Sleep is the time to recover from daily activities and recharge. However, about half of today’s population experience sleep distraction because of a common reason – snoring. Since this troublesome problem can be a real nuisance to you or your partner, let’s get to the bottom of various phases of sleep and find out what sleep stage causes snoring and at what stage of sleep does snoring occur.
Sleep stage and snoring relation
Snoring is the result of narrowed or obstructed airflow during sleep. All the muscles of the airway relax so the passages narrow. When we breathe the airflow moves through these passages, collapses in a throat, which causes the vibrations that we all know as snoring. Depending on the sleep stage, snoring has different chances to occur. It’s necessary to be aware of the all sleep stages you pass and in which the risk of snoring is higher.
What stage of sleep do you snore?
To get to know at what stage of sleep do you snore, you have to get familiar with these 5 phases of sleep and what each of them stands for:
- Light stage sleep, is one of the shortest phases. In this stage, your mind and body begin to slow down, causing you to feel drowsy and relaxed.
- The second is all about decreasing muscle activities and preparation for deep sleep. This is where the difficulties might arise. Your tongue and other parts of the body relax and collapse into your throat making it harder to breathe.
- During the third and fourth stage you enter deep sleep. In these stages, your body produces growth hormones, regulates immune system function, and develops muscle tissue. We should avoid sleep deprivation at these stages because the body needs its time to recover. Answering at what stage of sleep do you snore, it mainly happens during these stages.
- The last REM is the somewhat mysterious phase of our sleep cycle. During this stage, your body is sleeping, but your brain is very alert. That’s where most of our vivid dreams occur.
What sleep stage does snoring occur?
The question at what sleep stage does snoring occur most often has a clear answer. It was found that most people begin to snore during the second stage since that’s where the person is more relaxed than usual.
Because of the extra hard work to get enough oxygen, snoring exacerbates your night cycle and doesn’t let you move on to the next stage. Lack of energy and drowsiness are the consequences because snoring makes the whole sleep process much longer than it’s supposed to be.
Snoring may occur in other stages of sleep too. During the third and fourth stages of sleep, snoring occurs as well. During these phases you are at the peak of calmness, that’s why your tongue can’t always be controlled, causing the difficulties. It becomes much more critical if you snore at the REM stage. At this stage, oxygen can be stolen from the other parts of the body. A good way to prevent snoring is using the anti-snoring app, like Goodsomnia Lab. It gathers the statistics of your sleep, detects and analyzes snoring sounds and informs you when you started snoring. It’s a personal sleep assistant that just suits your pocket.
Finding out the cause of your snoring is good to prevent emotional and physical footage. We should all let ourselves enjoy one of the most pleasurable parts of the night routine.
