Snoring happens when relaxed tissues in your throat, tongue, and soft palate partially block your airway during sleep. As air squeezes through that narrowed space, the tissues vibrate and produce sound. The narrower the airway, the more forceful the airflow and the louder the snoring. The good news: most people can reduce or eliminate snoring with a combination of lifestyle changes, positioning strategies, and simple devices.
Why You Snore
As you transition from light to deep sleep, the muscles in your throat, tongue, and the roof of your mouth relax. In some people, those tissues sag enough to partially obstruct the airway. Several factors make this worse: carrying extra weight (which adds fatty tissue around the airway), having a naturally thick or low-hanging soft palate, enlarged tonsils or adenoids, or a longer-than-average uvula (the small tissue that dangles at the back of your throat). Alcohol and sedatives compound the problem by further relaxing those muscles, turning a quiet sleeper into a loud one.
Sleeping on your back makes snoring worse because gravity pulls the tongue and soft tissues backward into the airway. That’s why a bed partner might nudge you onto your side in the middle of the night and notice an immediate difference.
Lose Weight If You’re Carrying Extra
If your snoring started or worsened after gaining weight, this is the single most effective long-term fix. Fat deposits around the neck and throat physically compress the airway, and losing even a modest amount reverses that pressure. Research published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that losing 5 to 10% of body weight significantly improved sleep-disordered breathing. For a 200-pound person, that’s 10 to 20 pounds.
More dramatic results come with more weight loss. In one study, participants who lost around 12% of their body weight through diet and exercise saw major reductions in snoring frequency and loudness. Another case documented a person who lost 15% of their body weight and stopped snoring entirely. You don’t need to hit a target weight overnight. Even gradual, steady loss tends to produce noticeable improvements in snoring within a few months.
Change Your Sleep Position
Positional therapy, the formal term for staying off your back while you sleep, consistently reduces snoring and airway obstruction. A Cochrane review found that positional therapy reduced breathing disruptions by about 7 events per hour compared to sleeping without restrictions. While that’s not as powerful as a CPAP machine (which added roughly 6 more events of improvement beyond positional therapy alone), it’s a meaningful change for many snorers, and it costs nothing.
The simplest approach is a body pillow or a tennis ball sewn into the back of a sleep shirt, both of which discourage rolling onto your back. Commercial positional trainers, which are wearable devices that vibrate when you turn supine, also exist. Adherence can be a challenge with any method, so pick whatever feels least disruptive to your sleep. Elevating the head of your bed by a few inches (using a wedge pillow or bed risers) can also help by keeping gravity from pulling tissues straight back into the airway.
Cut Back on Alcohol Before Bed
Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant that relaxes the muscles controlling your airway, including the tongue muscle that keeps your airway open. A systematic review in Sleep Medicine Reviews confirmed that alcohol reduces the activity of this key muscle, which directly worsens snoring and can tip borderline cases into obstructive sleep apnea territory. If you drink, finish your last drink at least three to four hours before bed. Even moderate amounts of alcohol consumed close to bedtime can turn a mild snorer into someone who rattles the walls.
Try Mouth and Throat Exercises
This one surprises most people, but it works. Myofunctional therapy, essentially a workout routine for the muscles in your mouth and throat, strengthens the tissues that tend to collapse during sleep. The catch is consistency: you need about 10 to 15 minutes per day, two to three times daily, for roughly three months before you’ll notice a meaningful reduction in snoring.
The exercises are simple enough to do while driving or watching TV:
- Tongue slide: Place the tip of your tongue behind your top front teeth, then slowly slide it backward along the roof of your mouth. Repeat 5 to 10 times.
- Tongue stretch: Stick your tongue out as far as possible, trying to touch your chin while looking at the ceiling. Hold for 10 to 15 seconds. Repeat 5 times.
- Tongue push-up: Press your entire tongue flat against the roof of your mouth and hold for 10 seconds. Repeat 5 times.
- Cheek pulls: Hook a finger inside your cheek and gently pull it outward, then use your facial muscles to pull it back in. Do 10 repetitions on each side.
- Vowel repetition: Loudly and deliberately pronounce each vowel sound (A, E, I, O, U) 10 to 20 times in a row.
One study even found that playing a smartphone game designed around these exercises for 15 minutes a day was enough to improve snoring. Singing, particularly repeating individual sounds forcefully, works the same muscles and counts toward your daily practice.
Nasal Strips and Internal Dilators
Adhesive nasal strips (the kind you stick across the bridge of your nose) and small silicone internal dilators (which sit inside the nostrils) both work by physically widening the nasal passages. They’re most helpful if your snoring originates from nasal congestion or a naturally narrow nasal valve rather than from the collapse of throat tissues. If you breathe fine through your nose during the day and your snoring is deep and throaty, strips alone probably won’t solve the problem.
Some research shows that nasal strips can reduce snoring loudness and improve sleep quality for nasal-driven snorers, but the evidence base is still limited. They have no effect on obstructive sleep apnea. Think of them as a low-cost experiment: try a box for a week and see if your bed partner notices a difference.
Mandibular Advancement Devices
These are mouthpieces, similar to a sports mouth guard, that hold your lower jaw slightly forward while you sleep. By advancing the jaw, they pull the tongue base forward and open up the airway behind it. A retrospective study of 90 patients found that about 73% responded well, with average snoring intensity dropping from an 8 out of 10 to roughly a 3.
You can buy over-the-counter “boil and bite” versions for $30 to $100, or get a custom-fitted device from a dentist for several hundred dollars. Custom devices generally fit better and cause fewer problems. The most common side effects are excess saliva (about 9% of users), a foreign-body sensation in the mouth (8%), jaw joint discomfort (5%), and minor changes in how your bite feels in the morning (7%). Most of these are mild and tend to improve over the first few weeks of use.
Manage Your Bedroom Environment
Dry air irritates nasal and throat tissues, increasing congestion and making snoring worse. Keeping indoor humidity between 40% and 50% with a humidifier (or dehumidifier, depending on your climate) helps maintain comfortable, open airways. If allergies contribute to your nasal congestion, keeping the bedroom free of dust, washing bedding weekly in hot water, and using allergen-proof pillow covers can make a real difference, particularly during high-pollen seasons.
Know When Snoring Signals Something More
Not all snoring is harmless. Obstructive sleep apnea, a condition where the airway completely closes dozens or even hundreds of times per night, shares snoring as its most obvious symptom but carries serious cardiovascular risks. Clinicians use a screening tool called the STOP-BANG questionnaire to flag higher-risk individuals. You can score yourself at home:
- S: Do you snore loudly enough to be heard through a closed door?
- T: Do you often feel tired, fatigued, or sleepy during the day?
- O: Has anyone observed you stop breathing during sleep?
- P: Do you have or are you treated for high blood pressure?
- B: Is your BMI above 35?
- A: Are you 50 or older?
- N: Is your neck circumference greater than 40 cm (about 16 inches)?
- G: Are you male?
Each “yes” scores one point. A score of 3 or higher puts you at elevated risk for sleep apnea and warrants a sleep study. Even on just the first four questions, a score of 2 or more is considered high risk. If you regularly wake up with headaches, feel exhausted despite a full night’s sleep, or your partner has seen you gasp or stop breathing, pursue a formal evaluation. Sleep apnea responds well to treatment, but lifestyle fixes for simple snoring won’t adequately address it on their own.
Surgical Options
Surgery is typically a last resort after lifestyle changes, positional therapy, and oral devices have failed. The most common procedure, uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP), removes excess tissue from the throat to widen the airway. In one study, 58% of UPPP surgeries met the threshold for success, and only 8% of patients experienced a worsening of symptoms.
Laser-assisted procedures, which were once popular because they’re less invasive, have fallen out of favor. A study tracking laser surgery patients over time found that initial improvement in snoring (76% of patients reported benefit early on) deteriorated significantly, dropping to just 32% at later follow-up. Worse, 64% of patients said they were dissatisfied and wouldn’t do it again, and some actually saw their breathing worsen after the procedure. If surgery is on the table, a thorough evaluation by a sleep specialist who can identify exactly where your obstruction occurs will help determine which approach, if any, makes sense for your anatomy.