How to Stop Snoring
Test side sleeping, less evening alcohol, a clear nose, weight loss, and throat exercises against your snoring, and know the sleep apnea signs that need a doctor.
You will end up with a short list of changes to test against your own snoring, the order to test them in, and a clear rule for when to stop testing and see a doctor. Snoring is common. In a 2020 genetic study published in Nature Communications of about 408,000 UK adults, 37 percent said a partner, relative, or friend had complained about their snoring, and men had more than twice the odds of women.
Snoring happens when the soft tissue in your throat relaxes during sleep and partially blocks your airway. Air squeezes through the narrowed opening, vibrating the tissue like a loose sail in the wind. Louder snoring does go with more obstruction on average, but only loosely, and the range for mild cases overlaps the range for severe ones. Volume alone cannot tell you whether you have sleep apnea. Step 8 covers the signs that can.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's patient page on snoring names four changes to encourage in everyone who snores: avoiding alcohol before bed, quitting tobacco, losing weight, and side sleeping. Steps 1, 2, and 4 cover those. The other steps cover a blocked nose, throat exercises, and mouthpieces. Read step 8 before you start, because if you have any of its warning signs, the appointment comes first.
A tennis ball and an old T-shirt, or a body pillow Saline nasal rinse or neti pot, with distilled or previously boiled water Nasal strips or internal nasal dilators (optional) A humidifier if dry indoor air leaves your nose stuffy (optional) A phone app that records snoring overnight (optional) A custom mandibular advancement device, prescribed by a sleep doctor and fitted by a dentist after the visit in step 8 (optional)
Switch to sleeping on your side
Sleeping on your back is the main positional trigger for snoring. When you lie face up, gravity pulls your tongue, soft palate, and the fatty tissue at the back of your throat downward, narrowing your airway. Roll onto your side. Either side works. If you keep drifting onto your back during the night, tape or sew a tennis ball into the back of an old T-shirt and wear it to bed. It makes lying on your back uncomfortable enough that you roll off it. Wedge pillows and positional belts worn around the waist or back do the same job, and the tennis ball is the cheapest version. A body pillow is another option. Hugging a full-length pillow keeps your body angled on its side. Judge any positional change over 2 weeks of nights, not one, because a drink, a cold, or a night spent on your back each change the result. A phone app that records snoring overnight, or a partner's report, gives you the comparison.
Good to know: Raising the head of the bed is a second positional option. In a 2017 before-and-after study published in Sleep and Breathing of 52 people with sleep apnea, 6-inch (15 cm) blocks under the legs at the head of the bed cut breathing interruptions from a median of 15.7 to 10.7 an hour. The study measured apnea, not the sound of snoring.
Cut bedtime alcohol, review sedatives with your doctor, and quit tobacco
Alcohol relaxes the muscles of your mouth and throat, which lets the soft tissue sag further into your airway. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine page linked in the introduction lists alcohol among the causes of snoring and tells snorers to avoid it before bedtime. The page gives no cut-off in hours. The nightcap is the drink to move, because the closer a drink is to bedtime, the more alcohol is still in your blood when you fall asleep. Have your last drink with dinner or earlier. Sedatives and sleeping pills belong on the same list. The same page says the throat muscles relax from alcohol or other respiratory depressants, the group that includes sedatives. Do not stop a prescribed medication on your own. If you take one regularly and snore, ask your doctor whether there is an alternative. Tobacco is the third item. The same page tells snorers to quit, and in the UK study from the introduction, snoring was more common the more often people smoked. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute says smoking can cause inflammation in the upper airway, which affects breathing.
Clear your nasal passages
A blocked nose makes you breathe through your mouth, and congestion from a cold or allergies is one of the causes of snoring on the American Academy of Sleep Medicine page. This step helps only if your nose is the narrow point. If you breathe freely through your nose at bedtime, skip it. Start with a saline rinse, and get the water right first. Use only distilled, sterile, or previously boiled and cooled water, never water straight from the tap. The organisms tap water can carry are harmless in your stomach and can cause serious infections in your nose. Then rinse before bed with a neti pot or squeeze bottle. The rinse flushes mucus and allergens out of your nasal passages. If allergies are behind the congestion, cut the dust in your bedroom. Wash pillowcases weekly and vacuum regularly. Nasal strips and dilators are the other tool. External strips such as Breathe Right strips pull the nostrils open from the outside, and internal dilators sit inside the nostril and hold it open. They act only on the nose and only while you wear them. FAQ 3 below covers what a trial found. If dry indoor air is what leaves your nose stuffy, use a saline spray before bed or run a humidifier in the bedroom. We could not find a trial that tested a humidifier against snoring.
Heads up: Do not use a decongestant nasal spray such as oxymetazoline for more than 3 days in a row. The label carries that limit and warns that frequent or prolonged use can make congestion come back or get worse. Saline sprays have no such limit.
Lose weight if your snoring came with weight gain
Not everyone who snores is overweight, and not everyone who is overweight snores. But if you started snoring after gaining weight, or if your snoring got worse as your weight went up, treat weight as one of your causes. Excess weight around the neck and throat presses on the airway from the outside. It is not only the neck, though. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's fact sheet on obesity and sleep apnea describes two ways weight loss helps. It reduces the fatty tissue in the throat and tongue, and losing abdominal fat increases the downward pull on the upper airway, which makes it less likely to collapse. For the size of the effect, a 4-year study following 690 adults found that a 10 percent weight loss predicted a 26 percent decrease in the apnea-hypopnea index, the primary measure of sleep-disordered breathing severity. The same study found the effect was stronger in reverse, with a 10 percent weight gain predicting a 32 percent increase. The study's authors concluded that even modest weight control is likely to help, so you do not need to reach a target weight before it counts. Those figures measure sleep-disordered breathing, not the sound of snoring, and they come from following people over time, not from a weight-loss trial. This is the slowest step, so start it alongside the others instead of after them.
Strengthen your throat with oropharyngeal exercises
Your tongue, soft palate, and throat walls are muscles, and a set of exercises for them has been tested against snoring. A randomized trial published in the journal CHEST assigned 39 adults with primary snoring or mild to moderate sleep apnea to 3 months of daily oropharyngeal exercises or to a comparison treatment. In the exercise group, snores per hour fell from 99.5 to 48.2 and the total power of snoring fell by nearly half. The comparison group did not change significantly. A systematic review and meta-analysis pooled nine studies and 211 patients, and among the 80 of them scored on a visual analog scale, snoring intensity fell by 51 percent. Those were before-and-after measurements without a control group, so treat the trial above as the stronger of the two. The trial's set, as a 2018 review of these exercises describes it, has five exercises. Do the whole set three times a day. Each session took about 8 minutes in the trial, and people in it also rinsed their nose with saline three times a day, the rinse from step 3. First, push the tip of your tongue against the front of the roof of your mouth and slide it backward. Repeat 20 times. Second, press your entire tongue up against the roof of your mouth. Repeat 20 times. Third, keep the tip of your tongue against the back of your lower front teeth and push the back of your tongue down toward the floor of your mouth. Repeat 20 times. Fourth, lift your soft palate and uvula by saying the vowel "A" in short bursts. Repeat 20 times. You can see the uvula lifting if you watch in a mirror. In the trial, people moved on after 3 to 5 weeks to lifting the palate without the sound and holding it for 5 seconds. Fifth, put a finger inside your cheek and squeeze the cheek muscle against it. Repeat 10 times on each side. At meals, chew on both sides of your mouth in turn and swallow with your tongue against the roof of your mouth. The trial measured its results after 3 months, so give the exercises that long before you judge them.
Good to know: If tongue slides sound boring, there is a randomized trial of didgeridoo playing, published in the BMJ in 2006, in 25 people with moderate sleep apnea. Over 4 months their daytime sleepiness and apnea index both improved compared with a waiting-list group, and their partners reported less disturbed sleep. The practice worked out at about 25 minutes a day, 6 days a week, so treat it as an instrument you take up rather than a trick.
Ask about a mandibular advancement device
A mandibular advancement device (MAD) is a mouthpiece you wear while sleeping. It holds your lower jaw slightly forward, which pulls the base of your tongue forward and opens up the airway behind it. These devices look like a sports mouth guard and are sometimes called snoring mouthpieces or oral appliances. Two things come before the device. The route starts with a sleep doctor, who checks for sleep apnea and prescribes the appliance, so if you have any of the warning signs in step 8, get the sleep study first. And if you have jaw joint (TMJ) problems, loose teeth, or other serious dental problems, tell the dentist before a device is made. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine jointly recommend oral appliances in two situations. One is snoring in adults who do not have sleep apnea. The other is sleep apnea in adults who cannot tolerate CPAP or would rather use something else. They also recommend a custom, adjustable appliance over a generic one. Their guideline gives no separate advice by severity band and says CPAP remains the first-line treatment for severe sleep apnea, so a mouthpiece is not a way around a CPAP prescription. A systematic review in Sleep Medicine Reviews found improvement across every group it examined, while noting how few studies have tested these devices on snoring by itself. Get it custom fitted. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's patient page on oral appliances says you must be custom fitted for an appliance for it to work properly, and that over-the-counter devices are not recommended as a treatment for snoring or sleep apnea. That rules out the boil-and-bite mouthpieces sold at pharmacies. A custom device is made by a dentist and costs far more. Pricing moves and dental coverage varies, so ask your own dentist and insurer rather than trusting a figure in a guide. Expect side effects at first. The same page lists excessive saliva, dry mouth, tooth and jaw discomfort, and temporary bite changes as frequent but minor, and says most patients take a few weeks to get used to the device. The review above reports jaw joint pain and excessive salivation as the most common side effects, and that both improved with time. Jaw pain that does not ease, or a bite that feels different, is what the guideline's follow-up visits with the dentist are for, so go back instead of waiting it out.
Keep regular sleep hours
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, including weekends, and get 7 to 9 hours of sleep. It matters here for a practical reason. One of the warning signs in step 8 is daytime sleepiness despite enough sleep, and you cannot read that sign while you are short on sleep. We could not find a trial that tested sleep habits against snoring itself, so do not expect this step to quiet the noise on its own. Our guide on how to sleep better covers the schedule, the bedroom, and the wind-down routine.
Know when to see a doctor
Snoring by itself is not a medical emergency. But snoring can be a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a condition where your airway narrows or closes again and again during sleep, reducing or stopping your breathing each time. OSA is linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes. A meta-analysis of 16 studies covering nearly 146,000 participants found that snoring is associated with a 46 percent increased risk of stroke. See a doctor if your snoring comes with any of these: gasping or choking sounds during sleep, pauses in breathing that someone else has noticed, daytime sleepiness despite enough hours of sleep, headaches, trouble concentrating during the day, or waking with a dry mouth. Sleep apnea is diagnosed with a sleep study, either overnight at a sleep lab or with a home sleep apnea test that your doctor arranges. If OSA is confirmed, the most effective treatment is a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine, which delivers a gentle stream of air through a mask to keep your airway open. If you have any of the warning signs above, make the appointment now, before you work through the other steps. If you have none of them and steps 1 to 3 have not helped after 2 weeks each, book a visit as well. That visit is also the route to the mouthpiece in step 6, because a sleep doctor prescribes it.
Heads up: Nobody can tell from the sound alone whether a snorer has obstructive sleep apnea. If your partner tells you that you stop breathing during the night, treat it as a medical symptom and get a sleep study.
Work through the changes in this order. Start with sleep position and evening alcohol, because they cost nothing, and judge each over 2 weeks of nights. Add nasal care if your nose is stuffy at bedtime. Start the throat exercises at the same time and give them the full 3 months the trial ran, because they run on a slower clock than everything else. Weight loss runs alongside all of it. If you cannot tell whether anything is working, use the recording or the partner's report from step 1, and compare runs of nights, not single nights. One quiet night does not mean a change worked, and one loud night does not mean it failed. If nothing has changed after those tests, or if your snoring comes with gasping, choking, pauses in breathing, or heavy daytime sleepiness, stop testing and see a doctor. Ask whether a sleep study or a home sleep apnea test fits your case. FAQ 4 below covers the home test, FAQ 3 nasal strips, FAQ 5 mouth taping, and FAQ 6 what snoring means for your health when you do not have sleep apnea.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
Snoring is the sound of air making the relaxed tissue at the back of your throat vibrate. The steps cover the causes you can change, which are back sleeping, alcohol, tobacco, congestion, and weight. Three you cannot change raise the odds as well. Snoring is more common in men, it runs in families, and it becomes more common with age, although men become less likely to snore after 70. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine puts habitual snoring at about 40 percent of adult men and 24 percent of adult women. The shape of your mouth, nose, and throat matters too, which is why a doctor looks inside your mouth and nose when snoring does not respond to the steps.
No source we read promises a permanent cure, and each fix lasts only as long as you keep it up. Weight is the clearest case. In the study from step 4, a 10 percent weight gain predicted a 32 percent rise in breathing interruptions, so the benefit goes if the weight comes back. Side sleeping, mouthpieces, and nasal strips work only on the nights you use them. The throat-exercise trial measured snoring after 3 months of daily practice, so its result is for people still doing the exercises. Surgery for structural causes does not always work, and snoring can come back afterward. Plan on managing snoring the way you would manage blood pressure, as an ongoing job.
They act on one cause, a blocked or narrow nose, and they are not aimed at snoring that starts in the throat. The trial in step 5 shows the limit. Its comparison group wore nasal dilator strips during sleep for 3 months, alongside breathing exercises, and their measured snoring did not change significantly. Those were adults with primary snoring or mild to moderate sleep apnea, not people picked for a stuffy nose. If your nose feels blocked at bedtime, wear strips for 2 weeks of nights and compare. If you breathe clearly through your nose during the day and still snore at night, skip them.
Yes, if a doctor orders it and you fit the criteria. A home sleep apnea test is equipment you wear for a night in your own bed that records your breathing and blood oxygen level. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says it suits people who are highly likely to have moderate to severe sleep apnea and have no other significant medical conditions. It is not for people with lung disease, neuromuscular disease, or congestive heart failure, or when the doctor suspects a different sleep disorder. A negative home test does not rule sleep apnea out. If your symptoms still fit, the next step is an overnight study in a sleep lab, which gives the most complete evaluation.
Taping your mouth shut is the popular way to do it, and the evidence does not support it. A 2025 systematic review of mouth taping found ten studies covering 213 people between them. Two reported a real improvement in apnea measures, the rest found no difference, and the reviewers concluded there is a potentially serious risk of harm, including asphyxiation, for anyone doing it with a blocked nose. Many of those studies had excluded people with nasal obstruction to begin with, so the evidence does not cover the very readers for whom it is riskiest. If your nose is congested, work through step 3 first, and do not tape.
It is linked to high blood pressure. A 2024 study in npj Digital Medicine tracked 12,287 people for about 6 months with a sensor under the mattress. People who snored for about 12 percent of the night had roughly 1.9 times the odds of uncontrolled high blood pressure of people who barely snored, after adjusting for sleep apnea, age, sex, and body mass index. The participants were users of a consumer sleep sensor and 88 percent were men, so the study shows a link in that group, not proof that snoring raises blood pressure. If you snore on most nights, check your blood pressure. Our guide on how to lower blood pressure covers monitoring it at home.
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