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Treatments for Snoring

Simple snoring caused by upper airway obstruction can be treated by one or more of the following changes in behavior:

Sleep on your side rather than on your back.
Exercise daily to develop good muscle tone, establish regular sleeping habits, and lose weight. Weight loss reduces the fat deposits in neck tissues, which compress the airway. Furthermore, excess weight in the abdomen reduces the efficiency of your breathing muscles and makes breathing more difficult.
Avoid alcohol, drugs, and medications that relax muscles and depress the breathing reflex.
Allergies and respiratory infections narrow the airway and make breathing more difficult. Consult a physician for appropriate medications that will not interfere with sleep.
Smoking reduces lung capacity, inflames the mouth and throat, and makes breathing more difficult. Reduced likelihood of snoring, and many other important health benefits, come from quitting.

Oral devices like Snore Guard can boost the positive effects of changed behavior to reduce snoring. There are several types of similar oral devices on the market, but Snore Guard is the original from which these others others are patterned.

The CPAP user wears a face mask connected to an air pump to increase the pressure of air entering the airway. The user has to take a series of tests called polysonmography, which are conducted in a sleep lab. The results determine the settings for the CPAP device.

Surgical treatments consist of tonsillectomy, adenoidectomy, UPPP, and tracheostomy. UPPP stands for the hard-to-pronounce uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, a surgery in which the physician removes the back part of the soft palate and tissue at the back of the throat, enlarging the airway. A new, out-patient surgery procedure called laser-assisted uvulopalatoplasty (LAUP) uses lasers to remove the uvula. The surgery is successful for about 50% of patients.