Mouth Taping is the Crazy Sleep Trend You Should Actually Try
It sounds a little unorthodox, but there might be a way to cure your snoring, bad breath, and even improve your bone structure, with a simple piece of tape. You just have to put it over your mouth when you sleep like you’re trapped in a kidnappers trunk. Sounds relaxing, no?
Wellness entrepreneur and Bulletproof Coffee bro Dave Asprey swears by it, and has been taping his mouth for five years. In a recent Instagram collaboration with the platform Mind Body Green, he claims it’s one of the most effective biohacks there is.
By improving your sleep with a little piece of tape, Asprey argues that you decelerate the aging process overall.
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It’s not just Asprey and TikTokers who are embracing the trend. Huberman Lab podcast host Andrew Huberman, agrees that mouth tape is worth the hype. As the Stanford University neuroscientist explains, most of the benefits of taping your mouth shut come down to reducing the damage of being a mouth-breather.
“It’s not good to be a mouth breather,” Huberman said on a recent episode of the Flagrant podcast with Andrew Schulz. The reason for this is because you only breathe out of your mouth, you don’t exhale enough carbon dioxide, which can make your anxiety soar.
Huberman goes on to warn that mouth breathing can even change the structure of your face. There’s ample evidence that mouth breathers have longer, narrower faces, crooked teeth, and recessed jaws, when all this time they just needed a little tape?
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According to the Sleep Foundation, the benefits of mouth tape mostly underscore how important nasal breathing is for your health. Breathing through your nose filters out allergens, increases your oxygen intake and circulation. It also produces nitric oxide which has anti-fungal and antibacterial effects. Basically, nasal breathing is essential for cleaning your body out.
That said, mouth tape isn’t for everybody and can lead dry lips, discomfort, and overall anxiety about having your mouth taped shut. So be sure to try special tape designed for being able to breathe when you sleep and not regular old duct tape. This isn’t “Taken” cosplay, after all.
At the end of the day, if mouth tape makes it harder to sleep, then it’s probably not the biohack for you. Just make sure to keep your mouth shut when you are awake.
