Stop snoring - Some Amusing Methods

Snoring has often been the comic relief in movies and TV sitcoms. In fact, it goes all the way back to the early days of television when one partner would get out of their twin bed and nudge the other to quit snoring. Since those days, however, couples now sleep in the same bed but the jokes continue. While many medical treatment and aids for snoring now exist, many people still use home remedies. The home remedies might seem logical at first glance but many of them can also be quite humorous at the same time.

One of the first “cures” for snoring involved a tennis ball. Since people whom snore often do, so when they lay flat on their back, or snore more loudly lying flat on their back, one item often marketed or created at home for snoring was a tennis ball. The tennis ball was attached to the pajamas right in the middle of the back. The logic behind this “treatment” was that in the middle of the night when the person normally rolled onto their back and began to snore, the tennis ball would make them too uncomfortable to remain in that position and they’d immediately roll to their side again.

While this cure sometimes didn’t work because the pajamas would twist to the side, or some people slept without a pajama top. In that case, often taping it to the back was the solution.  If the snorer had massive amounts of back hair, this could turn out to be a painful solution.

Another cure for snoring that is not only cost effective but also easy to do is toning the muscles in the throat. There are several different exercises people use from those used by singers to warm the vocal chords to some tongue and face exercises. These aren’t amusing unless someone catches you doing them. The logic behind the exercises comes from studies showing that if you pronounce certain vowels or curl the tongue in a specific way, it strengthens the muscles in the upper respiratory tract. That act of strengthening the muscles is supposed to reduce snoring.

The first is to go up and down the scale saying la-la-la-la-la, the ka-ka-ka-ka-ka and finally ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. You’re to repeat that several times. Throughout the day, you’re also to repeat the five vowels, a-e-i-o-u, aloud for at least three minutes.

To exercise the facial muscles, you should purse your lips with your mouth closed and hold it for thirty seconds. Exercising the tongue is also important, after all, when it falls to the back of the throat, it causes snoring. To do this put the tip of your tongue against the back of your front teeth and then slide it back toward the throat for several minutes.

Another exercise involves opening your mouth wide and moving your jaw to the left for half a minute and then doing the same thing on toward the right.  The final exercise is the most embarrassing of all. First, you‘ll need to stand in front of a mirror in order to make sure you’re doing it properly. Open your mouth wide and then contract the muscles in the throat and hold them for thirty seconds. Watch to see if the uvula, the dangling thing hanging in the back of your throat, moves up and down. If someone catches you, just tell the person you were checking your uvula. It almost sounds vulgar.
Since developing the muscles of the face and upper respiratory area are important, learning a forced air musical instrument has been offered as one solution. Two of the instruments often mentioned are not traditional ones, the alphorn and the didgeridoo.  The alphorn is the big long pipe that extends clear to the ground. You often see these in pictures with men playing them dressed in traditional Swiss garb.

The didgeridoo is from the aborigines. It’s a long hollow wooden tube with an opening larger than the average person’s mouth. In order to get sounds, you have to purse your lips and force air through, similar to the alphorn. While neither of these instruments is traditional, learning them “for your snoring” can be fun but difficult to explain.  You can also take up singing at the top of your lungs for the same effect.

Some people have gotten so unnerved by the snoring that they threw their entire body on top of the snorer. For some reason, this seems to work. Others have put a belt around the chest of the person that snores and tightened it just enough so it stayed on their body but didn’t restrict their breathing. Again, the reason it works is unknown but it seemed to do the trick.

There’s a bit of dissention on the best height of pillow. Some people claim that no pillow or a very flat one is the best and others claim that raising he pillow to four inches high is the best procedure. While it isn’t amusing, the contrasting discussions can get quite heated. The people that claim a four-inch high pillow say it juts out the jaw and stops snoring. Those that claim a flat pillow is best use the same logic.

An unusual method of treating snoring involves gargling before bed. However, you don’t use Listerine or other well known gargle; instead, you boil sage to create your magic elixir. After you’ve boiled it, you allow it to cool and remove the sage leaves by straining it. Then use this to gargle with each night and you’ll eliminate snoring according to the belief.

Probably the best known over the counter cure for snoring actually looks the funniest. If you’ve ever seen someone coming out of a deep sleep and walk into the living room with a nasal strip across his or her nose, you’ll understand. These strips are constructed to open the nasal passages so you don’t mouth breathe, one of the causes of snoring, but they do make you look as though your nose has wings.

While snoring can be an indication of sleep apnea, which is no laughing matter, it still has a place on sitcoms and movies for comic relief. One person said they found a method to relieve themselves of their mate’s snoring. When the bed partner started to snore, they simply pinched their nostrils together and covered their mouth. It didn’t stop their snoring but it woke them up so the suffering party could tell them to sleep on the couch.

You can read mode about how to stop snoring in this article.