Why Mouth Taping May Not Be Worth the Risk

If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you may have seen creators hyping up the proposed benefits of mouth taping. The “hack” involves using tape to keep your mouth shut while you sleep. The thinking is, if you force yourself to breathe through your nose, you’ll wake up feeling more refreshed and avoid some of the health issues linked to sleeping with your mouth open.

However, a new systematic review published in the journal PLoS One suggests that mouth taping probably isn’t doing your health any favors—and may even lead to serious consequences like asphyxiation.

Here’s what to know about mouth taping, why it can be dangerous, and what you can do to breathe easier at night.

Mouth taping typically involves placing a piece of skin-safe surgical or porous tape across your lips to encourage nasal breathing and prevent mouth breathing.

People who breathe through their mouths at night typically have a dysfunction in their airways. Often, this means something obstructs airflow in your nose, Andrey Zinchuk, MD, MHS, a sleep medicine specialist and director of the Advanced Apnea Management Program at the Yale School of Medicine, told Health. The culprit could be:

• A cold
• Allergies
• An underlying health issue, like enlarged tonsils, a deviated septum, or benign nasal polyps

If you have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)—a disorder that causes periodic breathing pauses during the night—you’re more likely to sleep with your mouth open.

There’s no solid data on how common mouth taping is, but anecdotally, experts say their patients are curious about it. “It’s becoming more of a question as more people realize that sleep is important and feel like their sleep is not optimal,” Zinchuk said.

Generally speaking, people interested in mouth taping want to reap the benefits of nasal breathing. Breathing through your nose does come with more health benefits than mouth breathing, according to lead study author Brian Rotenberg, MD, MPH, a professor in the Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery at Western University’s Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry in Canada.

Nasal breathing helps you avoid drooling and dry mouth (and, therefore, bad breath and tooth decay). It also humidifies, warms, and filters irritating particles from inhaled air. And it improves the oxygen flow in your body, enables you to smell, and usually just feels better than mouth breathing.

For the new review, the researchers identified 86 papers that explored the possible effects of mouth taping (either via adhesive tape or a chin strap that held the mouth closed) on people with known mouth breathing, nasal obstruction, or sleep-disordered breathing. “Most published data on mouth taping was of such low quality that it didn’t make sense to include in a high-quality, peer-reviewed scientific paper,” Rotenberg explained. “We eventually came up with 10 of the best papers on this topic.”

Of those 10, which included 233 people, only one was a randomized controlled trial (the gold standard of scientific evidence). The researchers couldn’t do a statistical analysis—a method that would ideally identify patterns and trends—because they were working with low-quality data.

However, they concluded that:

• Eight of the published papers showed that mouth taping didn’t lead to meaningful health benefits.
• Four papers noted that people with nasal obstruction faced serious health risks from mouth taping, including not getting enough oxygen.
• Two papers suggested that mouth taping had a modest benefit in folks with mild OSA, but the results weren’t relevant in a clinical setting, Rotenberg said.

Overall, the existing evidence doesn’t support mouth taping as a treatment for mouth breathing or sleep-disordered breathing, including OSA. The findings underscore the risks of hopping on health fads fueled by social media, Rotenberg said.

The problem with mouth taping is that many people who do it have problems with nasal breathing. Ask yourself, said Boris Gilyadov, MD, a sleep medicine specialist at Mount Sinai, “If you can’t breathe through your nose very well, would you also want to block your mouth?”

When you don’t get enough air at night (or ever), your body goes into panic mode, Zinchuk explained. Oxygen levels drop, carbon dioxide rises, and you get startled awake so you don’t suffocate. The process leads to a spike in heart rate, stress hormones, and blood pressure. Repeating this every night strains various parts of your body, including your brain and heart, he said.

If you have sleep apnea but haven’t been diagnosed, as is sometimes the case, mouth taping could worsen the condition because you’re further restricting your oxygen. “There’s a very real risk of people not being able to get air into their throat, locking their breathing off, and choking at night,” Rotenberg said.

Experts also said there’s no guarantee that the tape will stay in place. If that little strip becomes loose, it could wind up in your mouth and become a choking hazard.

Rotenberg acknowledged that mouth taping can feel like it’s working some magic. But until there’s more high-quality data to back its potential benefits, it’s important to remember that it’s likely masking a problem, and you need to find out what that is.

That’s why each expert Health spoke to said it’s safer to stop mouth taping, even if it’s seemingly helpful, and have a conversation with your primary care doctor about what’s going on. They can refer you to a sleep specialist if they suspect sleep-disordered breathing is behind your snoring, dry mouth, or exhaustion. 

Once you have a diagnosis, you can work together to fine-tune a treatment plan. If you decide that mouth taping is worth continuing, at least you’ll be doing it under medical supervision, so your doctor can determine whether it’s improving or harming your oxygen levels, Zinchuk said.

Even if you’re convinced your mouth breathing is the result of something less serious, like persistent allergies, it’s safest to book an appointment with a healthcare provider. They can ID what’s triggering your mouth breathing and personalize your treatment, Gilyadov said.

You may simply need a saline nasal spray, decongestant, or antihistamine to help clear things up. Staying well hydrated and sleeping on your side instead of your back may also offer some relief. If your doctor determines that your mouth breathing is a behavioral problem instead of a medical one, Zinchuk said practicing mindful breathing exercises can help you reverse the habit. 

In the case of OSA, treatment can involve using a CPAP machine, wearing a custom dental appliance, or, in last-resort cases, surgery.

The bottom line? Don’t delay the care you deserve. “Just because something doesn’t feel right doesn’t mean it has to be that way,” Zinchuk said. “You’re not on your own.”