No More Snoring: Natural Remedies and Recommendations

Although snoring may seem fairly harmless, it could affect your rest, altering your sleep patterns along with your partner’s, who shares the room with you. There are lots of different things that could cause someone to snore, like relaxed tongue and throat muscles, a long palate, congestion or obstruction of the respiratory tracts, large tonsils…but snoring is also more common in people that are overweight or obese.

Snoring and quality of life

Snoring can prevent sleep from being restful.  This increases stress and could affect health over time, but the problems don’t stop there.

Snoring can deteriorate relationships between couples, and in some cases, it can be the cause for separation.  This is because it creates irritability and tension, which is generated by lack of quality sleep.

Sleeping poorly also affects productivity and moods, which is why you should definitely tend to your snoring.

Recommendations for treating snoring

You may be able to stop snoring simply by following a few recommendations, especially if they tend to the primary cause of snoring:

• Lose weight, if you are overweight.
• Exercise or perform some sort of regular physical activity.
• Avoid eating large dinners, and we also recommend not going to bed immediately after eating.
• Avoid consuming alcoholic beverages before going to bed.
• Avoid taking sedative drugs which could relax throat tissues, causing snoring.
• Try to sleep on your side.
• Follow natural remedies and advice for stopping snoring.
• Keep your house free of dust.

Advice for naturally putting and end to snoring

There have probably been times that you have snored.  When snoring becomes habitual, however, you need to make certain lifestyle changes, and changes in your habits, to fight it.  From sleeping on your side to doing regular physical activity, each one of these tips are key to putting an end to your snoring.

Sleeping on your side: This position is best if you want to prevent snoring.  A good little trick that often times works in these cases, is to place a pillow behind your back to prevent you from rolling onto your back.  You could also use a ball of clothing, and maybe place a tennis ball inside, so that every time you try to roll on your back, the discomfort caused by the ball will make you roll back onto your side.  It seems weird, but it works.

Lift the head of your bed: Lifting the head of your bed by 4 cm is enough to help prevent your tongue from blocking your throat.  This prevents snoring.  You could add a few booked or blocks under each foot of the bed to put it at an incline.

Avoid dry air: If your bedroom has mostly dry air, think about buying a humidifier.  Dry air promotes congestion, which also leads to snoring.  If you have a humidifier, you could also dilute a few drops of eucalyptus in it to prevent dryness.

Position your pillows: Having a flat pillow, or a really fat pillow could lead to poor head and neck positioning, which leads to snoring.  It’s best to buy a pillow with enough support for your head, but which isn’t too spongy.

Honey and lemon remedy: Honey helps relax the throat, making it a useful remedy against snoring.  Prepare a mixture with two teaspoons of organic honey and lemon juice, then drink it.  Do not drink anything else afterwards, allowing the mixture to work.

Eucalyptus remedy: If you have a humidifier, you can add a few drops of eucalyptus oil, but if not you can still use this oil.  Dilute a bit of it in a spray bottle and spray the head of your bed.  This will unclog your respiratory tracts while you sleep.

Onion remedy: Onions are often times used to unclog respiratory tracts and also to fight snoring.  Cut a small onion into slices and sprinkle salt water over it.  Then set it on your night stand at night.

Throat and tongue exercises

Although you may not believe this, the muscles in your throat and tongue could help reduce snoring.  Some exercises can be useful for this very purpose.

Repeat the vowels: Say “A I E O U” clearly, and slowly, 10 to 20 times before going to bed.

Move your tongue: Stretch your tongue out as straight as possible, move your tongue to both sides of your mouth, touching the corner of your lips without relaxing your tongue muscles.  Do this two or three times a day.

Jaw exercise: Push your lower jaw forward, past your upper jaw and count to 10.  Repeat 5 to 10 times a day.

Revised by: Dra. Loredana Lunadei on 08/29/2018

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