As someone who makes choking, dying-hog sounds in my sleep thanks to sleep apnea, I am especially interested in the mechanics of snoring. What is it about my throat, nasal passages, tonsils, and tongue, and their interactions with one another, that makes it sound like I’m trying to crank-start an old lawnmower while I’m supposed to be resting? A team from Sweden, publishing its findings in Physics of Fluids, may have an answer.
Researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology built a 3D computer model of the upper airway to simulate what happens during ordinary, non-apneic snoring. The model included the soft palate and uvula and, crucially, allowed airflow and tissue movement to interact with each other rather than simulating the throat as a rigid system of independent parts
Air moves through the airway, pushes against the soft palate, causing the tissue to vibrate. The vibration alters airflow, pushing the palate again, creating a feedback loop of rattling that we call snoring.
Researchers say that essentially all of the sound of a snore comes from this interaction between airflow and vibrating tissue. The model was able to produce sound levels and frequencies similar to the ones measured in actual snorers.
Understanding what makes a snore noise can help improve treatment. Instead of just trying to open the airway, researchers could potentially find some way to manipulate the soft palate itself by changing its stiffness or reducing the aerodynamic forces that make it vibrate.
The model is more of an idealized vision of a human throat, minus a lot of the messy complexities of an actual human throat and how it would interact with the nose or lungs. And it didn’t simulate sleep apnea, a much more severe, more serious version of snoring in which the airway is so thoroughly obstructed that the sleeper is essentially choking in the night. But it is nice to finally know what’s happening when someone sounds like they’re kickstarting a motorcycle in their sleep.
The post Scientists Finally Solved the Mystery of Why You Sound Like a Chainsaw in Your Sleep appeared first on VICE.
