How to Stop Snoring: Causes, Remedies, and warning signs of Sleep Apnea

Snoring is extremely common, which is not the same as harmless. It disturbs your partner, creates tension at home, and leaves everybody in the bedroom exhausted.

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Sometimes snoring is simply the sound of air moving through a narrowed airway. Sometimes it is a warning sign of obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing repeatedly slows or stops during sleep.

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I should say something here that I have been saying for years, usually to other doctors. Most sleep medicine does not treat snoring and does not care much about it. The field looks at the apnea-hypopnea index, and if the number comes back low, the patient is sent home. Ear, nose and throat surgeons are the exception, and I trained as one before I trained in sleep medicine. Snoring is a symptom. It means your airway is narrow enough for tissue to vibrate, and it is worth understanding regardless of what any index says.

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The most effective way to stop snoring depends on what is causing it.

Why Do People Snore?

When you fall asleep, the muscles in your tongue, throat, and soft palate relax. If the airway narrows, the passing air makes the surrounding tissues vibrate, and that vibration is the sound you hear.

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Common factors include:

• Sleeping on your back
• Nasal congestion
• Allergies or a deviated septum
• Alcohol or sedating medication
• Excess weight around the neck
• Smoking
• Enlarged tonsils
• Jaw or airway anatomy
• Sleep deprivation
• Obstructive sleep apnea

More than one factor is usually involved, which is why a remedy that transforms your neighbor's sleep may do nothing at all for you.

Lifestyle Changes That May Reduce Snoring

For mild or occasional snoring, several practical changes are worth trying.

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Change Your Sleeping Position

Snoring is often worse on your back, because gravity lets the tongue and soft tissues fall toward the airway. Side sleeping reduces snoring for a lot of people. Body pillows, positional trainers, or wearable position devices help you stay on your side through the night.

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Avoid Alcohol Near Bedtime

Alcohol relaxes the muscles that hold your upper airway open, which makes snoring and obstructive breathing worse. Cutting back, especially in the hours before sleep, improves nighttime breathing for most patients who try it.

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Address Nasal Congestion

Saline rinses, allergy treatment, nasal strips, or other clinician-recommended therapies improve airflow when a blocked nose is part of the problem.

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I would put more weight on this one than most guides do. In my surgical years I lost count of the patients whose snoring, and whose failed CPAP trials, traced back to a nose that had not moved air properly in a decade. Nobody had ever looked. Decongestant medications and sprays are not appropriate for everyone and should not be used long-term without medical guidance.

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Maintain a Healthy Weight

Weight is not the only cause of snoring, and thin people can absolutely have sleep apnea. Excess tissue around the neck and airway does narrow the breathing passage during sleep.

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When medically appropriate, gradual weight loss reduces snoring and improves obstructive sleep apnea. I will add the caveat I give patients on weight-loss medication: most people plateau, and the apnea often improves without disappearing. If you take GLP-1s like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro, you should still consider sleep apnea treatment.

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Stop Smoking

Smoking irritates and inflames the upper airway. Quitting reduces the swelling, and the benefits to your heart and lungs need no defense from me.

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Get Enough Sleep

Sleep deprivation deepens muscle relaxation once you finally fall asleep, which can make snoring worse. A consistent sleep schedule helps.

Do Over-the-Counter Snoring Remedies Work?

Whether an anti-snoring product works depends entirely on whether it addresses your actual cause. Nasal strips help when nasal resistance is the problem, and they do nothing to stop the throat from collapsing. Pillows and position devices help positional snoring. Mouth sprays, rings, clips, and assorted supplements mostly lack good evidence.

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Be especially careful with generic boil-and-bite mouthguards. A poorly fitted device is uncomfortable, can move your teeth or change your bite over time, and often fails to position the jaw where it needs to be. Talk to your dentist or doctor before trying one.

Custom Oral Appliances

A custom oral appliance is a small device worn in the mouth during sleep. It gently advances and stabilizes the lower jaw, helping keep the tongue and surrounding tissues out of the airway.

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For appropriate patients, oral appliance therapy treats primary snoring and certain cases of obstructive sleep apnea. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine recommend custom, adjustable appliances rather than the non-custom kind, and recommend that a sleep physician prescribe them and a qualified dentist fit them.

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Modern appliances are custom-fitted, discreet, quiet, and portable. That reassures a lot of people who have been avoiding evaluation because they assume any diagnosis ends with a large machine and a mask on their face. It does not, and in our practice roughly half of treated patients end up with an appliance instead.

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A medical sleep evaluation still comes first. Silencing the noise without checking for apnea hides the symptom and leaves the breathing disorder in place, and that is the one outcome I genuinely worry about. If you are young, healthy, take no medications and only snore, the risk of skipping a test is low. If you have high blood pressure, heart disease, or some years on you, do not take the chance.

CPAP Therapy

CPAP delivers air through a mask at enough pressure to hold the airway open. It is one of the most effective treatments we have for obstructive sleep apnea.

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Different masks and comfort settings exist, so patients who struggled with CPAP years ago often do much better with current equipment, a proper refitting, and someone paying attention. A bad first experience with CPAP in 2015 tells you very little about what is possible now.

When Is Snoring a Sign of Sleep Apnea?

Snoring deserves medical attention when it comes with:

• Pauses in breathing
• Gasping or choking
• Loud snorts after periods of silence
• Excessive daytime sleepiness
• Morning headaches
• Difficulty concentrating
• High blood pressure
• Waking with a dry mouth
• Frequent nighttime urination
• Unrefreshing sleep

Snoring on its own cannot tell you whether you have sleep apnea. It also works the other way: you can have significant sleep apnea and barely snore at all.

How Snoring Is Evaluated

A sleep specialist will go through your symptoms, medical history, medications, sleep habits, and risk factors. If sleep apnea looks likely, the next step is usually a sleep study.

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Many adults can complete a home sleep apnea test in their own bed. The device records breathing and related signals that let a qualified provider identify obstructive events. An in-lab sleep test is the better choice for people with complex medical histories or possible non-obstructive sleep disorders, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says the same.

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If your smart ring or watch has been telling you something looks wrong with your breathing at night, that is a reasonable prompt to get evaluated. Consumer devices are not diagnostic, but they have brought a great many people to my office who would otherwise have kept ignoring the problem, and a fair number of them turned out to have real disease.

Find the Right Solution

There is no single snoring remedy that works for everyone. The right approach may involve positional changes, treatment of nasal obstruction, lifestyle measures, a custom oral appliance, CPAP, or another medically appropriate therapy.

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If snoring is wrecking your sleep, or someone has noticed that you stop breathing, do not spend another year cycling through gadgets and online remedies.

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Schedule a video consultation with BlueSleep to find the cause and get a treatment matched to your airway, your health, and your life.

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Jordan Stern, MD

BlueSleep Founder, CEO and Medical Director