What are the treatments for snoring?

This depends largely on the reasons of your snoring.

Being overweight: if you have a collar size of 16½ inches or greater, you may not have the muscle tone needed to keep the airway open sufficiently at night to allow normal breathing. This is way a person with a short fat neck is at an increased risk of snoring. Men tend to get fat around their necks and waists, whereas women seem to put on weight around the thighs.

However, this situation very often changes for women following the menopause and by the time women have reached their 70s they are just as likely to be snorers as men of the same age. Weight loss with accompanying fat reduction around the neck area will certainly help to alleviate snoring.

Sleeping position: while sleeping on your back, your tongue, your chin and any excess fatty tissue under your chin may relax back and squash your airway. Sleeping on your side could prevent this.

Alcohol: alcohol slows the brain’s responses, causing the muscles to relax even more than during a normal night’s sleep. The added relaxation of the musculature causes the oropharynx to collapse causing snoring. Furthermore alcohol may induce obstructive sleep apnoea (where breathing stops for short periods during sleep) in individuals who are otherwise just snorers. Additionally alcohol causes nasal airway irritation and congestion that increases the airway resistance when breathing.

However if you are not heavily overweight and snore at all time, regardless of your alcohol consumption, your snoring could be caused by a stuffy nose, a blocked nose or an enlarged uvula, for which we offer three different treatments. They are:

Unblocking the nose – Minimally invasive laser treatment under local anaesthetic can be used to treat the problem of a blocked nose in a matter of minutes. The treatment reduces enlarged fleshy ridges or ‘turbinates’ at the entrance of the sinuses. Please note it cannot correct a deviated septum. Please see our Rhinoplasty treatment page for more details about correcting a deviated septum. For more information click here

Laser Assisted Uvulopalatoplasty (LAUP) – This is a simple procedure that is performed under local anaesthetic and uses a laser to remodel the excess soft tissue that vibrates at the back of your throat. This frees your airways and increases oxygen supply, which not only prevents snoring*, but lifts the mood, increases energy levels and can even improve libido. LAUP is the most popular snoring treatment in the UK and over 40,000 procedures have been performed to date.

Bipolar Radiofrequency Thermotherapy (RFITT) – This is a short, gentle treatment that uses a radio frequency to tighten the muscle within the soft palate so that it vibrates less during sleep. The procedure involves numbing the back of the throat with a local anaesthetic and targeting it with a slim pen that emits a high frequency. The heat causes the muscle to tighten both during and after the treatment. The maximum benefit is usually evident about 6 months after treatment.