This article discusses using humidifiers to help with snoring.
If you are prone to excessive snoring while you sleep, it can be a real pain. In fact, it’s probably more of a problem for your spouse than it is for you!
If you want to deal with excessive snoring, a high-quality humidifier might be worth looking into. Humidifiers have long been used to address coughing, dry throat and nose, and a variety of other problems.
But another benefit of humidifiers is that they help you sleep at night. In fact, humidifiers can reduce snoring, in addition to improving the quality of your sleep.
Keep reading for more information about using humidifiers to reduce snoring and get better sleep.
Does A Humidifier Reduce Snoring?
Running a high quality humidifier while you sleep does help with chronic snoring. It may reduce how much you snore, and even how loudly.
To understand how a humidifier helps with snoring, we must first understand what makes us snore, and how a humidifier works to combat that. Below, we also recommend the best ways to set up your humidifier to deal with snoring.
What Causes You To Snore While Sleeping
Snoring is a common problem that most people will have dealt with at some point in their lives. But what exactly causes it?
We snore when air passes over relaxed tissues, causing these tissues to vibrate and create sound. These relaxed tissues include the tongue, the soft palate, and the airway.
That said, another common reason for snoring is an excessively dry throat or nasal passage. And that’s where a humidifier comes in.
How A Humidifier Helps With Snoring
Humidifiers work by releasing water into the air, in the form of mist. This increases the amount of moisture in the air, helping relieve symptoms such as coughing, sneezing, allergies, dry/cracked skin, and the like.
But another major benefit of humidifiers is that they help with dry throat. And that in turn helps reduce snoring when you sleep.
It should be noted that having a dry throat is not the actual cause of snoring, but it certainly exacerbates the problem. And while a humidifier may help reduce snoring, it won’t eliminate snoring completely.
Best Humidifier Settings To Help With Snoring
If you were curious how to set up your humidifier to help with snoring, allow us to make some recommendations. Our aim will be to recommend the best settings to help you deal with dry throat and nasal passages, which are a major contributor to excessive snoring.
High Mist Volume
First things first, you should try to set the mist volume and speed settings a bit higher than usual. Doing so ensures better, faster coverage of a space, in addition to improved humidification.
The higher humidity will more effectively counter symptoms of dry throat and nasal passages. Additionally, it will also allow you to sleep better, as higher humidity in a space has been linked to better higher quality sleep.
Essential Oil/Aroma
Some essential oil enthusiasts recommend rubbing essential oil on your feet in order to combat snoring. We haven’t really tried that one, but we find that a bit of aroma or essential oil in the humidifier can help with snoring as well.
Not to mention, it just makes for a more pleasant feeling in general. Just don’t overdo it with the essential oil. If your humidifier has an aromatherapy function, a couple drops should more than suffice.
Cool/Warm Mist
If your humidifier gives you the option to set the temperature of the mist, we highly recommend using it to help with snoring. Your unit will probably have cool and warm mist modes which make for a noticeable difference in the temperature of the mist.
The interesting thing is that warm mist works for some folks, while others prefer cool mist to deal with snoring. It is really up to you which one you choose to help you with snoring. That is why we highly recommend trying out both modes to see what works for you.
Use A Medicated Mist
Often, excessive snoring can be brought about by congestion or build up in your nasal passages. While a humidifier helps with that on its own, you can supercharge it by adding medicated mist.
Imagine mist with VapoRub in it. This will help open up your nasal passages, which could in turn reduce snoring.
Reduce The Humidity
‘What the what?! You just told me to set the humidity settings to high, and now you’re telling me to reduce it? What’s the big idea?’
Folks, when it comes to snoring, it’s not a very exact science. And different people react differently to different remedies. So it’s entirely possible that you could benefit more from lower humidity.
Try it out, and it just might work!
Things To Consider When Using A Humidifier While You Sleep
Humidifiers are perfectly safe to use at night while you sleep. However, there are some things to consider when setting up the humidifier to run all night.
Placement
Firstly, where you place the humidifier while it runs at night is very important. We recommend using the 3,2,1 approach if you’re using the humidifier in a bedroom, or any other small to medium-sized indoor space.
So that’s at least 3 feet away from the bed where you sleep, to ensure you don’t have to deal with any of the adverse effects of putting a humidifier too close to you while you sleep.
And then at least 2 feet off the ground. Elevating the humidifier is a great way to make the humidification a bit faster and more effective.
And finally, you should put the humidifier at least 1 foot away from any walls, furniture, and other fixtures around your room.
Putting the unit too close to walls could cause paint and wallpaper to start peeling. Besides ruining the finish, this could also cause paint particles to be released into the air, which you definitely don’t want.
Runtime
If you run the humidifier to help with snoring, you should consider how long the unit will keep running after you go to sleep. You don’t want your humidifier to just keep running the whole time, as it could result in over-humidification, which can become quite uncomfortable.
So, it is a good idea to use the timer function, if your humidifier has one, to automatically turn it off after a while.
Automatic Humidity Control
If your humidifier comes with an automatic mode, we recommend using it while you sleep. This mode uses integrated sensors to detect the relative humidity of your surroundings, and then humidify them accordingly.
It takes the guesswork out of humidifier use, and since this mode regulates the humidity, it will prevent over-humidification.
How To Reduce Snoring Without A Humidifier
Humidifiers are an effective way of dealing with snoring. But even if you don’t want to use a humidifier to help with snoring, there are a couple other things you can try.
Change Your Sleeping Position
Often, reducing snoring is as simple as sleeping in a different position. If you snore a lot while sleeping normally, try sleeping on your side, and vice versa. It’s all about finding the perfect position for you.
Lose Weight
If you find yourself snoring excessively, losing weight could help deal with it. This is especially true if you recently gained weight.
That’s not to say that skinny people don’t snore. But when we gain weight, the extra mass around our necks tends to constrict our airway, thus making snoring more apparent.
Change Your Pillows
Pillows tend to get neglected, but they play a huge role in how comfortable you are while sleeping. If you haven’t changed your pillows or washed them in a while, it is possible that dust has settled into them over time.
When breathed in, this dust could cause dry throat, which worsens snoring. So change your pillows, and your partner might just get a good night’s sleep.
Conclusion
Humidifiers are a great way to deal with snoring. And while they probably won’t cure snoring entirely, they will reduce it to more manageable levels.
Still, if you plan on using a humidifier to help with snoring, there are a couple humidifier settings you need to keep in mind, as we’ve mentioned above.
And lastly, if you find that the humidifier doesn’t quite help you with snoring, you can try a couple other things and find something that works for you.
