Research Confirms: Tongue Posture Is a Bigger Factor in Snoring Than Most People Realize

Somewhere around two in the morning, most snorers are the last to know it is happening. A partner hears it. A partner complains about it, or gives up and moves to the guest room. The person making all that noise sleeps straight through the night, convinced their sleep is fine, because from the inside it feels fine.

The usual explanations get blamed first. Weight. Alcohol. Sleeping on the back. All three matter, but there is a structure doing most of the actual blocking that almost nobody thinks about: the tongue. It is the strongest muscle in the mouth, and like every other muscle in the body, it loses tone the moment sleep begins. In a wide open airway that relaxation barely registers. In a narrower one, the tongue slides backward just enough to partially seal off the passage air needs to reach the lungs, and the surrounding tissue starts to vibrate. That vibration is snoring.

The muscle doing most of this work has a name: the genioglossus, the largest of several muscles that make up the tongue and one of the primary upper airway dilator muscles that keep the throat open during breathing. During waking hours, the genioglossus stays active, adjusting tension to hold the tongue forward and the airway clear. Sleep changes that. Muscle tone throughout the body drops during certain sleep stages, and the genioglossus is not exempt. In someone with strong baseline tongue posture and a roomy airway, that dip in tone rarely causes a problem. In someone with weaker tongue muscle tone, a naturally narrower airway, or both, the same dip can be enough to trigger snoring or worse.

Where the tongue sits during the day turns out to predict a lot about what it does at night. Orthodontic researchers use the term tongue posture to describe where the tongue naturally rests when the mouth is closed and idle, and the ideal position places the tip against the ridge just behind the upper front teeth, with the rest of the tongue resting along the roof of the mouth (Fatima & Fida, 2019). Most people never developed that posture, or lost it somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Chronic mouth breathing, allergies, and certain jaw structures can all push the tongue into a lower, more forward or backward resting position, and a tongue that spends all day resting low in the mouth tends to fall even lower once sleep removes what little muscle tone was holding it in place.

A smaller subset of cases trace back to something structural rather than habitual. Ankyloglossia, more commonly called tongue-tie, occurs when the band of tissue connecting the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth is unusually short or tight, limiting how far the tongue can lift or extend. It is usually diagnosed in infancy because of feeding difficulty, but a tongue-tie can go unnoticed well into adulthood, quietly contributing to low tongue posture, mouth breathing, and the same downstream airway crowding described above. It is not the most common driver of adult snoring, but for someone who has tried everything else without success, it is worth ruling out. An assessment from a dentist, orofacial myologist, or ear, nose, and throat specialist can usually determine within a single visit whether restricted tongue mobility is playing a role.

This is not a rare quirk affecting a handful of unlucky sleepers. Roughly a quarter of adult men and about one in seven adult women snore habitually, a finding that has held up since some of the earliest large-scale sleep research was published decades ago (Lugaresi et al., 1980). Snoring on its own is often dismissed as background noise, something a partner tolerates or a sleeper denies. But when tongue-related airway narrowing becomes severe enough, snoring can progress into obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing repeatedly stops and restarts throughout the night, fragmenting sleep and starving the body of oxygen in short, repeated bursts.

Body position compounds the problem. Lying flat on the back lets gravity pull the tongue toward the back of the throat, which is why snoring is often loudest and most frequent in that position and quieter on the side. Head and neck alignment matters here too. A neck bent too far forward or extended too far back changes the angle of the airway independent of anything happening with the tongue's muscle tone, which is part of why sleep specialists sometimes recommend side sleeping or supportive head positioning as a first, low-effort step before anything more involved.

The encouraging part is that tongue-related airway problems respond to something other than surgery or a lifetime of loud nights. Myofunctional therapy, a structured set of exercises that retrain the tongue, lips, cheeks, and throat muscles, has been studied specifically for this purpose. A widely cited meta-analysis found that adults completing a myofunctional therapy program reduced their apnea-hypopnea index, the standard measure of how often breathing is interrupted during sleep, by close to 50 percent, with children in the same body of research showing a 62 percent reduction (Camacho et al., 2015).

Myofunctional therapy programs typically combine a handful of exercise types. Some target the tongue directly, such as pressing the tongue flat against the roof of the mouth and holding it there to rebuild tone. Others focus on the muscles of the cheeks, lips, and soft palate, since airway stability depends on more than the tongue alone. Nasal breathing retraining is often included as well, since chronic mouth breathing tends to reinforce the low tongue posture that starts the whole cycle in the first place. None of these exercises look dramatic. Their value comes from repetition over weeks and months, done consistently, not from any single session.

A later Cochrane review reached a similar conclusion, finding that compared with sham therapy, myofunctional therapy produced a substantial drop in the apnea-hypopnea index along with measurable improvements in daytime sleepiness (Rueda et al., 2020). The evidence is not uniformly positive, though, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise. A 2025 systematic review and network meta-analysis found that myofunctional therapy did not produce a statistically significant AHI improvement across the full pool of adult studies, and that meaningful benefit was concentrated among people who practiced consistently for at least 30 minutes a day (Xu et al., 2025). The exercises work, in other words, but mainly for people who actually do them consistently, and as one part of a broader approach to airway health rather than a stand-alone cure.

None of this replaces a proper evaluation. Persistent snoring, gasping during sleep, or a partner reporting pauses in breathing are reasons to see a sleep specialist rather than start a self-directed exercise routine and hope for the best. The clinical perspective behind SCI's education programs, outlined at sleepcoachinginstitute.com/about, treats tongue posture and airway function as one piece of a larger picture that includes weight, anatomy, sleep position, and underlying medical conditions. Tongue exercises are a legitimate tool worth learning more about at sleepcoachinginstitute.com. They are not a substitute for diagnosis.

What comes next depends on who is reading this. Professionals working with clients on sleep, posture, or airway concerns will want to know how tongue function fits into assessment and practice. Individuals dealing with their own snoring or restless nights will want something simpler: what to actually do tonight.

For Professionals

What This Means for Health and Wellness Professionals

For professionals working with clients on sleep, breathing, or musculoskeletal health, tongue posture is worth adding to intake conversations even when it is not the presenting complaint. A client reporting fatigue, morning headaches, or a partner's complaints about snoring may never mention their tongue, because most people have no idea it is relevant. A few simple observations, such as whether a client breathes through the mouth at rest, whether their tongue rests low in the mouth, or whether they show signs of a restricted lingual frenulum, can flag a contributing factor that generalist assessments miss entirely.

Myofunctional therapy and tongue posture retraining are not universal fixes, and the research reflects that clearly. Benefit concentrates among clients who practice consistently, and the strongest outcomes appear in mild to moderate cases used alongside other interventions rather than as a replacement for medical evaluation. Setting that expectation early, and referring out for a sleep study or ENT evaluation when symptoms suggest moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, protects both the client and the credibility of the intervention itself.

For practitioners who want a deeper, structured framework for assessing and addressing airway and posture-related sleep issues, learning more about SCI's professional certification pathways at sleepcoachinginstitute.com/professionals is a logical next step.

For Individuals

How to Use This for Your Own Sleep

If snoring or restless nights sound familiar, there are a few things worth trying before assuming nothing can be done. Start with sleep position. Sleeping on your side instead of your back keeps gravity from pulling your tongue toward the back of your throat, and it is the single easiest change most people can make tonight. Head and neck alignment matters too. A pillow that supports your neck at the right height and angle, and that you can adjust to fit your own shape and preferred sleep position, tends to keep the airway more open than a flat or overly high pillow that tilts the neck out of a natural line.

Beyond sleep position, tongue and mouth exercises are worth a real trial. Try pressing your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth and holding it for several seconds, several times a day. Practicing nasal breathing, especially if you tend to breathe through your mouth during the day, can also help retrain the habits that carry over into sleep. These changes take weeks of consistency before they show results, not one good night.

If your snoring is loud, frequent, or if anyone has noticed pauses in your breathing, that is a sign to talk to a doctor rather than manage it alone. To learn more about SCI's individual sleep programs, visit sleepcoachinginstitute.com/individuals.

Camacho, M., Certal, V., Abdullatif, J., Zaghi, S., Ruoff, C. M., Capasso, R., & Kushida, C. A. (2015). Myofunctional therapy to treat obstructive sleep apnea: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sleep, 38(5), 669–675. https://doi.org/10.5665/sleep.4652

Fatima, F., & Fida, M. (2019). The assessment of resting tongue posture in different sagittal skeletal patterns. Dental Press Journal of Orthodontics, 24(3), 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1590/2177-6709.24.3.055-063.oar

Lugaresi, E., Cirignotta, F., Coccagna, G., & Piana, C. (1980). Some epidemiological data on snoring and cardiocirculatory disturbances. Sleep, 3(3–4), 221–224. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/3.3-4.221

Rueda, J. R., Mugueta-Aguinaga, I., Vilaró, J., & Rueda-Etxebarria, M. (2020). Myofunctional therapy (oropharyngeal exercises) for obstructive sleep apnoea. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020(11), CD013449. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD013449.pub2

Xu, Y., et al. (2025). Efficacy of myofunctional therapy for obstructive sleep apnea: A systematic review and network meta-analysis. Sleep Medicine Reviews. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1532338225000521