The problem with sleeping on your back, says Cartwright, is that the tongue can sag into the throat and block the top of the airway. The two most popular categories of dental devices — jaw positioners and tongue retainers — use two different approaches to prevent the tongue from sagging.

"Jaw positioners fit into your mouth like two athletic mouthpieces — top and bottom — with a hinge," says Cartwright. "They're made to force the lower jaw a slight bit forward. That keeps the airway open."

Tongue retainers, meanwhile, feature a soft plastic bulb at the front of the mouth that holds the tongue in place by suction. "When you're wearing one of these, it looks like you're blowing a bubble-gum bubble," says Cartwright. "You slip your tongue into the bubble, squeeze it like a turkey baster, and it holds the tongue in place, like when you suck your tongue inside a soda bottle."

These oral devices are effective, says Cartwright, but they have their drawbacks, too.

"They tend to slip out, or people pull them out and drop them on the floor without realizing it," she says. "They take some getting used to."

Stop Snoring With a Few Tennis Balls, a Needle and Thread
There's also the matter of the price. They can cost as much as $800, and many insurance plans won't cover the expense. Fortunately, Cartwright has a more reasonable offer, which might do millions of back sleepers some good.

"I invented it myself," she says. "It's just a white T- shirt, with the yin-yang sleep/wake symbol on the front and three to four tennis balls sewn into a pocket along the spine."

The concept is simple: The tennis balls keep you from sleeping on your back, reducing the kind of airway obstructions that cause you to snore in the first place.

"In two to eight weeks, many people who use the shirt learn to sleep on their sides," says Cartwright, "then they can throw the shirt away."

You can sew pockets for tennis balls into a sleep shirt or buy ready-made shirts over the Internet.

In any case, snorers should be assured that with expert help and a little self-discipline, snoring can be reduced to tolerable levels. Meanwhile, the beleaguered bed partners of snorers might find solace by reminding themselves that on some primal level, your snoring sidekick may be following a latent, Neanderthal urge to protect hearth and home. Maybe that's a stretch, but then again, do you have any cave bears lurking in the hallway?

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