More on Thyme and Snoring

Ever since I published the post "Snoring Has Finally Met Its Match: Thyme," I cannot begin to tell you how many of you have approached me saying, "Is it true? I need to try this. My wife would love you forever if it worked!" Of all the posts on my blog, Google searches keep bringing people to this post more than any of my other posts! Snoring is that much of an issue. Some of you snore, some of you sleep next to a snorer, but all of you would give anything to either tone the snoring down or make it entirely obsolete.

Well, here's the update. Our thyme experiment has been two years in the making. At first my husband put a drop or two of thyme on the bottoms of his feet before bed. That evolved into putting a drop of thyme on the palms of his hands and breathing it in. Quickly that turned into him simply putting the open bottle under his nose and inhaling. (This progression happened over the course of a year and a half.) All in all, he would do that every night before bed. Without fail if I started to hear him snore, I'd nudge him and ask, "Did you put thyme on?" He'd grumble in his sleep and say, "No, I forgot," and grab the bottle off his night stand to take a whiff.

That's not to say thyme always worked. Will still snores on random occasions, but he doesn't bring down the house night after night like I wrote about in my post two years ago. (Click here to read it.) Some nights it didn't stop the snoring, but usually it did. If we were sleeping away from home, he would usually snore the first few nights. I have no idea why. New bed and pillow change your sleep positions? Or if his allergies were kicking in or he was starting to come down with a cold he would snore. But I'd say 13 out of 14 nights thyme worked amazingly well to prevent snoring.

Six months ago we moved, and the thyme got packed away. We temporarily lived at my parents' while we remodeled our new home, and my husband did not use thyme the entire six weeks we were there. But he didn't snore. Except for random nights like I already mentioned. We now live in our new home, and even though we unpacked the thyme, my husband doesn't need it anymore.

What am I saying? Will no longer needs thyme to stop his snoring. What does that mean? I'm not exactly sure. I can't tell you how thyme works and if it helps your body stop snoring, but I can't deny that it's worked for us. Will thinks maybe I've grown immune to his snores, which could be partially true. But considering that we have a baby who has me awake at night longer than I'm asleep, we can consider that a perfect opportunity for me to hear any snores if there were any. So what have you got to lose?

Snoring Has Finally Met Its Match: Thyme

mmarcotte51 / Foter.com / CC BY

If you could choose between sleeping peacefully through the night or waking up every few hours and not being able to fall back asleep, which would you choose? It's pretty safe to say that most, if not all, of us treasure our sleep enough that we would do anything to get a good night's rest. Anything!

According to a study at the University of North Carolina, 30 percent of women and 40 percent of men snore, although those numbers depend on the person surveyed actually being aware that they snore. This study is to test how making lesions on the soft palate by heating a needle electrode with radio frequency energy can tighten up the soft palate to potentially eliminate snoring. I'm telling you this to illustrate how we as a society are going to great lengths to find ways to get rid of snoring—it disrupts our sleep and the sleep of the people around us.

This Friday Will and I are going on three months being married! We are so in love (I just had to throw that in there) and have so much fun together. Who knew it'd be worth the wait to find a love that would happen so naturally and easily (compared to ALL the other attempts of trying to force love and "make it work") and find the person who would make us truly the happiest? I am so grateful for this man.

Well when we were dating I found out that Will snored. And not just snored but raised the roof with his snores and woke neighboring cities. His friends and family know this from personal experience, and Will was well aware of it too. So I started praying really hard that he'd stop snoring by the time we got married. Didn't work. I told Will to do positive affirmations, which he kindly told me he'd do, but to be honest I'll have to ask him if he really did them. We looked up the emotions on snoring, and I researched the meridians associated with snoring in Chinese medicine. After three months of ear plugs and experimenting and lots of nights lying awake, what would you say if I told you we have found something that works??

Jack Fussell / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Thyme. Yes, thyme was our unsuspecting answer! You know, the plant you cook with? The herb? We bought the essential oil Thyme almost a month ago, not even realizing it is known to help with snoring. About three weeks ago we read how you can help snoring if you rub it on the bottoms of your feet before going to bed at night, specifically at the base of the big toe, and Will started doing it. After two days there was no change, and he stopped putting it on. Then maybe a week later Will decided to give it another try and started putting it on religiously—he keeps the bottle of thyme on his nightstand, and it's now become part of his bedtime routine. (Really I am just trying to give him things to do before bed since my bedtime routine is like an hour and his is 2 minutes. We regularly discuss this imbalance and the unfairness of life.)

After about a week I still didn't notice much of a change in his snoring, BUT the second week I noticed that if he was snoring, all I had to do to get him to stop was gently touch his arm, not even waking him up. This was a huge breakthrough! Before Will started using Thyme if I nudged him he'd stop snoring for 5 seconds, roll over, and start snoring again. On average this second week I would touch his arm to stop his snoring about three times a night. 

Now into the third week, I would classify Will as a non-snorer! I know, crazy, huh? If you don't believe me, you are welcome to sleep on the floor beside our bed tonight. This is the truth. The snoring has changed to a very deep breathing that is free of any rattle and does not wake either of us up. Sometimes he will do a few seconds of sounds that would typically turn into a snore, but then they stop. It is magical, really—heavenly! And, to be honest, surprising. I knew essential oils worked great for preventing colds and for helping with my arthritis, but now I know even more so not to limit their possibilities. Who knew thyme was where it was at?

UPDATE: Click here to read the part II to this post.