Snoring happens when relaxed throat tissues partially block your airway during sleep, and the narrower the passage gets, the louder the vibration. About 40% of adult men and 24% of adult women snore regularly. The good news: most people can reduce or eliminate snoring with a combination of lifestyle changes, sleep adjustments, and, when needed, devices or medical treatment.
Why You Snore in the First Place
As you shift from light sleep into deeper stages, the muscles in your tongue, throat, and soft palate relax. These softened tissues sag inward, narrowing the space air has to pass through. The tighter that space, the faster air has to move, and faster airflow makes the loose tissue vibrate more aggressively. That vibration is the sound of snoring.
Several things make the airway even narrower. Excess weight adds tissue to the back of the throat. A naturally thick or low-hanging soft palate takes up more room. An elongated uvula (the small flap that hangs at the back of your mouth) can obstruct airflow on its own. Nasal congestion from allergies or a deviated septum forces you to breathe through your mouth, which pulls more air past those throat tissues. And gravity plays a direct role: lying on your back lets everything fall toward the back of your throat, which is why back-sleeping tends to produce the loudest snoring.
Lose Weight If You’re Carrying Extra
If your snoring started or worsened after weight gain, this is the single most effective long-term fix. Fat deposits around the neck and throat physically compress the airway, and reducing them opens it back up. Studies have shown that losing roughly 13 to 15% of body fat can cut the severity of snoring and related breathing disruptions in half. For someone weighing 200 pounds, that’s about 26 to 30 pounds. Even smaller losses help, since every bit of tissue removed from around the airway gives air more room to flow quietly.
Change Your Sleep Position
Switching from your back to your side is one of the simplest changes you can make tonight. In people whose snoring or sleep apnea is position-dependent, side sleeping reduces breathing interruptions by an average of about seven events per hour. That’s a meaningful drop for most snorers.
The challenge is staying on your side all night. A few approaches work well. The classic “tennis ball method” involves taping or sewing a tennis ball to the back of your pajama top so rolling onto your back becomes uncomfortable. Wedge pillows or body pillows can also keep you angled to one side. Some newer wearable devices vibrate gently when they detect you’ve rolled onto your back, nudging you to shift without fully waking you. Elevating the head of your bed by a few inches can also reduce the gravitational pull on throat tissues, even if you do end up on your back.
Avoid Alcohol Before Bed
Alcohol is a sedative that relaxes throat muscles well beyond their normal sleep state, making it significantly more likely that loose tissue will collapse into the airway. Even people who don’t normally snore can start after a few drinks. If you do drink, finishing your last drink at least three to four hours before bed gives your body time to metabolize the alcohol and restore some muscle tone before you fall asleep. Sedating medications like certain antihistamines and sleep aids can have a similar effect, so it’s worth noting whether snoring worsens on nights you take them.
Try Mouth and Throat Exercises
Myofunctional therapy is a fancy name for simple exercises that strengthen the muscles keeping your airway open. Think of it as physical therapy for your throat. The logic is straightforward: stronger muscles resist collapse better during sleep.
A few exercises to practice daily:
- Tongue press: Push the tip of your tongue firmly against the roof of your mouth and hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Repeat five times, gradually increasing the hold duration over weeks.
- Lip purse: Pucker your lips tightly, as if whistling, and hold for 10 seconds. Relax and repeat.
- Cheek resistance: Hook a finger inside one cheek and pull outward while contracting your cheek muscle inward against the finger. Repeat on both sides.
- Jaw slides: Open your mouth wide, then move your jaw side to side. Adjust the opening slightly and repeat at several different widths.
These exercises need consistency to work. Most people practice for about 10 minutes a day and begin noticing improvement after several weeks.
What About Nasal Strips?
External nasal strips (like Breathe Right) use a spring-loaded adhesive band to physically widen your nostrils, reducing the resistance you feel when breathing in. They do open the nasal passages, and some people feel subjective relief. But the research is disappointing: when analyzed across multiple studies, reductions in snoring have been small, and nasal strips haven’t consistently outperformed a placebo. The manufacturer’s own 2019 study found their strips didn’t significantly improve sleep quality or nasal congestion compared to a fake strip. If nasal congestion is your main issue, treating the congestion directly with saline rinses or allergy management tends to work better than a strip alone.
Mandibular Advancement Devices
These are mouthpieces that hold your lower jaw slightly forward while you sleep, pulling the tongue and surrounding tissue away from the back of the throat. They’re one of the most effective non-surgical options available. In one long-term study, 93% of users reported at least a 50% improvement in snoring. Objective measurements backed this up: snorers went from a median of 193 snores per hour down to 20, and total snoring time dropped from over 13 minutes per hour to under one minute.
You can buy over-the-counter “boil and bite” versions for relatively low cost, which let you test whether the approach works for you. Custom-fitted devices from a dentist cost more but tend to be more comfortable and effective for long-term use. Common side effects include jaw soreness, excess saliva, and mild tooth discomfort, which usually fade after the first few weeks of use.
When Snoring Signals Something Bigger
Not all snoring is harmless. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) occurs when the airway doesn’t just narrow but repeatedly closes completely, cutting off breathing for seconds at a time. Doctors measure this with a number called the apnea-hypopnea index, which counts how many times per hour your breathing stops or becomes dangerously shallow. Fewer than five events per hour is normal. Five to 15 is mild sleep apnea, 15 to 30 is moderate, and 30 or more is severe.
Signs that your snoring may be OSA include gasping or choking during sleep (often noticed by a bed partner), waking up with a headache or dry mouth, and feeling exhausted during the day despite getting enough hours in bed. A sleep study, which can now often be done at home with a portable monitor, is the standard way to find out. If you do have OSA, treatments like CPAP (a mask that delivers gentle air pressure to keep the airway open) or a mandibular device can dramatically improve both sleep quality and long-term health.
Surgical Options
Surgery is typically a last resort after lifestyle changes and devices haven’t worked. Several procedures aim to remove or tighten the excess tissue in the soft palate, uvula, or throat that causes vibration. Radiofrequency tissue reduction uses heat to shrink tissue and can be done in an office with local anesthesia and mild post-procedure discomfort. Laser-assisted procedures reshape the palate but involve more pain and often require multiple sessions. Uvulectomy, the removal of the uvula, can also be done in-office but comes with a week or more of significant soreness.
The consistent finding across these procedures is that their effectiveness decreases over time. Tissue can regrow or re-soften, and many people need repeat treatments after a few years. Some patients also report a lasting sensation of dryness or excess mucus at the back of the throat. These procedures work best for mild cases where the obstruction is clearly at the palate level, and they’re rarely a permanent cure on their own without the lifestyle changes that address the underlying causes.