Prevention Magazine February 2000.
Natural remedy rates high among snorers and their bedmate.
Great news for those who lose sleep next to habitual snorers: A homeopathic remedy seems to help stop the noise.
In a recent study, those snorers who took the remedy SnoreStop showed a significant decrease in their snoring after 10 nights, compared to those who took a dummy pill (Sleep and Breathing, vol 3, no 2, 1999).
How does the product work? According to Kenneth Rifkin, ND, the Portland-based naturopathic physician and homeopath who concocted the remedy, it halts the snore-producing process before it starts. A snore is born when tissues in the upper airway relax and sag during sleep, so air passing through the airway makes the tissues rattle nosily.
”SnoreStop firms up the soft tissues in the back of the throat so that they don’t vibrate like a sail in the wind when the snorer breathes,” says Dr. Rifkin, who has used it to treat more than 200 snorers- much to the delight of their sleep mates. The medicine also acts as an antihistamine to open the airways, so air passing through doesn’t create so much tissue-vibrating turbulence. In the study, snorers reported no side effects after taking SnoreStop. (But we bet that they enjoyed one significant, positive effect: fewer elbow jabs from their disturbed bedmates.)
