- Look, a piece of tape over your mouth isn’t a solution to any problem.
You don’t always understand how precious a good night’s sleep is until you can’t get it. If some issue starts taking a toll on your ability to rest, you’ll go to any lengths to get it fixed.
Sometimes, though, people go to way to extreme lengths — like taping their mouths shut.
Taping your mouth shut has become something of a small trend recently. According to the theory, taping your mouth forces you to breathe through your nose, which should result in better sleep.
This bizarre health “hack” has been spreading mostly on — where else? — TikTok, where self-declared health gurus are pushing it while naturally selling related products. Actual sleep experts and doctors, however, aren’t thrilled about nocturnal mouth-taping.
Although nighttime mouth breathing can be a real problem, taping your mouth shut isn’t the solution, doctors caution. Doing so could prevent you from getting professional help for an underlying health issue or, in the worst-case scenario, suffocate you in your sleep.
So, in case you’ve been considering taping your mouth for the night: don’t.
Pushed on Social Media
To most people, having a piece of duct tape keeping your mouth shut brings to mind some kind of kidnapping or hostage scenario. To a small group of folks, though, it’s the harbinger of good sleep.
According to a recently popularized theory, taping your mouth is the ultimate life hack for peaceful sleep. This bizarre wellness fad is being pushed on social media, particularly TikTok.
Those espousing mouth taping claim that it forces you to breathe through your nose while you sleep, like nature intended. This, they say, reduces snoring and other factors that could impact your sleep quality, allowing you to dream sweet dreams.
Of course, these wellness influencers are typically also selling mouth tape and other related gadgets. We suppose that just comes with the territory.
Is Mouth Breathing a Problem?
But is nocturnal mouth breathing really a bad thing? Well, it can be.
Breathing through your mouth while you sleep is not typically a major health issue. However, we are biologically designed to breathe through our noses, so that is always preferable.
The airway in your nose is lined with hairs that are designed to trap debris, dust, and allergens to keep them out of your lungs. Your mouth doesn’t have this system, so if you suffer from allergies or dust sensitivity, mouth breathing could exacerbate related problems.
Additionally, having your gob open all night can dry out your mouth and irritate your throat. This, in turn, can lead to a sore throat in the morning, foul-smelling breath, and other oral health issues.
Finally, breathing through your mouth is likely to make you snore. That can wake you or your bedfellows up, which again disrupts your sleep cycle.
Tape Isn’t the Way to Go
With all that said, however, mouth tape isn’t what you should do to address nighttime mouth breathing. The tape will likely not do very much to help with the problem, and it could end up seriously harming you in the long run.
“The studies behind mouth tape are small, the benefits are modest, and the potential risks are there,” summarized Dr. Kimberly Hutchison, neurologist and sleep expert at Oregon Health & Science University, for the Associated Press.
What few studies have been conducted on mouth tape show that it has no or next to no effect on your sleep quality. Meanwhile, there are several risks that go with the tape.
On the least severe end of the scale, mouth tape could be too uncomfortable for you to sleep with, which negates its whole point. The glue could also lead to skin issues, like acne, around your mouth.
In a nightmare scenario, the tape could straight up kill you through suffocation. It’s unlikely since your nose is open, but people are unfortunately very successful in dying in unlikely ways.
Perhaps most seriously, though, mouth tape could lead you to ignore an underlying health issue that’s causing you to breathe through your mouth in the first place. This, in turn, could lead to illnesses like sleep apnea, a condition where breathing stops suddenly during sleep.
Best to See a Doctor
So, if mouth breathing keeps you up at night and mouth tape isn’t a solution, what should you do? The same thing you do with every health problem — go see a doctor.
There are multiple conditions that can cause nightly mouth breathing, like smoking, being overweight, or having obstructive polyps in your nose. These can all be rectified by stopping smoking, losing weight, or getting surgery.
The mouth tape, on the other hand, does nothing to address the real problem.
Meanwhile, if doctors find out you have sleep apnea, they can offer you treatment with a CPAP machine. Again, the mouth tape is only likely to make your sleep apnea worse.
To put it simply, just don’t tape your mouth shut.