Non-Surgical Snoring Options: What to Try First
Start with position, then elevation, then get checked. A 2024 systematic review of 9 studies and 235 patients found positional therapy and head-of-bed elevation reduced snoring — the strongest evidence of any non-surgical snoring options — but the authors call the evidence few and short-term. If your snoring comes with daytime sleepiness, breathing pauses, or gasping, skip the ladder and talk to a doctor first.
Applies to: anyone who wants the non-surgical snoring options in evidence order — cheapest and safest first — without buying a gadget that outruns its proof.
If you have bought a gadget that did not help — you are the reader this page is written for. One r/snoring user wrote that sleeping propped up cut their snoring more than any product they bought. The review literature points the same way: position first, gadgets later.
The headline fact behind this page's ladder: positional therapy and head-of-bed elevation reduced snoring across 9 studies and 235 patients — though the review authors call the evidence few and short-term (Moffa et al., 2024). Below, the non-surgical snoring options are ranked in the order a cautious person would try them: free and low-risk first, devices with thin evidence next, and a sleep test where the warning signs point.
A ladder from easiest to most involved
The logic of a ladder is simple for anyone seeking a snoring treatment without surgery: every step up costs more money, takes more effort, or carries more caveats — so you climb only when the step below did not do enough. The nine studies in the 2024 systematic review by Moffa and colleagues tested position and elevation, not gadgets . That is exactly why those two sit at the bottom of the ladder and everything marketed harder sits higher.
Moffa A et al. (2024) — systematic review, 9 studies / 235 patients, Journal of Personalized Medicine 14(7):715. Positional therapy (including anti-snoring pillows) and head-of-bed elevation reduced snoring in snorers and OSA patients; authors describe the evidence as few short-term studies and call for controlled trials. Full text (PMC)The options ladder, cheapest and safest first
| Step | What it is | What the reviewed trials say | Cost and effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sleep on your side | Best-supported of the non-surgical snoring options: lateral-encouraging pillows cut the snoring index in small trials | Free |
| 2 | Raise the head of the bed (roughly 7–12 degrees in the trials) | One incline trial found a small measured drop in snoring duration; another found the drop did not reach significance | Low — a wedge or risers |
| 3 | A positional or active pillow | Three pillow trials in the review showed snoring-index drops — but only for active/dynamic designs, not plain foam | Moderate |
| 4 | Mouth taping | Not in the 9 studies. A separate 2025 systematic review found no good-quality evidence for snoring and flags a harm warning with nasal obstruction | Low — but the safety caveat is the real cost |
| 5 | Throat exercises, humidifiers, mouthpieces | Not tested in the 9 studies — this ladder cannot rank what the trials never tried | Varies |
| 6 | Daytime myofunctional-style devices (e.g. the FDA-authorized eXciteOSA) | FDA assessed 115 patients; secondary reporting cites a >20% mean snoring-time reduction. Not for moderate or severe sleep apnea | High |
| 7 | A sleep study / GP visit | Not a snoring fix — the step that rules out sleep apnea when warning signs appear | A medical appointment |
Notice what the ladder does not do: it does not start with the thing most heavily advertised. That is deliberate, and it is the single most useful idea on this page — the trials tested the boring options first, and the boring options won. If you are choosing between specific pillow designs rather than options in general, wedge, contour or positional pillow for snoring — which has trial data? And if your question is the pillow question in its simplest form, do anti-snoring pillows actually work? walks through the same nine studies pillow by pillow.
There is a reason clinical guidance reaches for the low-risk option first: when the evidence base is thin — nine small, short studies — the cost of being wrong about a free option is near zero, while the cost of being wrong about an expensive device is money, sleep, and false confidence. The review authors make the same point in blunter language: snoring treatment should rest on evidence, "not a simple commercial product" (Moffa et al., 2024). The ladder is that sentence, operationalized.
What the evidence supports at each step
Each rung below gets the same treatment: what was actually tested, on how many people, for how long, and what happened. Where the trials go silent, this ranking of non-surgical snoring options says so instead of filling the silence with marketing.
Step 1 — side-sleeping: the mechanism and the trials
Back-sleeping lets gravity pull the tongue and soft palate backward, narrowing the airway; side-sleeping changes that geometry (the diagram near the end of this page shows how). Two of the nine reviewed studies tested the positional lever directly. Chen and colleagues (2015) gave 25 snorers with positional sleep apnea a head-positioning pillow designed to encourage side-sleeping: after two nights, the median snoring index fell from 218 to 115 events per hour — a 34.4% drop — compared with a regular pillow (Chen et al., 2015, via Moffa et al., 2024). Newell and colleagues (2018) tested a positional pillow in 28 people with positional sleep apnea and found supine (back-sleeping) time fell from 52% to 20.4% of the night and the apnea–hypopnea index fell from 12.1 to 6.0 — though the share of the night spent snoring (26.3% to 20.4%) did not improve enough to reach statistical significance (Newell et al., 2018, via Moffa et al., 2024).
Read those two together and you get the honest version of "sleep on your side": of all the non-surgical snoring options, it moves the measurable numbers most clearly and quickly — but a 25- or 28-person trial running days to weeks is a signal, not a settled answer. If back-sleeping is specifically your pattern, why do people snore more on their backs? explains the positional mechanism in full.
Step 2 — head elevation: small effects, real tolerance limits
Elevation is the second-cheapest of the non-surgical snoring options, and the head elevation snoring trials are a study in small effects. Danoff-Burg and colleagues (2022) tested a 12-degree incline base in 25 snorers for four weeks and found a 7% relative reduction in objectively measured snoring duration (p=0.001), plus fewer partner wake-ups (Danoff-Burg et al., 2022, via Moffa et al., 2024). Seven percent is real — it cleared statistical significance — but it is not the kind of number that transforms a bedroom. Lee and colleagues (2024) ran a randomized pilot of 7.5-degree head-of-bed elevation and found the apnea and respiratory-disturbance indexes improved while the snoring improvement did not reach significance (p=0.065) (Lee et al., 2024, via Moffa et al., 2024).
Then there is the tolerance ceiling the trials rarely advertise: elevation of the head and trunk above roughly 35 degrees is poorly tolerated long-term, and some people cannot side-sleep at all — the review names ankylosing spondylitis and shoulder or hip pain as examples . The practical reading: elevation helps a little, for some people, at modest angles — and the wedge that promises a lot more angle than the trials tested is selling a version of these non-surgical snoring options past the evidence.
Iannella et al. (2022), via Moffa et al. (2024) discussion: head/trunk elevation above ~35 degrees is poorly tolerated over time; side-sleeping is not possible for everyone (e.g. ankylosing spondylitis, shoulder/hip pain). Moffa et al. (2024), full textThe marketing story
Gadgets beat position — the newest device with the slickest ad is obviously the strongest of the non-surgical snoring options.
What the review found
The 2024 systematic review says position has the best evidence of the non-surgical snoring options tested — and its authors warn that treatment should rest on evidence, "not a simple commercial product."
Step 3 — the pillow trials: active designs only
Three of the nine studies tested pillows, and the distinction that matters is active versus plain. Cazan and colleagues (2017) ran a randomized crossover in 22 snorers (sleep apnea excluded, body-mass index 30 or below, all with a sleep partner): an air-chamber foam pillow that actively adjusted during the night cut the snoring index from 269 to 162.5 events per hour (p=0.03) without worsening other breathing measures, and partners rated snoring loudness 7.2 down to 4.0 on a visual scale (p<0.001), with every participant accepting the device (Cazan et al., 2017, via Moffa et al., 2024). That is the strongest pillow result in the review — and it belongs to an active, dynamic design, not to a shaped piece of foam.
The takeaway for shoppers weighing non-surgical snoring options is blunt: the trials with positive results used pillows that do something (adjust, or hold you off your back). Nothing in the nine studies supports a plain contoured pillow as a snoring treatment. The design-by-design comparison lives here: wedge, contour or positional pillow for snoring — which has trial data?
| Trial | What was tested | Snoring result | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cazan 2017 (n=22) | Active air-chamber pillow, 4 weeks | Snoring index 269 → 162.5 events/h; partner rating 7.2 → 4.0 | Small, short; active design only |
| Chen 2015 (n=25) | Lateral-encouraging pillow, 2 nights | Median snoring index 218 → 115 (−34.4%) vs regular pillow | Two nights; positional apnea patients |
| Newell 2018 (n=28) | Positional pillow | Supine time 52% → 20.4%; snoring time % change not significant | AHI improved; snoring share did not |
| Danoff-Burg 2022 (n=25) | 12-degree incline base, 4 weeks | 7% relative drop in snoring duration (p=0.001) | Small effect size |
| Lee 2024 (pilot) | 7.5-degree head-of-bed elevation | Snoring improvement not significant (p=0.065) | Pilot; AHI/RDI improved instead |
Steps 4 to 6 — where the review goes quiet
Honesty requires naming what the nine studies never tried. Mouth taping was not among them — but a separate 2025 systematic review by Rhee and colleagues examined 10 studies and found no good-quality evidence that mouth taping helps snoring: eight showed no benefit and two showed minimal benefit the authors did not consider clinically significant. Two small pilots did show improvement in mild sleep-apnea mouth-breathers, and the review carries a clear harm warning — asphyxiation risk when nasal obstruction is present — while noting mouth taping appears in no international sleep guidelines (Rhee et al., 2025). The full treatment of that warning lives here: is mouth taping safe for snoring?
Throat and mouth exercises (sometimes called myofunctional therapy) and humidifiers were likewise not tested in the nine studies — the myofunctional therapy snoring question is one the trials leave completely unanswered, so this page's ladder cannot honestly rank them — anyone who tells you exactly where they sit is guessing. The same applies to snoring mouthpieces: not tested in the reviewed trials. Mouth devices are dentist-fitted medical devices, and the compliance note on this page is that non-position devices still lack primary evidence in the ledger — so treat confident claims about them with proportional skepticism and discuss them with a dentist or sleep clinician.
Daytime devices are the one non-position option with a regulatory footprint: the FDA assessed the eXciteOSA daytime tongue-muscle stimulator in 115 patients with snoring, including 48 with snoring plus mild sleep apnea. Secondary reporting of the assessment cites a greater than 20% mean reduction in snoring time above 40 decibels in 87 patients; among the mild-apnea subgroup, 79% responded with a mean 52% apnea–hypopnea reduction, a 58% oxygen-desaturation reduction, and a 3.9-point drop on the Epworth sleepiness scale — and the device is not indicated for moderate or severe apnea . Note the sourcing: this comes via secondary news reporting of the FDA assessment, not a peer-reviewed trial we opened ourselves.
eXciteOSA FDA assessment (2021), via secondary reporting: 115 patients with snoring incl. 48 with snoring + mild OSA; >20% mean reduction in snoring time (>40 dB) in 87 patients; mild-OSA subgroup (n=65): 79% responded, mean 52% AHI reduction, 58% ODI reduction, 3.9-point ESS reduction. Not for moderate/severe OSA. Secondary report⚠ Limits of this evidence
- Few and short-term. Nine studies, 235 patients total, individual trials of 22–28 people running two nights to four weeks. The review authors explicitly call for controlled trials.
- Position and elevation only. The trials tested sleeping position and head elevation — not mouth taping, throat exercises, humidifiers, or mouthpieces. Rankings beyond rungs 1–3 rest on thinner ground.
- Small effects are real effects — and small. A 7% snoring-duration drop that clears p=0.001 is genuine evidence and a modest bedroom change. Do not let anyone sell it as a transformation.
- Commercial non-surgical snoring options outran the evidence. The review's own warning: treatment should rest on evidence, "not a simple commercial product." Only active/dynamic pillow designs — not plain shaped foam — produced the positive pillow results.
When snoring needs a sleep test
Everything above this section is about snoring as a comfort problem. This section is about the boundary where it stops being one. The distinction matters because no rung of the non-surgical snoring options ladder — no position, no elevation, no pillow — treats sleep apnea, and these options are not apnea treatments.
⚠ Get checked if any of these fit
- You feel sleepy during the day despite a full night in bed — the classic flag that snoring may be fragmenting sleep.
- Your breathing stops and starts while you sleep (a partner usually notices this first).
- You make gasping or choking noises in your sleep.
- Guidance from NHS 111 Wales puts it plainly: these signs may mean sleep apnoea, which can be serious if not treated — so they warrant a GP visit, not another gadget NHS 111 Wales.
If you are the partner doing the noticing, you are also the person this matters to most — what helps when your partner snores? covers the tonight fixes and the kind way to raise it. For the full boundary between the two conditions, how to tell snoring from sleep apnea? draws the line the evidence draws.
One more honest note for anyone whose ladder ends at surgery: NHS guidance says surgery is sometimes used for snoring when other treatments have not helped — but it is not widely available, it does not always work, and snoring can come back afterwards NHS 111 Wales. That is the medical system's own caution about its most invasive non-device option, and it applies double to anything sold with a money-back promise.
What can I do to stop snoring? A tonight-first checklist
Search results for "what can I do to stop snoring" mostly sell things. The trial literature suggests a cheaper opening move. Everything on this checklist of non-surgical snoring options is either directly tested in the nine reviewed studies or is plain common sense that costs nothing — and the checklist is ordered the way the ladder is, because the order is the point.
- Start the night on your side. The positional trials cut the snoring index by roughly a third within days for back-snorers — the single biggest tested effect on this page.
- Put a body pillow behind your back if you roll onto your back in your sleep. It is the low-tech version of what the lateral-encouraging pillows in the trials were doing.
- Raise the head of the bed a few inches — risers under the headboard legs or a modest wedge, not a 35-degree ski slope. The incline trials tested roughly 7–12 degrees; tolerance falls off steeply above about 35.
- Keep your nose clear. Congestion forces mouth breathing, which the mouth-taping literature flags as the riskier pattern. A warm shower before bed or saline rinse costs almost nothing.
- Skip the nightcap as a sleep aid. Alcohol relaxes the throat muscles that keep the airway open — this is standard sleep guidance, not something the nine studies tested, but it sits comfortably in the "free and harmless" tier.
- Ask your partner what they hear. You cannot grade your own snoring. Whether it is steady rumbling or pauses and gasps decides whether tonight's checklist is enough or whether the sleep-test section above applies.
- Give any change a week, not a night. The shortest trials ran two nights; the longest, four weeks. One bad night proves nothing in either direction.
One thing the checklist deliberately leaves out: buying a new pillow tonight. The pillow trials with positive results used active designs tested over weeks — an impulse-bought contour pillow is not what the evidence describes. The shopper's-eye reading of all nine studies can wait until morning; tonight belongs to the free rungs of the ladder.
Is there anything that can be done for snoring other than using a CPAP machine?
This question usually comes from a specific worry: "does my snoring mean I need one of those machines?" The short answer is that CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) is a medical treatment a doctor prescribes after diagnosing sleep apnea — it is not a consumer product you graduate to when snoring annoys your partner. The nine studies in the 2024 review did not test CPAP at all; they tested the things you try instead when apnea has not been diagnosed.
The practical split is the one the "when snoring needs a sleep test" section drew: warning signs (daytime sleepiness, breathing pauses, gasping) → GP → possible sleep study → and only then does CPAP enter the conversation, on a doctor's prescription. No warning signs → the ladder on this page is the appropriate territory. Conflating the two is how people end up either ignoring a real apnea problem or medicalizing ordinary snoring — both mistakes, in opposite directions.
Can snoring be cured?
"Cure" is the word that separates marketing from medicine on this topic. Across the nine reviewed studies, the language is always reduction — a snoring index that falls, a duration that shortens, a partner rating that drops — never elimination. The 2024 review's own framing is that the evidence is few and short-term; cures are not claimed by the researchers, only by the advertisers.
What can change durably is the pattern around the snoring. Positional snoring — snoring that happens mostly on the back — responds to positional therapy as long as the position holds; the Newell trial's supine-time drop from 52% to 20.4% is the mechanism made visible. Weight, alcohol, nasal congestion, and aging all move the baseline too, in both directions, over years. None of that is a cure; all of it is more honest than the word.
And the surgical end of the spectrum deserves the NHS's own caution, stated plainly: surgery is sometimes used when other treatments have not helped, but it is not widely available, it does not always work, and snoring can come back afterwards NHS 111 Wales. Surgery is not one of the non-surgical snoring options — it is the option the ladder exists to avoid — and if the medical system's most invasive option carries those three caveats, a gadget's promise of a permanent fix should be read accordingly.
Why back-sleeping makes snoring worse
This is the mechanism behind every positional therapy on the page — the reason the ladder starts where it does. It is also why the "gadget" rung keeps underperforming it: most devices try to treat the vibration while position removes the cause.
Text equivalent: when you sleep on your back, gravity draws the tongue and soft palate toward the back of the throat, narrowing the airway so passing air vibrates the tissue (the snore). On your side, the tongue rests sideways, the airway keeps its width, and vibration drops. This geometry is the mechanism behind every positional therapy in the 2024 review.
How common is snoring, really?
The numbers come from the 2024 review's introduction, citing population studies: roughly 45% of adults snore occasionally and about 25% snore regularly; among snorers, around 40% are men compared with 24% women, and snoring becomes more common after menopause (Moffa et al., 2024). Those figures do two useful things. First, they normalize the problem — a quarter of adults snoring regularly means the market for "cures" is enormous, which is precisely why the marketing is louder than the evidence. Second, they set the base rate for the ladder: with numbers this large, the first-line answer among non-surgical snoring options has to be cheap, safe, and scalable. Side-sleeping is all three; a $2,000 device is none.
There is a subtler point in the sex difference. Snoring in women is under-recognized — partners report it less, women report it less — which means the "I don't snore" self-assessment is least reliable exactly where the statistics say to look harder. If a partner says otherwise, believe the partner; the checklist section's advice to ask what they hear applies regardless of who is doing the snoring.
Moffa and colleagues close their review the way honest researchers close thin literatures: by asking for controlled trials — larger samples, longer follow-ups, standardized snoring measures — before positional and elevation therapies can be recommended with confidence. Until those trials exist, every rung of these non-surgical snoring options above side-sleeping should be read as "promising but provisional." That is not a reason to do nothing; it is a reason to spend little, expect modestly, and keep the GP's number handy.
🪜 Which rung of the ladder fits you? (4 taps)
Answer four quick questions — the check sorts you to the cheapest rung worth trying first. Question 1 of 4
Do you (or your partner) notice the snoring is worst on your back?
Any of these: daytime sleepiness, breathing pauses, or gasping/choking at night?
Can you comfortably sleep on your side all night?
Have you already tried a gadget (pillow, strip, spray) that did not help?
Questions people actually ask
What should I try first for snoring without surgery?
Best Ways to Stop Snoring Without Surgery
What can I do to stop snoring?
Can snoring be cured?
Can using an air humidifier help stop snoring?
Are snoring mouthpieces safe?
Is there anything that can be done for snoring other than using a CPAP machine?
Does myofunctional therapy work for sleep apnea?
Key takeaways
- The non-surgical snoring options rank: side-sleeping first, head elevation second, active positional pillows third — that is the order the trial evidence supports.
- Nine studies and 235 patients sit behind the ladder (Moffa et al., 2024) — but the authors call the evidence few and short-term, and ask for controlled trials.
- Mouth taping has no good-quality evidence for snoring and carries an asphyxiation warning with nasal obstruction (Rhee et al., 2025).
- Throat exercises, humidifiers, and mouthpieces were not tested in the reviewed trials — honest pages do not rank what trials never tried.
- Daytime sleepiness, breathing pauses, or gasping mean a GP visit, not another gadget. A pillow supports comfort and side-sleeping; it does not treat sleep apnea.
Last reviewed: 2026-11-01 by Honest Review Hub Editorial Team
References
- Moffa, A., et al. (2024). Positional therapy and head-of-bed elevation for snoring and obstructive sleep apnea: A systematic review. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 14(7), 715. PMC11277951
- Cazan, D., et al. (2017). Effect of an active air-chamber pillow on snoring: A randomized crossover trial (n=22). Sleep and Breathing, 21, 615–621. PubMed: 28127672
- Chen, W. C., et al. (2015). Head-positioning pillow for snoring and positional obstructive sleep apnea (n=25). Scientific Reports, 5, 18188. Via Moffa et al. (2024). Moffa et al. (2024)
- Newell, J., et al. (2018). Positional pillow for positional obstructive sleep apnea (n=28). Sleep and Breathing, 22, 1143. Via Moffa et al. (2024). Moffa et al. (2024)
- Danoff-Burg, S., et al. (2022). 12-degree incline base for snoring (n=25, 4 weeks). JMIR Formative Research, 6, e30102. Via Moffa et al. (2024). Moffa et al. (2024)
- Lee, S., et al. (2024). 7.5-degree head-of-bed elevation: randomized pilot. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. Via Moffa et al. (2024). Moffa et al. (2024)
- Rhee, J. S., et al. (2025). Breaking social media fads: systematic review of the safety and efficacy of mouth taping. PLOS One. PMC12094774
- NHS 111 Wales. Snoring — Health A-Z guidance. NHS 111 Wales: Snoring
- FDA assessment of the eXciteOSA device (2021), via secondary reporting. Wearable Technologies — secondary source; primary assessment not opened.
How we researched this page
We mapped 14 reader questions for this page from 211 collected "people also ask" queries, then traced every claim to 9 evidence-pack sources: a 2024 systematic review (9 studies, 235 patients, 2015–2024), a 2025 systematic review of mouth taping (10 studies), NHS 111 Wales guidance, one verbatim community report (r/snoring, quoted exactly and attributed), and one secondary report of an FDA device assessment (labeled as such). Options the trials never tested are named as untested rather than ranked. Full method: how we research.