Do you snore? Experts reveal what you can do to stop it

From sewing a tennis ball to your shirt to cutting out this one thing at night, here’s what you can try to stop snoring – for your health and maybe also your relationship.

Snoring isn’t always limited to just being annoying for the person sleeping next to you.

It can also be a sign of sleep apnoea, a serious condition where your breathing stops and starts as you’re in a slumber.

Due to the drop of oxygen it causes in your blood, it’s been linked to high blood pressure, worse cardiovascular outcomes and even dementia.

Woolcock Institute of Medical Research respiratory and sleep physician Ben Nguyen, who also works at St Vincent’s and Royal Prince Alfred hospitals in Sydney, said a sign of sleep apnoea involved a person stopping breathing and gasping and choking.

“They are also very drowsy, they sleep a lot and they wake up tired. All of those things would raise your suspicion,” he said.

People with sleep apnoea generally will always snore, however not everyone who snores necessarily has sleep apnoea.

If you snore you could have the more serious condition of sleep apnoea.

So if you want a silent night then these are nine things you can look at doing depending on how serious your snoring really is.

Stop drinking alcohol

If you’re a drinker, then one of the simplest things you can try is cutting out that evening tipple.

“Alcohol is a muscle relaxant so it makes the airways floppy, which makes it more likely to collapse,” Dr Nguyen said.

“And that’s essentially what the snoring is – it’s from trying to move air in and out through a narrowed airway.”

Drinking in the evening will increase your snoring.

Lose some weight

If you’re overweight you’re more likely to snore, so another option is to try lose some of those excess kilos.

Dr Nguyen said being overweight increased the pressure on a person’s airways.

“When you put on weight, a lot of the tissues start to accumulate around the throat and around the neck,” he said.

“There’s a lot of soft tissue depositing around the airways internally so you’ve got a narrow tube with increasing pressure around it which increases the collapsibility … and that’s how weight can make snoring worse.”

It can also increase your risk of other health problems.

Research out of Flinders University last year found that overweight middle-aged men who regularly snored at night were more likely to have uncontrolled hypertension.

Sleep in a separate room

If sleep apnoea has been ruled out and the only person getting annoyed by the snoring is your partner then they could try ear plugs or sleeping in a separate room, Dr Nguyen suggested.

Sleep on your side

Sleeping on our backs tends to make snoring worse due to gravity.

“This is because of the effect it has on your upper airway and the tongue – everything tends to collapse backwards and that causes the airways to narrow,” Dr Nguyen said.

He suggested using pillows to prop yourself to one side.

But if that doesn’t work, he suggested the “old-fashioned tennis ball technique”.

This means you need to get out the sewing kit and stitch a tennis ball into the front pocket of your bedtime shirt.

Then you put it on backwards so it becomes too uncomfortable for you to roll onto your back.

“I have had patients try, it doesn’t always work, some patients will just end up waking up with a sore back,” Dr Nguyen said.

The next option is wearing a backpack stuffed with towels as it will be even harder to roll onto your back.

Or if you want to go down the expensive route, you can purchase a body position device that vibrates when you move and lie in a way you shouldn’t.

If you have a stuffy nose, nasal sprays might help

Dr Nguyen said a nasal decongestant may be of benefit because it caused the blood vessels in the nose to constrict and this reduced swelling.

But he said this spray could only be used short-term and overuse would actually make the problem worse.

Longer-term sprays included anti-inflammatories and antihistamines if the nose was inflamed, he said.

“That’s for patients who have chronic rhinitis, they may have allergies and they get a lot of congestion that causes the narrowing of their sinus or their nasal passages,” Dr Nguyen said.

He said it could also be worth doing allergy testing and looking at immunotherapy options.

“For example if you’re allergic to dust mites, there are tablets or injections that can be used to try and reduce that allergic response,” he said.

Nasal sprays can be an option if your snoring is related to your nose.

He said if the medication didn’t work further scans might be needed to see if there were any obstructions in the nose. In that case surgery could be required.

Mouth tape?

Dr Nguyen said he constantly got questions from patients about mouth tape because it was spruiked on social media – but it wasn’t always a good idea.

“I guess the first thing to say is there is certainly a benefit in breathing through our nose rather than breathing through our mouth,” he said.

“Our nasal passages have important functions. They humidify the air we breathe in so we don’t just breathe in harsh dry air into our lungs.

“We also have lots of tiny hairs in our nose that filters or catches any particles.”

He said people who had no issues breathing through their nose who were just in the habit of breathing through their mouth could benefit.

“But if you’ve got sleep apnoea, where your throat is closing off during sleep, it can actually be harmful to have mouth tape on,” he said.

“When you’re waking up gasping and can’t breathe – I have had patients who have woken up thinking they were suffocating. I can see why some people would recommend it, I think you just have to be careful.”

Jacqueline Pascarl OAM, the practice partner at The Snore Fix Dr in Melbourne, agreed mouth-taping could have benefits for your health.

“If you’ve got good air flow through your nose, mouth taping is actually shown scientifically to create more nitric oxide which allows for deeper penetration of oxygen to the bottom of your lungs and your brain,” she said.

Special mouthguards

Mandibular advancement splints look like mouthguards and help keep the jaw and tongue forward to open up the airways.

Ms Pascarl said it was her clinic’s speciality and they were custom fitted so they were comfortable and held the jaw forward and slightly open.

“It’s something that you wear every night you go to sleep to hold your jaw forward and to stop you choking on your tongue, because the tongue is anchored at the floor of your mouth so wherever the jaw goes the tongue will follow,” she said.

Ms Pascarl said they cost about $2000.

Dr Nguyen noted there were non-custom options that could be bought online or in the chemist.

They could be moulded to a person’s mouth at home but they were chunky and uncomfortable.

“I’d usually recommend to my patients who intend to use the device long-term to get a custom one made,” he said

CPAP machine

A CPAP machine is one of the more serious ways to tackle snoring and only really recommended if you have sleep apnoea, Dr Nguyen said.

It involves wearing a mask that’s connected to a machine via a tube which then delivers positive pressure to the airway to keep it open.

Dr Nguyen said it was the “gold standard” for sleep apnoea and would treat snoring too, however the machines cost between $1000 and $2000 with no Medicare rebate.

He cautioned against going out and buying one without a sleep study.

“It may not be the right treatment, it may cause problems as well,” he said.

“It can cause things like dry mouth, sore throat, you can get bloating if you’re pushing too much air into your stomach, you can get a lot of gas, it can cause pressure sores over the skin.”

Surgery

This could be an option to widen the airways if someone has severe sleep apnoea.

St Vincent’s Private Hospital Ear Nose and Throat surgeon Mr Damien Phillips said that the starting point would be an examination by a GP to check if there were any structural issues contributing to snoring.

“The type of structural issues would be in your nose, in your mouth and in your pharynx such as excessively large tonsils,” he said.

Mr Phillips said a lateral-expansion pharyngoplasty was a more invasive surgical option.

“This is a more invasive surgery than a tonsillectomy,” he said.

“It involves removing tonsils and reshaping the palate and pharynx to allow a wider more open airway.

“The benefit is greatest in those with sleep apnoea that is more severe who cannot tolerate other treatments.

“Usually the first-line treatment is lifestyle factors like losing weight.

“Next level is CPAP or mouthguard.

“And then ENT surgery.”

Originally published as Do you snore? Experts reveal what you can do to stop it