A lot of websites and companies claim to have gadgets and pills that will stop your snoring, free your airways, help you breathe easier or help you fall asleep faster. Most of them don’t work however. Why do so many people buy them? They are desperate to find a way to stop snoring and choking during sleep, or to cure their insomnia. In addition, it is easy to fall for cheesy explanations that involve magnets, false physics, chemistry and biology claims if you are not a scientist yourself (even some doctors fall for them, sadly). A lot of these products come with a lot of positive reviews, usually written by the scam artists themselves. Some people swear that these methods work for them, while in reality what they experience is the placebo effect. This means that people feel better temporarily simply because somebody “reputable” told them that they should. If the improvement of symptoms is real, it is most likely the result of a coincidence with other circumstances. These gadgets and substances may be FDA approved, but that only means that they are safe to use, and not at all that they are also effective. If people resort to false medicine instead of seeing a qualified physician, they risk becoming worse, and in this sense these methods are not a safe alternative at all.

Chin Straps for Snoring

Chin straps will hold your mouth closed to force you to breathe only through your nose. Allegedly, this will stop the snoring. In reality, apart from being dangerous (imagine your nose gets stuffy at night and you cannot breathe through your mouth because it’s being held shut by the straps), they will have only limited effect on your snoring. You will snore just as easily breathing through your nose. The acceptable ways to address snoring are described on a previous page.

Nose Clips

Nose clips attach to the nasal septum (the part that separates your two nostrils). The theory is that the clip exerts pressure on the trigeminal nerve in the septum (often aided by two magnets that increase the pressure on the septum), causing a dilation of the nasal passage.

These products will plug up your nose, making it harder to breathe. There is no medical basis for the claims above.

Nose Straps

On the underside of nose straps is a special adhesive that, when placed properly on the nose, gently sticks to the area right above the flare of each nostril, in theory. As the bands attempt to straighten back to their original shape, they allegedly gently lift the sides of the nose and open the nasal passages, providing immediate and continual relief. In reality, a stuffy nose comes from congestion of the mucous membrane and by mucus plugs. Not only will the adhesive surface come easily loose during the night, but the slight pull on the nostrils doesn’t address the real mechanism of a stuffed nose.

Electric Shock-Based Snore Stopper

The electric shock-based snore stoppers are supposed to make you stop snoring by emitting a gentle (“harmless”, they say) electrical signal when it detects your snoring. In theory, your body will learn to stop snoring over time. In other cases it is claimed that you will turn on your other side when shocked, which will again stop the snoring. In reality you cannot train your body to do that because you will develop resistance to the shocks as your body gets used to them. The solution: increase the voltage. You will just end up with burn marks or other undesirable consequences.

Anti Snore Pillows

Pillows will help a lot of people sleep better by relieving tension in your neck and spreading the pressure uniformly over your head-neck area. They have no proven utility as snore stoppers though.

Magnets

Magnets are great for attaching things in an elegant way since they attract each other and other metals. Magnetic fields are currently being use in NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) scans in hospitals. A very intense magnetic field placed behind your head can also render you blind for a short period of time (for experimental purposes). But so far, these are the only type of medical uses for magnets. They will not cure anything, including pain, snoring or heavy breathing. Maybe one day the technology will be advanced enough to cure people using magnets, but this is very far from now.

Homeopathic Remedies

Quite often, you will find so called “100% natural remedies” (usually made of various plant extracts) based on homeopathy. Homeopathy is a form of alternative “medicine”, in which practitioners treat patients by repeatedly diluting the “active ingredient” in water until less than one molecule is present in the final concoction. Homeopaths believe that the “memory” of the active ingredient is passed on from one water molecule to the next and that the more diluted the final product is, the more efficient it is. Of course, they don’t explain that on the bottle because they would lose their customers. The video below explains what “scientific basis” these treatments have and why they cannot possibly do what they say they do.

Tea and Herbal Supplements

Some insomniacs use herbs such as valerian, chamomile, lavender, hops, and passion-flower, usually in the form of tea or dietary supplements.

These substances have undergone multiple studies and appear to be at best only modestly effective in reducing the sleep latency (the period it takes to fall asleep), without any effect on the quality of the sleep. In fact, the most recent double blind studies (studies that exclude the placebo effect and any kind of bias), show no effect whatsoever, in spite of the reputation of these herbs (look for recent articles on Google Scholar). Of course, certain interest groups will swear by them, since their reputation depends on perpetuating this myth among patients (and sadly among some physicians too).