THURSDAY, May 22, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Mouth taping is one of the latest health fads to swamp social media, driven by celebrity endorsements from the likes of Gwenyth Paltrow and Ashley Graham.
The practice of taping your mouth shut as you sleep is meant to prevent mouth breathing, in hopes of improving rest by warding off snoring or sleep apnea.
But a new review says there’s little evidence the fad actually benefits sleep. In fact, for many it could pose a serious risk of asphyxiation in the night.
“The social media phenomenon of mouth taping as a means to stop mouth breathing would seem to be guided by poor evidence and can even lead to risk of detrimental effects in individuals with serious nasal obstruction,” concluded the research team led by senior researcher Dr. Brian Rotenberg, a professor of otolaryngology at Western University in Ontario, Canada.
For the review, researchers evaluated 10 previously published studies of sealing the mouth shut during sleep. The studies employed different methods — using tape or other devices, like chin straps — to test the practice on a total 213 patients.
The review was prompted by social media posts promoting the practice as a means of sleeping better, fighting aging and even improving dry mouth and bad breath, researchers said.
“This is probably the single best wellness tool I have found recently,” Paltrow wrote on Instagram about mouth taping, according to Us Weekly. “Breathing through your nose at night apparently creates alkalinity in the body and promotes best quality sleep.”
Only 2 of the 10 studies suggested that mouth taping might be helpful for people with mild sleep apnea, results show.
On the other hand, 4 of the 10 studies warned that mouth taping could pose a serious risk of asphyxiation during sleep, if a person’s mouth breathing is caused by some sort of problem that is blocking their nasal airways.
For example, people with hay fever, a cold, a deviated septum or enlarged tonsils might be mouth breathing because they can’t get enough oxygen through their nose, researchers said.
There’s also a risk that a person might choke on their own vomit, were they to regurgitate in their sleep, researchers noted.
“Mouth taping is a contemporary practice that is often celebrity-endorsed, but is not necessarily scientifically accurate,” the researchers concluded. “Many people are not appropriate for mouth taping, and in some cases it can lead to risk of serious health harm.”
However, researchers noted that further investigation is warranted since the studies they reviewed were not of consistently high quality.
The new study was published May 21 in the journal PLOS One.
More information
The Cleveland Clinic has more about mouth taping.
SOURCE: PLOS One, news release, May 21, 2025