I tried six snoring cures - this is the one that worked

I recently heard the most disgusting noise in the world. It was a hellish mess of snorts, groans, chokes and grunts, like a pig having a flashback to a traumatic event in its past, or a Tasmanian devil violently disagreeing with someone while eating a toffee.

Sadly, the noise came from me. I was on a plane, and had a bit of a cold, and snored so loudly and terrifyingly that I woke myself up. This was fairly upsetting.

My wife has told me how loudly and revoltingly I snore many times over the years, but I had always attributed at least part of that to how much more concentrated and intense every sound seems in darkness and surrounded by silence. I assumed my snores were much the same as hers: annoying, capable of being heard from downstairs, vaguely foghorn-esque, but not abnormal or anything.

But 10 minutes after waking myself up and falling back asleep, it happened again. The horrible sound of a swan dying echoed through the length of the plane and I decided to do something about it.

Snoring happens when the muscles in your soft palate (the roof of your mouth), throat and tongue relax. This relaxed tissue can end up partially blocking your airways, which means the air travelling through does so with more force, which makes the tissue vibrate and everyone think you’re gross.

If your snoring is really interfering with your sleep, or you wake up choking or short of breath, with a sore throat, chest pain or headaches, you might have a more serious issue like obstructive sleep apnoea, and should visit the doctor. But I don’t have that. I just snore a lot like a manky hog.

Factors like being overweight or drinking a lot of alcohol can make it all worse – with the former there’s simply more tissue, and with the latter it’s more relaxed – but there are changes you can make to how you sleep to try to reduce how much of a honk-shoe-honk-shoe-mimimimimimi noise you make at night.

This can be as simple as trying to sleep on your side rather than your back, or can involve all sorts of anti-snoring devices. These all aim to reduce the pressure going through your airways, either by stopping your muscles relaxing quite so much, broadening the airways in your nose to reduce the amount you breathe through your mouth or taking your mouth out of the equation entirely.

My phone must have been listening to me as I revolted a whole plane, as for two weeks after that trip, every time I went on Instagram I was deluged with ads for anti-snoring mouthguards. These always involved young men being gazed at adoringly by their beautiful girlfriends as they slid chunky gumshields into their mouths and then performed varying levels of convincing “having a lovely sleep” acting.

This definitely seemed like the best solution for me, as they also stop you grinding your teeth, something else I’ve recently learned my nighttime self goes absolutely nuts for.

I ordered one, trimmed it, boiled it, moulded it to my teeth and gave it a go. But, while they seem to work wonderfully for a lot of people, every time I tried using it I ended up retching violently. After a lot of thought I reached the conclusion that, however annoying snoring might be, throwing up all over your partner’s head would be worse. So the search continued.

First, the one that involved putting the least stuff on your face. An anti-snoring pillow has a foam core designed to discourage sleeping on your back and gently lean you towards a less noisy side-sleeping position. Mine, from Silentnight, came with a lot of disclaimers insisting it might not help with anything, but I definitely slept better on it than on the flattened, beaten, drool-stained monstrosity it replaced. My nights were still far from silent, though: time to shove stuff into my head.

Nasal dilators, as well as making an excellent band name, work by stretching your nostrils extra-wide from the inside: big-ass gorilla nostrils for easier nighttime breathing.

Every night that I wore mine I ended up waking up and pulling it out in the middle of the night, snoring my way to morning untethered and undilated. I have a reasonably big nose, but this felt like someone else was trying to pick it with their big toe, which I couldn’t get used to at all.

Nasal strips work in the same way but from the outside. You adhere the stretchy, plaster-like strip to the outside of your nose and it pulls your nostrils wider. They’re vaguely fun to put on, and as long as there isn’t a mirror nearby you can convince yourself you look like a cool American football player (I got black ones for this very reason). I snored significantly less wearing these — I was still elbowed awake now and then, but far less than normal. They’re also comfortable enough, once you get used to them, that I would forget I was wearing them by morning, and become incredibly confused as to why my glasses kept sliding down my face.

I had hoped that wearing a snoring mask would feel slightly badass, and that I’d nod off feeling like I was wearing a Petr Cech-style helmet like a world-class sportsperson, but it felt a lot more like I was wearing a pair of knickers on my head. The idea with the mask is that it holds your jaw in place, stopping it from slopping about and causing airway blockages. I had no complaints at all in the night, although felt like I still did some new little snorts and snarls. They might have just been deep existential groans from deep within my soul, though — Amazon don’t sell anything for those.

The final, most extreme-feeling solution I tried: snoring tape. This seals your mouth shut, preventing snoring by sheer brute force. It feels like being duct-taped by a kidnapper, and there’s something about it that feels both uncomfortable and slightly unsavoury.

Affixing it to my face I feel both like I’m going to die in the night and that my death will be misinterpreted as having been significantly more sordid than an anti-snoring mishap. But it’s actually fine, mostly — not a snore to be heard all night. However, I also couldn’t really talk, and when I woke up thirsty and wanted a drink of water I was out of luck. And, despite the product’s insistence it was beard-friendly, it ripped a few hairs out of my face — enough so that I’d be hesitant to use it regularly.

I’m going to press on with some combination of mask, strips and pillow, and while they might not lead to a totally snore-free life, it’ll hopefully make the truly grotesque barnyard noises I filled economy class with into a rarity. I just hope I don’t have to answer the door unexpectedly, because with the mask and strips combo, I don’t wish to horrify the milkman. I’ve caused enough sleepless nights as it is.