For some rea­son, peo­ple al­ways laugh when I ask if their child snores.  “Of course he does; he like his fa­ther” is the com­mon an­swer. 

Snor­ing is so com­mon that it is con­sid­ered nor­mal, harm­less. It is not!  Forty-five per cent of adults snore at least oc­ca­sion­al­ly, and 25 per cent are ha­bit­u­al snor­ers.

Prob­lem snor­ing is more fre­quent in males and over­weight per­sons, and it usu­al­ly grows worse with age. It is not un­known in chil­dren. About one in four chil­dren snore.  Loud snor­ing (heard from the bed­room door) oc­curs in about one in ten chil­dren. 

Loud snor­ing is as­so­ci­at­ed with in­creased bed­time prob­lems (fears and strug­gles), in­creased need for com­fort­ing ac­tiv­i­ties to fall asleep, ir­ri­tat­ing things like sleep talk­ing, teeth grind­ing, night ter­rors, in­creased day­time sleepi­ness and ir­ri­tabil­i­ty, and be­hav­iour­al dis­tur­bances which can be mis­di­ag­nosed as AD­HD.

The same sort of thing can hap­pen to adults. Snor­ing oc­curs when there is an ob­struc­tion to the free flow of air through the pas­sages at the back of the mouth and nose.

This area is the col­lapsi­ble part of the air­way where the tongue and up­per throat meet the soft roof of the mouth and the uvu­la, the thing that looks like a small fin­ger hang­ing down from the top of your mouth. 

Snor­ing oc­curs when these struc­tures strike each oth­er and vi­brate dur­ing breath­ing. Peo­ple who snore may suf­fer from de­for­mi­ties of the nose or nasal sep­tum, such as a de­vi­at­ed sep­tum (a de­for­mi­ty of the wall that sep­a­rates one nos­tril from the oth­er), which can cause an ob­struc­tion.  Or they may have poor mus­cle tone in the tongue and throat. When mus­cles are too re­laxed, ei­ther from al­co­hol or drugs that cause sleepi­ness, the tongue falls back­wards in­to the air­way, or the throat mus­cles draw in from the sides in­to the air­way, caus­ing ob­struc­tion and noise, which we call snor­ing.

Ex­ces­sive bulk­i­ness of the tis­sue in the throat, as in chil­dren with large ton­sils and ade­noids, caus­es snor­ing. Over­weight chil­dren of­ten have bulky neck tis­sue. Cysts or tu­mours can al­so cause bulk, but they are rare.  A child may have a long soft palate. This nar­rows the open­ing from the nose in­to the throat. As the soft palate dan­gles, it acts as a noisy flut­ter valve dur­ing re­laxed breath­ing.

A long uvu­la makes mat­ters even worse.

Fi­nal­ly, ob­struct­ed nasal air­ways. A stuffy or blocked nose re­quires ex­tra ef­fort to pull air through it. This cre­ates an ex­ag­ger­at­ed vac­u­um in the throat, pulls to­geth­er the flop­py tis­sues of the throat, and snor­ing re­sults.

So, snor­ing of­ten oc­curs dur­ing the si­nus sea­son or with a cold or si­nus in­fec­tion.  Over the last ten years, the in­crease in pol­lu­tion in T&T, from de­for­esta­tion, an in­crease in mo­tor­car ex­haust and Sa­hara dust re­lat­ed to cli­mate change, has caused an in­crease in con­gest­ed noses and sub­se­quent­ly in snor­ing in both chil­dren and adults.

Snor­ing is se­ri­ous when it makes the snor­er an ob­ject of ridicule and caus­es oth­ers sleep­less nights and re­sent­ful­ness. Re­searchers at the Sleep Dis­or­ders Cen­tre in Aves­ta, Swe­den, sur­veyed 500 women liv­ing with men who were re­ferred to a sleep dis­or­ders cen­tre be­cause of snor­ing.

They found more than ten per cent of these women were ex­haust­ed through­out the day be­cause they couldn’t get enough sleep.  Af­fect­ed women al­so suf­fered a lev­el of frus­tra­tion be­cause the prob­lem of liv­ing with a snor­er is some­times not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly by oth­ers.

It’s al­so a med­ical prob­lem be­cause it dis­turbs sleep­ing pat­terns and de­prives the snor­er of ap­pro­pri­ate rest. When snor­ing is se­vere, it can cause ob­struc­tive sleep ap­nea. Ap­nea is a pause in breath­ing and hap­pens when the mus­cles in the throat col­lapse com­plete­ly (ob­struc­tion) in­stead of just nar­row­ing, block­ing air­flow in­to the lungs.  

Se­ri­ous episodes last more than ten sec­onds each. 

Ap­nea pa­tients may ex­pe­ri­ence dozens of such events each night, re­duc­ing blood oxy­gen lev­els and caus­ing the heart to pump hard­er.  Af­ter many years, el­e­vat­ed blood pres­sure and heart en­large­ment may oc­cur. The im­me­di­ate ef­fect of sleep ap­nea is that the snor­er must sleep light­ly and keep his mus­cles tense in or­der to keep air­flow to the lungs. 

If the snor­er is a child, he may be sleepy or grumpy dur­ing the day, which makes school a prob­lem. In adults, poor sleep im­pairs job per­for­mance, dri­ving and equip­ment man­age­ment. Snor­ing means ob­struct­ed breath­ing, and ob­struc­tion can be se­ri­ous. It’s not fun­ny. 

If your child snores loud­ly, get him checked out soon.