Want to figure out how to stop snoring before it kills your love life? Here are 17 different ways to stop snoring you can try.
How To Stop Snoring Immediately
1. Change Your Sleeping Position
Knowing how to stop snoring is a lot easier than it sounds. In fact, it might be as simple as changing sleeping positions.
If you often sleep on your back, then this might be the cause of your snoring. Lying on your back causes the base of the tongue and the soft palate to collapse against the back wall of the throat. This creates a vibrating sound as you sleep.
Try sleeping on your side. If you find yourself looking for something to support your back, a body pillow ought to do the trick.
2. Elevate Your Head
Try elevating the head of your bed by about 4-5 inches. This should help keep your airways open, thereby reducing your snoring. There are wedge pillows you can look at online to help do this unless you have a hundred extra pillows lying around.
3. Try To Lose Weight
Get off the couch and go for a workout. This just might fix your snoring problem.
Gaining weight around the neck area tends to squeeze the internal diameter of the throat. This causes it to collapse as you sleep, triggering snoring.
For some people, this works. For others, it does not. After all, even thin people snore. No matter the case, it never hurts to be a little more fit, right?
4. Keep Yourself Hydrated
Drink plenty of water. Dehydration can cause secretions in the nose and soft palate to become sticky. In turn, this leads to snoring. A healthy man requires about 16 cups of water a day.
5. Stay Away From Alcoholic Beverages
Skip the beer before bedtime, gents. Apparently, those few post-work rounds about 4-5 hours before bedtime can make you snore. Alcohol lessens the resting tone of the muscles in the back of the throat. This causes even people who do not normally snore to do so.
6. Avoid Taking Sedatives Before Bed
Just like liquor, sedatives cause you to slumber heavy and deep. Try to stop using sedatives before going to bed. This may help ease your snoring. If you really need them, consult with your doctor for alternatives.
7. Practice A Good Sleep Routine
Even grown men need to have a proper bedtime. Not having enough sleep or maintaining an irregular bedtime has the same effects as drinking alcohol or taking sedatives, too. Sleeping deep and hard causes the muscles to become floppier, thus the snoring.
8. Quit Smoking
Smoking can enlarge your tonsils, thus blocking your airways and causing snoring. Even without the snoring, consider kicking the habit, anyway. It’s no longer cool to suck on those cancer sticks. Talk to your doctor for therapies that can help you quit.
9. Use Nasal Strips
To help increase the space in the nasal passage, try placing a stick-on nasal strip on the bridge of the nose. This can ease your breathing and make it more efficient, thus reducing (and maybe even eliminating) snoring.
10. Or An External Nasal Dilator
A nasal dilator is a stiffened adhesive strip applied on top of the nose across the nostrils. This helps ease breathing by decreasing airflow resistance.
11. Clean Your Room
There might be allergens in your room that are also causing you to snore. Dust mites and even pet fur can irritate your airways. One good way to determine if you need to clean up your room is if you have nasal congestion at night but not during the day. Vacuum your room and change your sheets every couple of weeks to get rid of the allergens. Your girlfriend will thank you.
12. Or Treat Your Allergies
Better yet, treat the allergies themselves. Allergies can reduce the airflow in your nose. This leaves your body with no choice but to breathe through the mouth, increasing the chances of snoring. Visit your doctor and ask about allergy medications that can help improve your condition.
13. Correct Structural Problems In Your Nose
Inborn or acquired structural problems of the nose can also cause snoring. A deviated septum is a condition wherein the nasal septum is either crooked or off-center. It can restrict airflow and cause mouth breathing, which makes snoring more likely to occur. If this is the problem, talk to a doctor to find out how to stop snoring permanently.
14. Get Uvulopalatopharyngoplasty
It’s a mouthful, right? Good thing uvulopalatopharyngoplasty can simply be called UPPP. This surgery tightens your throat tissues to help reduce snoring. A laser-assisted UPPP procedure can also be more effective. Ask your doctor about it if you suffer from extreme snoring.
15. Use A CPAP Machine
We are going with the abbreviation first this time. A CPAP machine, or a continuous positive airway pressure machine, can also help reduce snoring. This is a pressurized air mask that you can wear over your nose when you sleep to help keep airways open. Ask a doctor about how to stop snoring and he will most likely recommend this if the snoring is caused by sleep apnea.
16. Order Oral Appliances
Oral appliances are dental mouthpieces that help keep airways open. These make it easier for you to breathe, thus preventing snoring. Talk to your dentist and ask him how to stop snoring. He will most likely recommend having one of these devices made for you.
17. Get A Somnoplasty
This is one of the newest treatments for snoring out there today. Somnoplasty is a surgical treatment that modifies the tissues of the soft palate and the uvula using heat energy. This process shrinks the tissues that cause the problem.
Find out more about how to stop snoring in this video from Tech Insider:
As natural as snoring is, it is still extremely annoying for both you and your partner. Worse cases actually prevent couples from sleeping together, and we all know that even the toughest man can’t resist being the little spoon sometimes. Unfortunately, loud snores can sometimes be stronger than your partner’s desire to cuddle.
Try these tips and see which works best for you. If you are lucky, all it might take is a few extra glasses of water, right?
Do you know any other ways to stop snoring? Share them with us in the comments section below!