A few updates:
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I normally sleep on my side, and a single piece of tape sufficed. But following hernia surgery in August, I needed to sleep on my back. I found I needed two pieces of tape when sleeping on my back.
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When I haven’t shaved, the tape I use sticks poorly. The longer my facial hair grows, the more likely the tape is to come loose during the night.
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I intend to try specialized mouth tape. The 3M Nexcare Sensitive Skin Tape I use works very well, but I worry chemicals or microplastics or something may stick to my lips. I wipe my lips with a wet paper towel every morning, but I would prefer tape that never touches my lips.
[Orthodontist Dr. Erin Fraundorf] and [dentist Dr. Michael] Wei share a number of specific changes that mouth taping may contribute to:
- Improved nasal breathing. …Fraundorf says, “Through nasal breathing, you also produce a gas called nitric oxide, which increases blood flow, lowers blood pressure and improves brain function.”
- Increased oxygen intake. “Nasal breathing activates your lower lungs, letting you take deeper, fuller breaths, therefore getting more oxygen,” Fraundorf explains. Wei adds that this improved oxygen intake is accompanied by better filtration of air and better carbon dioxide elimination compared to mouth breathing.
- Reduced snoring. According to Wei and Fraundorf, breathing through the nose may eliminate or reduce snoring, leading to more sound sleep…
- Bruxism prevention. “In some cases, mouth taping can help prevent teeth grinding (bruxism)” …
- Better sleep, and therefore, higher energy. Because mouth taping may improve sleep quality, Fraundorf says related benefits like increased REM sleep, higher energy in the morning, improved cognitive function and reduced anxiety may be secondhand results.
My wife and kids have long complained that I snore. Though I don’t consciously notice my snoring, it has undoubtedly also disrupted my sleep, reducing how much high-quality deep sleep I’ve gotten over the years. Even when I’ve given myself enough hours of shuteye, my brain hasn’t reaped the full benefit.
Additionally, for many years, I frequently woke up several times a night with a dry throat and needing to drink water. This was caused by my tendency to mouth-breathe while sleeping.
Before we took an amazing family vacation to The Netherlands and Belgium in late June, I was looking for a way to reduce my snoring and happened to read that Erling Haaland – one of the world’s best footballers… or “soccer players” to most Americans – sleeps with his mouth taped shut. Haaland says it improves his sleep by forcing him to breathe through his nose, which helps him sleep more soundly by snoring less and preventing his throat from drying out.
Such a simple miracle cure sounded too good to be true. Wouldn’t someone have told me this decades ago?!?! It sounded a bit like snake oil, but I was desperate. So I decided I’d give it a go for a week to see whether I noticed any improvement.
The improvement was so dramatic that I needed just one night to become a believer! I slept the whole night through, never waking up with a dry throat. I felt noticeably more refreshed than normal when I woke up, despite having spent no extra time in bed.
The following nights were also great, and I’ve been sleeping with a single piece of medical tape vertically over the center of my mouth every night since. My sleep quality has been much better, and I’ve felt more alert during the day. I now may wake up once a night to pee but seldom several times and seldom craving water.
I’ve become an evangelist, raving about mouth tape to my colleagues and friends, several of whom must sleep with giant, annoying CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines that can cost $1,500. I even gave one of them a roll of my tape.
After several months of dramatically improved sleep, I woke up several times each of the past few nights with a dry throat, each time discovering my tape had come loose and I had been breathing through my mouth. I eventually figured out it happened because I hadn’t shaved for a few days and the tape wasn’t staying stuck to my facial hair. I found myself shaving at 5:00 am to sleep soundly the rest of the night! (Also, I haven’t been able to sleep on my side the past few nights because I had hernia surgery three days ago, and I snore more when sleeping on my back.)
There is a published research paper – “The Impact of Mouth-Taping in Mouth-Breathers with Mild Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Preliminary Study,” Healthcare (Basel), 2022 Sep 13 – showing a 50% improvement in both apnea/hypopnea index and snoring index when patients with obstructive sleep apnea taped their mouths closed. The results were highly significant, despite a tiny sample size of just 20 study participants:
The median apnea/hypopnea index (AHI) decreased significantly, from 8.3 to 4.7 event/h (by 47%, p = 0.0002), especially in supine AHI (9.4 vs. 5.5 event/h, p = 0.0001). The median snoring index (SI) was also improved (by 47%, 303.8 vs. 121.1 event/h, p = 0.0002). Despite no significant difference in the mean saturation, improvements in the oxygen desaturation index (8.7 vs. 5.8, p = 0.0003) and the lowest saturation (82.5% vs. 87%, p = 0.049) were noted.
Study participants with the worst sleep apnea benefited the most from taping their mouths shut while sleeping:
The change in AHI was associated with baseline AHI (r = -0.52, p = 0.02), oxygen desaturation index (ODI) (r = -0.54, p = 0.01), and SI (r = -0.47, p = 0.04). The change in SI was strongly associated with baseline SI (r = -0.77, p = 0.001).
If you want to try this, you don’t need specialized mouth tape. I use 3M Nexcare Sensitive Skin Tape, which has worked great. The nurse at Stamford Hospital seemed to use the same tape to attach my IV before hernia surgery last week. I bought a six-pack through Amazon for $30. If you want to consider other options, People magazine provides this review: “The Best Mouth Tape for Sleep, According to Experts”.
Also, you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) tape over your whole mouth. You just need enough to keep your lips together so your brain will keep you breathing through your nose. I recommend curling your lips slightly inward before taping them to prevent a gap from forming while you sleep.
One last benefit of mouth taping at night is that – after sleeping this way for two months – I believe I breathe through my nose far more often during the day too. This makes sense, as mouth tape has been reshaping my brain for 7-8 hours a night. Breathing through my nose also helps filter out germs and pollutants, so this simple, inexpensive change has brought many benefits.
Caveat: I’m not a physician. The above works well for me, but please do your own research and talk with your doctor.
With appreciation for photo by Adam Grabek on Unsplash