obstruction of the breathing

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Speaker 1: pathways during sleep. As you drift off to sleep, your mouth, tongue,

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Speaker 1: and throat relax. The soft tissue in your throat can

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Speaker 1: relax to the point that it partially blocks your airway.

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Speaker 1: As air passes through this restricted space, it causes the

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Speaker 1: tissue to vibrate, producing detail tale rumble. The narrower that

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Speaker 1: your airway is, the more forceful the flow of air

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Speaker 1: will be, which increases the vibration of the tissue and

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Speaker 1: makes your snoring sound even louder. The root causes of

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Speaker 1: snoring vary from person to person. Obesity is a common

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Speaker 1: underlying reason for storing because at sus weight on the

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Speaker 1: neck and chest compresses breathing pathways. Other causes can include allergies,

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Speaker 1: they cause congestion, and inflammation that tighten airways in the

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Speaker 1: nose and throat, and drinking alcohol before sleep, which relaxes

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Speaker 1: the throat muscles. And some people are just born with

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Speaker 1: an extra thick soft palate or a low hanging nuvula

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Speaker 1: that obstructs airflow to the throat. So where does sleep

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Speaker 1: position come into all of this? Sleep experts agree that

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Speaker 1: sleeping on your back exacerbates snoring. That's because when you're asleep,

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Speaker 1: your tongue, soft palate, and throat muscles automatically relax, and

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Speaker 1: if you're sleeping on your back, those relaxed muscles will

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Speaker 1: sag downward and backward, increasing the odds of an obstructed airway.

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Speaker 1: Sleeping on your side is most effective on true tongue snorers,

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Speaker 1: where the chief cause of the obstruction is a relaxed

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Speaker 1: tongue blocking your airway, But turning on your side won't

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Speaker 1: necessarily solve the snoring problem if it's an allergy or

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Speaker 1: obesity issue. The trouble beside sleeping is a cure is

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Speaker 1: that unconscious people are terrible at following directions. If you

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Speaker 1: are partner has a hard time maintaining a side sleeping position,

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Speaker 1: you might try using pillows to prop them up, or

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Speaker 1: place a tennis ball under their shirt in the middle

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Speaker 1: of their back to remind them to turn over with

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Speaker 1: their permission, of course. Today's episode was written by Dave

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Speaker 1: Ruse and produced by Tyler Clang. To find brain stuff,

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Speaker 1: laptop cases and other brain stuff, check out our shop

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Speaker 1: at t public dot com slash brain stuff, and to

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Speaker 1: find more on this and lots of other RESTful topics,

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Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.