Sleeping on your side instead of your back is the single most effective change you can make to reduce snoring. When you lie face up, gravity pulls your tongue, soft palate, and surrounding tissues backward, narrowing the airway and causing the vibration that produces snoring. But position is only one piece of the puzzle. How you breathe, what you drink before bed, and even the angle of your mattress all play a role.
Why Sleeping on Your Back Makes It Worse
Airway obstruction happens most often in the supine (face-up) position, particularly where the soft palate and epiglottis sit at the back of the throat. Lying on your back lets those tissues sag under gravity, and the airway becomes more collapsible than it is when you’re on your side. Breathing also tends to be less stable on your back, which compounds the problem.
Switching to side sleeping keeps those tissues from falling directly into the airway. If you naturally roll onto your back during the night, a few tools can help. The classic approach is the tennis ball technique: attaching a tennis ball or a wedge of firm foam between your shoulder blades using a pocket sewn into the back of a sleep shirt or held in place with an elastic band. It’s uncomfortable enough to nudge you back onto your side without fully waking you. Newer devices take a subtler approach, using a small chest-worn sensor that vibrates progressively when it detects you’ve rolled onto your back, gradually training you to stay on your side over several nights.
Elevate Your Upper Body Slightly
If side sleeping isn’t comfortable or you tend to rotate back no matter what, raising your upper body can help. A study testing an adjustable bed base found that a 12-degree incline was enough to reduce snoring while still being comfortable for a full night’s sleep. That’s a modest angle, roughly the equivalent of stacking a firm wedge pillow under your upper back and head. Larger angles may work better mechanically, but people tend to slide down or wake up sore, so the mild incline hits the sweet spot between effectiveness and comfort.
Regular pillows stacked on top of each other usually don’t hold the angle well and can kink your neck, making things worse. A purpose-built wedge pillow or an adjustable bed frame gives you a consistent incline throughout the night.
Breathe Through Your Nose
Mouth breathing is directly linked to a higher incidence of snoring. When air flows through an open mouth, it hits the soft palate and surrounding tissues at a wider, less controlled angle, making vibration more likely. Nasal breathing channels airflow in a way that keeps those tissues more stable.
If your nose is chronically stuffy, fixing that is a prerequisite for everything else on this list. Keeping bedroom humidity between 30% and 50% helps prevent the nasal passages from drying out overnight. A humidifier in the bedroom during dry months can make a noticeable difference. Nasal dilator strips or internal nasal stents work by physically opening the nasal valve, reducing air resistance and improving flow. Some people also find relief from a saline rinse before bed, which clears mucus and reduces swelling in the nasal passages.
Mouth tape (a gentle adhesive strip placed over the lips) has gained popularity as a way to encourage nasal breathing during sleep. It can work if your nose is clear, but if you have any nasal obstruction, it will just make sleeping miserable.
Strengthen Your Throat With Exercises
The muscles in your throat and tongue help hold your airway open. When they’re weak or overly relaxed, the tissue vibrates more easily. A set of targeted exercises called myofunctional therapy (or oropharyngeal exercises) has been shown to meaningfully reduce snoring. Across multiple studies involving over 200 adults, snoring intensity dropped by about 50%, and the percentage of sleep time spent snoring fell by roughly 31%.
The exercises are simple but need to be done consistently, typically for about 10 to 15 minutes a day over several weeks. Common routines include:
- Tongue push-ups: Press the tip of your tongue firmly against the roof of your mouth and slide it backward. Repeat 20 times.
- Tongue sweeps: Run the tip of your tongue along the gum line of your upper teeth, from one side to the other. Repeat 10 times.
- Soft palate lifts: Say “ahh” forcefully while lifting the back of your palate, holding for a few seconds. Repeat 20 times.
- Cheek compression: Hook a finger inside one cheek and press outward while using your cheek muscle to resist. Repeat 10 times per side.
These exercises won’t eliminate snoring overnight, but after a few weeks of daily practice, the improvement can be significant and lasting.
Skip Alcohol Close to Bedtime
Alcohol relaxes the muscles that keep your airway open, and the effect is strongest in the first two hours after you fall asleep. During that window, the pressure needed to keep snoring under control is measurably higher than on a sober night, and blood oxygen levels can dip as well. The more you drink, the more pronounced the effect.
Finishing your last drink at least three to four hours before bed gives your body time to metabolize most of the alcohol before sleep. Even moderate amounts, two glasses of wine, for example, are enough to worsen snoring noticeably.
Lose Weight Around the Neck
Excess fat around the neck compresses the airway from the outside. A neck circumference greater than 17 inches for men or 16 inches for women is a recognized risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea, and the same mechanism drives garden-variety snoring at smaller sizes. You can measure your own neck with a flexible tape measure placed just below the Adam’s apple.
Even a modest weight loss of 10% of body weight can reduce the fatty tissue in the throat enough to make a real difference. This is one of the more difficult changes on this list, but it tends to produce the most durable results because it addresses the structural cause rather than compensating for it.
Oral Appliances for Persistent Snoring
If lifestyle changes aren’t enough, a mandibular advancement device (MAD) is often the next step. It’s a custom-fit mouthpiece, similar to a retainer, that holds your lower jaw slightly forward during sleep. This pulls the tongue base and surrounding tissue away from the airway. In a randomized trial, 39% of bed partners reported their partner’s snoring was completely eliminated with a MAD, compared to 11% with a combination of nasal dilators and positional therapy alone.
Over-the-counter “boil and bite” versions are available at pharmacies and can give you a sense of whether the approach works for you. Custom devices fitted by a dentist are more comfortable for long-term use and hold the jaw in a more precise position.
Signs That Snoring May Be Something More
Simple snoring is a nuisance. Obstructive sleep apnea is a health risk. The difference matters because sleep apnea involves repeated episodes where your airway fully closes and breathing stops, sometimes dozens of times per hour, stressing your heart and leaving you exhausted.
A quick self-check: if you snore loudly (audible through a closed door), feel tired or sleepy during the day despite a full night’s sleep, or if anyone has ever noticed you stop breathing while asleep, those are the core warning signs. Additional risk factors include high blood pressure, a BMI over 30, being over 50 years old, a neck circumference over 40 cm (about 16 inches), and being male. The more of these that apply to you, the higher the likelihood that your snoring involves apnea rather than simple tissue vibration. A sleep study, which can now often be done at home with a portable monitor, is the definitive way to know.