Forget about the monster under your bed. If you have a partner who snores, you’re dealing with a monster in your bed — and it’s often a near-nightly showdown. In a new National Sleep Foundation survey, 40 percent of Americans admitted to snoring a few nights per week (or more).
And the ones who are suffering aren’t usually the folks sawing logs. “The most common side effect of snoring is waking up other people, whether in the same bed or the next bedroom, depending on how loud it is,” says Eric Kezirian, MD, a professor of otolaryngology at the University of Southern California, who specializes in the treatment of snoring.
In fact, people with a snoring significant other tend to lose an hour of sleep per night, according to Craig Schwimmer, MD, founder of The Snoring Center. Perhaps as a result, “couples in snoring relationships report lower marital satisfaction scores, they have less sex, and they often resort to sleeping apart,” he tells Yahoo Health.
That’s why snoring is considered a social issue more so than a medical one, although in some cases, it does indicate a more serious problem: obstructive sleep apnea. “When we go to sleep at night, the muscles in the throat relax, and as we breathe in and out, this relaxed tissue tends to vibrate,” explains Schwimmer. If that tissue simply vibrates — and nothing more — you’ll probably just bother your bedmate. But if that tissue closes as it vibrates, blocking your airway, you may have obstructive sleep apnea. “Snoring and sleep apnea are really just different points on a continuum,” says Schwimmer.
Obstructive sleep apnea, of course, requires serious medical intervention. But simple snoring can often be treated with these at-home remedies:
Adjust your position
If you’re a chronic snorer, back isn’t best. “Most people snore more on the back than they do on the side, and more on the side than they do on the stomach,” says Schwimmer. It can be tough to switch your preferred sleeping position, so sleep doctors often suggest this trick to encourage people to stay on their side: Sew a pocket on the back of a T-shirt between the shoulder blades, and slip two tennis balls inside.
“When people sleep on their side, their shoulder can get sore. So they roll on their back,” says Kezirian. “The tennis balls aren’t very comfortable, so they end up rolling to their other side.”
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Not extreme enough? Try the Night Shift Sleep Positioner, a device you wear around your neck that vibrates when you roll onto your back, increasing in intensity until you shift to your side. “I wore it one night, and it drove me crazy,” says W. Christopher Winter, MD, director of Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine. “But it worked. After a few days of that, you would not be sleeping on your back.”
Play with pillows
For some people, the tennis ball trick works — but only because it keeps them up all night. If you simply can’t sleep with sports equipment attached to your PJs, try resting a body pillow between your legs, which helps align your spine and makes side sleeping more comfortable. Or wedge a C-shaped pregnancy pillow behind your back, suggests Winter.
