If you don’t snore but your partners or family members snore, apart from feeling annoyed, you may also feel unfair: why can’t they hear themselves snoring while the rest of the house can? Why don’t snorers wake themselves up?

Why Do Some People Snore Loudly During Sleep?

Snoring is the resulting sound of all the oral smooshy bits vibrating and slapping together as air forces its way through the obstruction when we breathe. Our mouths and throats are full of various soft, floppy bits, such as your uvula, tonsils, adenoids and other bits of tissue. For snorers, this relaxation is enough for the soft tissues in their mouths to flop into undesirable positions and partially block the flow of air as they breathe.

Snoring Is Loud But Why Don’t Snorers Wake Themselves Up?

1. Brains prioritize restfulness while we sleep

Our brains tend to filter out low-priority sounds and letting us snooze through unimportant background noise. For the offending snorer, the brain interprets soft snores as innocuous background noise that needs no further attention.

2. The difference between air-conduction and bone-conduction

For a going-off alarm or a car crash, those noises are heard by people through air-conduction while when a snorer is making snoring noise, he mainly feels it via bone-conduction. It’s less abrupt compared with other shocking noises.

3. Snorers do but they just can’t remember

Loud snorers can wake themselves up with their own log-sawing sounds, but only for a few seconds and they will fall asleep again. That’s why they don’t always remember what happened on the following morning. However, there are ways to help ease their snoring in the morning.

How to Have A Better Sleep with A Snorer Partner?

1. Wear earplugs

If the snoring from your partner or your roommate is really bothering you, you can put some foam or silicone earplugs in your ears.

2. Go to bed first

If ear plugs don’t help, discuss with them and go to bed first. Research shows that if you fall asleep first, the snoring may be less bothersome as your brain will filter out the low-priority sound as well.

3. Change your partner’s position

For some people, sleeping in the supine position — that is, lying on their backs — makes snoring worse. So help them to sleep on the sides.

4. Sleep in separate rooms

If none of them can solve your problem, you may want to discuss it with your partner and sleep in another room as the sound of snore can be really piercing.

Conclusion

Mild snoring is not a big deal for the snorers themselves but can be a big problem for the people close to them. So, try some of the tips above and hope you will have a better sleep.