How I Healed my Snoring Without Surgery

A successful 10 year quest to breathe freely

Back in high school, I struggled with daytime drowsiness. I rarely stayed awake for an entire school day; my Biology and AP US History classmates could attest. I napped so often that my friend Shriram determined that my spirit animal was the sloth.

A fraternal diagnosis (age 19)

While sharing a hotel room with my brother, Jake, on a family trip, he informed me that I’d spent the night snoring loudly. I didn’t believe him, so that night he took it upon himself to gather evidence.

The next morning, he gleefully presented me with video footage of a sleeping Victor ‘sawing logs’, which, of course, is the clinical term for the appalling sounds coming out of my face in its desperate attempts to suck in oxygen. 

It would have been absurd to live in denial after seeing that clip, so I accepted Jake’s claim.

“Hello, everyone. My name's Vic and I am a snorer.”

Accepting the fact that I was snoring actually gave me hope. I thought “oh! Snoring is obviously the cause of my nagging fatigue. I just need to stop snoring and then I'll regain the superhuman vitality I enjoyed up until 9th grade!”.

Buoyed by what seemed like a clear understanding of the cause of my problem, I embarked on a quest to solve it. At the time, I wouldn't have believed you if you told me that this quest would take a decade to succeed. Alas, that it did.

CPAP: the silver bullet that wasn't, courtesy of cutting-edge Western Medicine (age 19-22)

The same day that Jake showed me the highlight reel of my snoring, I mentioned it to my uncle Craig. He told me about a machine called a CPAP that was working wonders for the quality of his sleep.

CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) works by constantly blowing air into your nose/mouth through a mask while you sleep. The air pressure keeps your airways open so that you breathe easily and get the oxygen you were missing out on by snoring.  

It seemed like an ingenious device; I was convinced Craig had pointed me towards the simple solution I craved. So, I scheduled an appointment with a sleep doctor at Kaiser and signed up for an overnight sleep study. I had a clear intention of getting a CPAP machine.

The results came in: my snoring caused me to stop breathing, either partially or entirely, every 6 minutes. This was medically categorized as mild sleep apnea and explained to me as a “respiratory disturbance”. As I’d intended, the doc prescribed me with a CPAP machine. I remember it costing about $250 with insurance (my dad thinks $750), and my grandma generously paid for it (thanks Bubs!).

In hindsight, it's quite telling and somewhat disturbing that the discussion with my sleep doctor paid no attention to why I (a healthy, active, slim 18 year old) was experiencing chronic snoring. There was no investigation into my habits, diet, or sleeping environment. We were just eager to treat the snoring itself without finding its root cause. As it turned out, that was a nearsighted mistake that would actually keep me snoring for years.

My snoring, I'd later learn, was being caused by something. And only by figuring out what that something was, and then changing it, would I give my body what it needed to open my airways enough to stop snoring. Seems obvious, right? At the time, though, I had an unconscious faith in Western Medicine's ability to solve any of my health problems.

That fancy, silver CPAP machine looked just like my silver bullet.

I was stoked to start using my brand new CPAP. I clicked the pump and the water chamber together, plugged in the tube, and strapped the face mask over my nose and mouth. I turned it on, and felt the pressure of air blowing non-stop into my airways.

The sensation was weird & uncomfortable, but I wasn't immediately deterred: my doc had warned me about the “adjustment period” of getting used to sleeping with the machine. I stuck with it, trusting that the CPAP was my cure.

My eagerness soon faded. Although the CPAP did seem to improve my sleep, I really, really didn’t like using it. Here’s why:

1. On mornings after sleeping with the CPAP, my mouth and throat would sometimes feel really dry, raw, or sensitive and I'd experience an unpleasant taste.

2. *TMI alert*: The air would sometimes blow into my stomach instead of lungs… I'd wake up and spend up to half an hour passing that gas. This highly unpleasant side effect is known as aerophagia, or air swallowing.

3. The face straps and mask were uncomfortable and would leave imprints on my face.

4. The CPAP machine was about the size of a shoebox, which made it annoying to shlep¹ around while traveling. It was an ordeal to pack it into its travel bag and then set it up again.

5. The water chamber needed to be cleaned daily, which was a hassle. As a 19 year old, I wasn't always diligent with the cleaning; when I neglected it for a few days the tank would get moldy and end up blowing moldy air directly into my lungs while I slept.

6. Aesthetically, the CPAP cramped my style. It looks like a ventilator for someone on life support. I was embarrassed about it and sometimes hid it when I had friends over.

When I graduated from Virginia Tech, I packed up a backpack to embark on a gap year of travel and the CPAP didn't make the cut. After four years of on-and-off use, it didn’t seem worth it to me so I continued on my journey without it.

For the record:

It appears true that CPAPs generate significant health benefits for the tens of millions of people that use them. (Fun fact: President Joe Biden uses a CPAP).² Research suggests that the benefits of CPAP therapy include improved heart health, less daytime sleepiness, lowered risk of stroke and car accidents, and improved mental health.³ A study in 2022 found that people who regularly used their CPAP were 39% less likely to experience premature death and 33% less likely to experience incident heart failure as compared people who used theirs for less than a year before stopping.⁴

That said, and noting that it's probably not my place to advise anyone to stop using a CPAP, I will point out that CPAPs are not designed to address the root causes of snoring. If you snore, a CPAP can help you avoid the negative health outcomes associated with snoring, but it will not change the conditions and risk factors that actually cause the snoring, which include being overweight, drinking alcohol, having narrow airways, and chronic congestion.⁵

The search continued & floundered (age 22-27)

Without my CPAP, I still snored and felt drowsy. Unfortunately, I still believed that a silver bullet was out there, so I kept looking for it.

Inspired by Tim Ferriss’s willingness to be a “human guinea pig” in experiments of his own design, I set about guinea pigging myself with dozens of products, apps, and habits.

The most game-changing mobile app I found is called Sleep Cycle. It uses the phone's mic to listen for snoring (and other sounds), which it saves in audio clips that you can listen to in the morning. (Its other key feature is an intelligent alarm that wakes you up gently. I've been using the premium version since 2018).

Sleep Cycle was an excellent tool for staying aware of my snoring, a persistently nagging reminder that I snored delivered to me every morning in the form of audio clips and the tally of minutes I'd spent snoring.

To scroll through my Amazon order history is to journey into the land of forgotten products. Nasal strips, mouth tape, nasal dilators, a humidifier, a dehumidifier... quick-fixes that sometimes brought noticeable improvements but never felt like true solutions.

Still, I snored. Why? Because my efforts were still aimed at eliminating a symptom and not changing the context of my life that was creating it.

In frustration, returning to the doctor's office (age 28)

Frustrated to find myself still snoring, almost TEN YEARS after I started trying not to, I went to an ENT (Ear, Nose, & Throat doctor) who recommended surgery: septoplasty and turbinate reduction. Those surgeries are basically the cutting of flesh out of one's nasal cavity.

It would have cost around $15k, the recovery could have been multiple months of painful swelling and extreme tenderness, and the operation came with no promises of effectiveness.

In fact, it was quite possible that even if my airways were opened enough to stop snoring, they could have closed up again after a few years and the same snoring could return. As frustrated as I was, I knew that would bring me to a whole other level of exasperation.

Still, I didn't know what else to do and I was quite serious about resolving my snoring so I almost went through with the surgery. My closest friends encouraged me to do it. And yet, there was an inner voice that said “what about consulting with a holistic healer first?”.

A last ditch effort before surgery: holistic healing

Thankfully, I listened to that voice. I searched Google Maps for “holistic healer” and found The Healing Collective OB near my house in San Diego. The owner, Aly, replied to my request for help with words so hopeful I struggled to believe them:

“I can definitely help. I am an herbalist and also a kundalini (a form of yoga that deals primarily with the breath). Would you have time to speak tomorrow?”

Yes, I had time.

From the start, Aly was fun to work with! She was thorough in her approach to understanding the situation, embodying the 5th Habit (“seek to understand, then to be understood”).

We spoke about all the approaches I’d already attempted. She asked about the history of my sleeping environments, and I recalled that my bedroom in high school was in the basement which had mold growing in the carpet and sometimes crept up the walls.

Aha! That seemed to Aly and me a likely root cause: mold toxicity.

It had been years, though, since I'd slept in that basement consistently. Could it still have been affecting me? I realized some of my subsequent homes in college had mold too, and in doing some research online it became apparent that the effects of prolonged mold exposure could indeed last for many years:

“mold's effects are more the result of chronic activation of the immune system, leading to chronic inflammation.”⁶

Sure enough, respiratory issues one of the most common symptoms of living & sleeping in damp, moldy homes.

Aly advised that the blood tests for mold toxicity were expensive and not super accurate, and that the holistic healing regimen she was creating for me could work regardless of whether that mold exposure was truly the primary cause or not, so we agreed to operate on the hypothesis of mold toxicity as a potential root cause of my swollen nasal airways (which were confirmed as swollen by the ENT I'd seen).

Aly sent me a quiz to determine my dosha, which is a body type in the ancient Hindu system of medicine known as Ayurveda, along with a thorough questionnaire about my health in general.

The Shift Scription

She used all that info to write up a “Shift Scription”: a 7 page document detailing a holistic regimen for me to follow. When I say “holistic” I mean it touched on almost all aspects of my life and lifestyle. She advised me on everything from herbal supplements, tinctures, and tea (all of which she provided), which foods to eat and which to avoid, certain yoga poses and breathwork techniques to practice daily, which kind of plants to keep in my room, a review of all the products I was using (like soaps, shampoos, etc) along with guidance on which to swap out, and more. I had already cut out alcohol which was definitely beneficial and I also scaled back to almost no caffeine.

The herbs, vitamins, and minerals I used were:

1. Cats Claw in pill form

2. AM Tincture: Oregon Grape Root, Tulsi (adaptogenic, Vitamin C), Goldenrod

3. Oil of Oregano (high potency of antioxidants)

4. PM Tincture: Echinacea, Ashwagandha

5. Zinc Sulfate (to build immunity against mold)

6. Spirulina (removes mycotoxins from the bloodstream)

7. Vitamin C (Micro-C)

8. B vitamin complex that includes B12 (helps nervous system)

9. Nighttime Tea: Lemon Balm & Peppermint (fill the entire tea bag and let it steep for at least 10 minutes)

10. Quercetin + Bromelain

11. Magnesium

12. Rosemary (diffused in essential oil form)

13. Sage (fresh, in my food)

14. Raw garlic

With Aly’s encouragement, I started following the Shift Scription. Within 3 months, my snoring was GONE. We’re talking 0 snoring. Before, I was snoring every night for 5-12 minutes (tracked with the Sleep Cycle app).

The swelling in my nostrils reduced so much that I could breathe through both sides for the first time in maybe ten years. 

I was awed, humbled, inspired, and so so grateful. No $15k surgery needed! No bloody, swollen nose. Rather, holistic healing provided by a deeply knowledgeable herbalist. Aly showed me the power of carefully-chosen herbs, breathwork, ayurvedic nutrition, and an intentionally crafted lifestyle regimen to enable my body to heal itself.

Over a year later, I'm still not snoring. My airways have remained very open and as far as I can tell the swelling hasn't returned at all.

My story is, I think, a powerful example of Western Medicine failing a patient and falling short due to its myopic focus on treating symptoms instead of healing a whole person.

David R. Hawkins, M.D. Ph.D. points out this phenomenon in our society in his book, “Power vs. Force”:

The difference between treating and healing is that in the former, the context remains the same, whereas in the latter, the clinical response is elicited by a change of context so as to bring about an absolute removal of the basis of the condition rather than mere recovery from its symptoms. It is one thing to prescribe an anti-hypertensive meditation for high blood pressure; it is quite another to expand the patient's context of life to the degree that he stops being angry, hostile, and repressive.

My “change of context” involved moving away from moldy places and removing the unhealthy habits and substances from my life that held my body back from its fullest expression of health. The sleep doctor gave me a device and said & asked nothing about my sleeping in a moldy room. The ENT surgeon asked little about my context either. Only the holistic healer sought to understand the context, and only with her guidance did I create true healing and set myself free from snoring!

Living snore-free on Lago Atitlán

1. shlep is a Yiddish verb meaning “to drag or pull something”

2. https://www.ncoa.org/adviser/sleep/sleep-apnea-statistics/

3. https://www.sleepfoundation.org/cpap/cpap-machine-benefits

4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001236922200263X

5. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/snoring/symptoms-causes/syc-20377694

6. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mold_health_issues