How do you stop snoring?

Get off your back: side-sleeping, and the tennis-ball trick if you roll.
Cut the evening alcohol: throat muscles relax, snoring roars.
Open the nose: saline rinse, allergy treatment, or strips if the nose is the bottleneck.
Screen for apnea: pauses plus gasping plus daytime exhaustion means a sleep study.

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Snoring is the sound of a floppy, narrowed airway vibrating - so the fixes aim at whatever is narrowing yours. The best-evidenced levers: lose extra weight if relevant (neck fat compresses the airway - the single biggest modifiable factor); sleep on your side, since back-sleeping lets the tongue fall backward (the old trick of a tennis ball sewn into the back of a T-shirt genuinely works for positional snorers); cut evening alcohol, which relaxes throat muscles and makes snoring louder; quit smoking, which inflames the airway lining; treat nasal congestion - saline rinses, allergy control, or nasal strips help if the nose is the bottleneck; and keep regular sleep hours, because overtired muscles are floppier muscles. Pharmacy options worth trying: nasal strips, a saline spray, or a mandibular advancement mouthguard from a pharmacist or dentist, which holds the jaw forward. The line where snoring stops being a nuisance and becomes a symptom: loud snoring plus witnessed pauses in breathing, gasping or choking, and heavy daytime sleepiness - that pattern is sleep apnea, and it needs a sleep study, not a strip. Pymander is a free AI doctor, 24/7 by text, that can help you sort nuisance snoring from apnea.

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