The chin strap and the chin cushion are effective ways of keeping your mouth shut while you sleep. But why is keeping my mouth shut, while I'm asleep, important in stopping my snoring?

These devices can help several types of snoring. Firstly they help mouth snorers by promoting nasal breathing. By changing from a mouth breather to a nasal breather many causes of snoring are eliminated. However this is simpler said than done.

For some mouth breathers using one of these products for the first time can feel claustrophobic. The urge to breathe through the mouth with the requirement to breathe through the nose can be quite disconcerting. If you are someone who breathes through the mouth simply because your nasal passages are too blocked then see our section on clearing a stuffy nose ; it will help. Used in conjunction with these techniques the chin strap or chin pillow can prove to be very effective.

These devices have the least impact on nasal snorers as they already breathe through the nose but they can still be helpful. Even if you breathe through your nose, if you open your mouth and drop your jaw, the tongue rises off the floor of the mouth and tends to drop to the back of the throat. By keeping your mouth shut, the tongue is much less likely to fall back.

The chin strap can help stop the jaw falling back by keeping a positive pressure on the teeth effectively holding the lower jaw forward.

The chin cushion has the added benefit of stopping the head from falling forward. By holding the head up the airways are held more open making it even easier to breathe.

Both these products are snoring aids. They can be, and are, helpful for many people. If you are trying to change the way you breathe to over come your snoring these can help, but you have to make the change, the aids wont do it all for you.

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