The Snoring Centre

For 2012 National Stop Snoring Week Ran 23^rd – 27^th April.

This year during National Stop Snoring Week volunteers endeavoured to stop snoring using remedies and old wives tales from as far back as the early 1800s. They tried the following remedies:

• Ball in the back of pyjamas
• Drinking milk
• Eating horseradish
• Gargling with garlic
• Phonetic exercises
• Rubbing upper lip of snorer
• Water under the bed
• Sucking a dummy
• A Royal remedy – rub toothpaste under the nostrils of snorer
• Sleeping without pillows

Volunteers used a chosen remedy for one week and reported their progress with video diaries.

The overall conclusion…. the old remedies simply don’t work.

Some of these remedies have long been believed to have some effect but the volunteers found that, in fact, many remedies not only failed to stop snoring but created other problems such as sore neck, dry mouth during the night and in the morning, nightmares, gooey, slimy taste in the mouth and – in the case of some remedies – actually making the snoring worse.

Even the famous ‘tennis ball sewn into the back of the pyjamas’ – still so widely recommended – had no effect on the snorers.

The study reinforces the view that a scientific approach of finding the cause of an individual’s snoring is essential before a treatment can be recommended.