Snoring gets dismissed as annoying, embarrassing, or just part of getting older. Many adults joke about it, tolerate it, or chase quick fixes for causes of snoring that promise quieter nights.
But when we slow down and look closely, snoring is rarely random. It is a sign of airway resistance, altered muscle tone, and compensations the body has learned over time.
When people search for the causes of snoring, they often encounter familiar explanations: weight, sleep position, allergies, alcohol, or nasal congestion. These factors absolutely matter. However, there is another layer that frequently goes unmentioned—tethered oral tissues, including tongue tie, lip tie, or a combination of both.
As a speech-language pathologist with over 30 years of experience specializing in adult myofunctional therapy, I see this missed connection daily.
Adults come to me after years of snoring, mouth breathing, fatigue, TMJ pain, or poor sleep quality—often after being told that “everything looks normal.” It isn’t that the professionals they consulted were careless. It’s that tethered oral tissues often sit outside the traditional lens used to evaluate snoring.
This article explores the causes of snoring from a broad medical perspective while highlighting why tongue tie and lip tie deserve far more attention in adult sleep conversations.
Understanding Snoring at Its Core
Snoring occurs when airflow becomes turbulent as it passes through the upper airway during sleep. When tissues relax, narrow, or collapse, air vibrates against soft structures such as the soft palate, tongue, or pharyngeal walls. That vibration is the sound we recognize as snoring.
The key issue is not the sound itself, though I’ve written an interesting article on the Sounds of Snoring you might like to check out. The issue is why the airway cannot stay open and stable during sleep.
Snoring exists on a spectrum. For some adults, it is positional and intermittent. For others, it becomes chronic, disruptive, and a warning sign of sleep-disordered breathing. Regardless of severity, snoring always reflects compromised airway mechanics.
Determining the root causes of compromised airway mechanics can lead to improved sleep for adults.
Let’s examine some of the more commonly thought of causes for snoring.
Commonly Recognized Causes of Snoring
Most adults are first introduced to the causes of snoring through Google searches on their phones. These explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete because they are often not the root cause of the snoring.
Weight and Body Composition
Increased tissue around the neck and throat can narrow the airway. This mechanical narrowing increases the likelihood of airway collapse during sleep. Weight can influence snoring, but it does not explain why many thin or athletic adults snore loudly.
In fact, sleep disturbances in otherwise healthy people occur quite often.
Interestingly, in their research article examining short and long-term consequences of sleep disruption, these authors found that obesity was a consequence of sleep disturbance.
Medic G, Wille M, Hemels ME. Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. Nat Sci Sleep. 2017 May 19;9:151-161. doi: 10.2147/NSS.S134864. PMID: 28579842; PMCID: PMC5449130.
Sleep Position
Back sleeping allows gravity to pull the tongue and soft tissues toward the airway. Side sleeping often reduces snoring, which is why positional advice is frequently given. However, position alone does not explain persistent snoring across all sleep postures.
Snoring partners around the world are familiar with the shake-them-awake-and-ask-them-to-rollover nighttime dance. But why isn’t the mouth remaining closed, no matter the sleeping position?
Nasal Congestion and Allergies
Chronic nasal obstruction encourages mouth breathing. Mouth breathing changes tongue posture, jaw position, and airway stability. While nasal issues contribute to snoring, they often coexist with deeper oral and muscular patterns.
If the nose is blocked, the only way to breathe is through the mouth, which inevitably increases the risk of snoring.
Here’s what I find interesting, though: persistent nasal congestion may be linked to tongue tie. This tether is holding the tongue down, preventing it from resting on the palate, where it helps regulate sinus pressure and nasal breathing.
So, are we looking at a cycle of treating nasal issues that just continue to relapse because the root cause of a tethered tissue has not even entered the conversation?
Alcohol and Sedatives
Alcohol relaxes muscles throughout the body, including those that stabilize the airway. This relaxation increases airway collapse. However, alcohol typically reveals an existing vulnerability rather than creating one from scratch.
Sure, reduce your alcohol use to help reduce snoring, good advice, but still not getting us to root causes that make you susceptible to snoring.
Age-Related Muscle Tone Changes
As adults age, muscle tone decreases, including in the tongue and airway. Reduced tone increases snoring risk, but again, this explanation fails to address why many adults snored long before aging became a factor.
Lifetime snoring, yes, even as a child, is often reported by those who have lived with tethered oral tissues. Tooth grinding is a common co-occurring sleep issue in children, along with snoring.
If you snored and ground your teeth as a child and tethers were overlooked, your adult sleep is surely suffering. The lifetime compensation your mouth has been making will be exacerbated by the natural decrease in muscle tone with age.
Causes of Snoring That Are Often Missed
Here is where the conversation needs to widen.
Many adults who snore have spent decades compensating for restricted oral structures. These restrictions affect tongue posture, lip seal, jaw position, and breathing patterns—especially during sleep.
When we examine how a tongue tie or lip tie affect the mouth influencing speech, chewing/swallowing and breathing it reveals clues as to how it may influence snoring.
Let’s take a closer look!
Tongue Tie and the Adult Airway
A tongue tie occurs when the frenulum, a small band of tissue under the tongue, is too short, thick, or tight, restricting the tongue’s natural range of motion.
You may have an anterior tie, anchoring the very tip of the tongue. Or a posterior tie, anchoring the mid-back of the tongue.
A tongue tie restricts the tongue’s ability to elevate, retract, and rest properly against the palate. When the tongue cannot assume a stable resting posture, it often falls backward during sleep.
Tongue-tied adults often do not realize that the posterior section of their tongue has never reached the palate.
They are unaware that the tongue resting low in the mouth is unhealthy. This is because most medical professionals do not consider tongue ties significant enough to assess.
But this backward movement of the tongue, rather than the elevated resting posture, works to narrow the airway. Over time, the body adapts by recruiting tension elsewhere—jaw clenching, neck tightening, or forward head posture. These adaptations may work for years until sleep exposes the weakness.
Forward head posture also lends itself to narrowing of the airway.
Tongue tie does not always present dramatically; in fact, it is often subtle. Many adults have posterior or submucosal restrictions that limit function and are not obvious on a quick visual exam.
Curious if you might have a tongue tie? Check out my home self-assessment and see for yourself!
Lip Tie and Mouth Breathing
Lip ties occur when the frenulum of the upper or lower lip is too thick, short, or tight, preventing harmonious lip movement during speech and feeding tasks.
A lip tie limits the ability to maintain an effortless lip seal. When lips cannot close comfortably at rest, mouth breathing becomes the default.
Mouth breathing during sleep destabilizes the airway. It alters tongue position, dries tissues, and increases vibration. Chronic mouth breathing is one of the most underestimated causes of snoring.
Wondering if lip tie could be a root cause of your mouth breathing? Check out my home self-assessment and see if this could be a possible hidden cause of your soring.
The Combination of Tongue Tie and Lip Tie
When tongue tie and lip tie coexist, the effects compound. The tongue cannot stabilize the airway, and the lips cannot support nasal breathing. The airway becomes vulnerable from multiple angles.
In my clinical experience, this combination often appears in adults with long-standing snoring that did not respond to typical interventions.
Mouth guards for tooth grinding are usually a big part of the picture. These only prevent tooth damage; they do not address the causes of snoring or grinding.
Additionally, this combination can be a root cause of TMJ issues and pain. This is yet another road often traveled down by adults with tethered tissues.
TMJ issues get blamed for snoring, and snoring gets blamed for TMJ issues. It just depends on which one showed up first and what medical professional you visited first.
The jaw often goes into overdrive to assist with speech, feeding, and breathing if the oral muscles cannot work harmoniously for those tasks. This overdrive can cause strain and repetitive-use injuries to the jaw.
Sadly, these issues are confabulated; no true root cause is ever sought, and the solutions center on mouth guards and splints that often make the situation worse.
Why Tethered Oral Tissues Are Overlooked as Causes of Snoring
Adults who seek help for snoring often consult well-meaning professionals who are trained to evaluate sleep from specific vantage points. These providers play important roles, yet most receive little formal training in the care of tethered oral tissues.
Primary Care Providers
Primary care physicians often screen for risk factors for sleep apnea and may recommend weight loss, positional changes, or referrals for sleep studies. Oral restrictions rarely enter the discussion.
ENTs (Ear, Nose, and Throat Physicians)
ENTs focus on nasal passages, tonsils, adenoids, and structural airway issues. If the nose appears clear and no obvious obstruction exists, patients are often told nothing is wrong—even when symptoms persist.
If nasal pathways are blocked, then recommendations are made to address these blockages. Once completed, if snoring persists, there is not much more to be offered.
Dentists and Dental Sleep Providers
Dentists may evaluate airway space, bruxism, or offer oral appliances. Some recognize tongue posture issues, but many lack specialized training in functional tongue and lip restrictions.
Therefore, they will not be able to suggest surgical release or refer to myofunctional therapy. Both of which can play important roles in improving airway space and reducing bruxism.
Sleep Specialists
Sleep studies measure breathing disruptions but do not explain why the airway collapses. Patients may receive diagnoses without insight into underlying oral contributors.
You already know you’re not sleeping well; the sleep study confirms this and provides some numbers to help measure severity. The next step after the sleep study is typically an appliance, such as C-PAP, if sleep apnea was found.
But if your snoring is not significant enough yet to cause sleep apnea, then insurance will not cover the machine, and you will be told to wait until it worsens.
Because tethered oral tissues live at the intersection of structure and function, they often fall through the cracks.
Each specialty uses its own lens of training, and unless they personally became interested in specializing in tethered oral tissues, they do not include it in their considerations.
This is one of the biggest complaints that patients in my office express. Why wouldn’t these medical professionals have at least considered it for them after years of dealing with issues related to poor sleep?
How Myofunctional Therapy Changes the Conversation
Myofunctional therapy addresses how the muscles of the tongue, lips, cheeks, and jaw function together to support breathing, swallowing, and sleep.
This therapy looks to identify any functional issues that you are suffering from, including snoring, and to assess and prescribe a treatment plan for your oral muscles.
For adults with tethered oral tissues, therapy focuses on:
- Improving tongue mobility and strength
- Establishing nasal breathing patterns
- Restoring functional rest posture
- Reducing compensatory tension
- Supporting airway stability during sleep
Myofunctional therapy does not replace medical care. Instead, it fills a critical gap by addressing function at the root of anatomy.
Once fascia strain is reduced and muscle function improves, the therapist will suggest a consultation with a preferred medical doctor to surgically release the tether. This is an important step in regulating the oral system.
Myofascial therapy continues after the surgical release and focuses on the inherent patterns required for breathing, speech, and feeding.
Many adults notice reductions in snoring as their tongue posture improves, lip seal strengthens, and breathing patterns normalize.
I like the Tongue Tie Life website for its comprehensive, organized list of preferred providers by location who treat oral ties.
This can be a great place to start your search for providers who are knowledgeable in the field of tethered oral tissues.
Causes of Snoring and the Myth of “Normal”
One of the most frustrating experiences adults describe is being told their snoring is “normal.” Normal does not mean optimal. It often means common.
Snoring that persists despite lifestyle changes deserves deeper evaluation. When tongue tie or lip tie contributes to airway instability, no amount of positional therapy or mouth taping will fully resolve the issue without addressing the restriction itself.
Never stop using a tool, such as a night guard, mouth tape, or C-PAP machine, until you’ve fully completed assessment, therapy, and recovery from oral ties.
But understanding that these tools may be addressing a red flag rather than a core root problem is key to knowing whether you’d benefit from further evaluation of your oral system.
Why Self-Diagnosis and Online Videos Fall Short In Identifying Causes of Snoring
In recent years, adults have turned to social media for solutions. While awareness has increased, treatment cannot rely on generic exercises or viral videos.
Tethered oral tissues require individualized assessment. Some adults need preparatory therapy before any release is considered. Others benefit from therapy alone. The sequence matters, and improper guidance can worsen symptoms.
Working with a speech-language pathologist trained in adult myofunctional therapy ensures that interventions match anatomy, history, and functional needs.
Re-framing the Causes of Snoring
Snoring is a red flag that indicates your oral cavity is not functioning properly. It reflects how poorly the airway functions when consciousness fades and compensatory mechanisms drop away.
When we broaden the lens to include tongue tie and lip tie, the causes of snoring make far more sense. This is especially true for adults who have tried everything else.
If you have lived with snoring for years yet never received answers that truly fit, it may be because the right questions were never asked.
Getting in front of preferred providers to fully assess your oral structures is preferable.
The gas lighting, and old mantras that tongue tie, and lip tie are fads should not be where the road ends for you.
At Lynn’s Tied Together Hub, I continue to educate adults on the connections between oral function, airway health, and whole-body wellness. Snoring is rarely isolated. From tongue to toes, every system is tied together—and when we finally listen, the body often tells a very clear story.
Education is key to self-advocacy, so check out my other articles on snoring at the BLOG.
Then, should you wish for a deeper dive into tongue ties and tethered oral tissues, look for my eBook on Amazon: Untangling the Ties: A Guide to Adult Tongue Tie and Tethered Oral Tissues.