19 Sep What Are the Mouth Taping for Sleep Benefits?
Many people are trying a new health hack to help nasal breathing while sleeping and avoid mouth-breathing’s unfavorable outcomes: mouth taping for sleep benefits.
Inhaling and exhaling through the nose is the healthiest way to breathe while sleeping; however, it doesn’t occur naturally for many patients, especially those with OSA (obstructive sleep apnea). Some studies even suggest that open-mouth breathing correlates with many sleep apnea patients’ risk of nocturnal ischemic heart attack.
Is it a lousy fad to ignore or worth a try for relief at home? Let’s review this mouth-taping trend and give our perspective.
The Basics of Mouth Taping for Sleep Benefits
This trend simply involves wearing tape over one’s mouth when going to bed to prevent mouth breathing and force respiration via the nasal passages. You don’t have to have sleep apnea to know that sleeping with your mouth open can lead to unpleasant symptoms like dry mouth, TMJ pain, drooling, cracked or chapped lips, and snoring. It is easy to see why mouth taping’s potential improvement of these symptoms entices many people to try it.
We can appreciate the thought process that led to this trend. If it works, mouth taping could be a home remedy for mild snoring. Nose breathing can also increase nitric oxide production (which usually occurs to some degree) during respiration, enriching the blood with oxygen and dilating blood vessels to improve healthy circulation throughout the body. It also can make you feel a lot more relaxed.
Efficacy & Safety: Our Recommendations, Concerns, and Warnings
While we can appreciate the idea behind mouth taping for sleep, we’re here to give you our honest opinion. We’ll address your questions about safety and efficacy, share crucial warnings and concerns, and offer alternative recommendations.
Is mouth-taping a practice backed by scholarly research and clinical trials?
One of our most significant concerns about this mouth taping trend is the lack of clinical research and approval to improve sleep quality.
Unfortunately, most information and “evidence” about this practice’s safety and efficacy is anecdotal and has not been thoroughly tested by sleep health experts. Consequently, we cannot, in good faith, endorse mouth-taping as a risk-free, one-size-fits-all method for improving sleep breathing.
So, mouth taping for sleep benefits is built on good ideas, but does it work?
In essence, mouth taping may be beneficial in preventing mouth breathing; that is, for patients who only sometimes snore. Breathing is an involuntary (or automatic) body function, so when your brain sends the signal for you to inhale and your mouth isn’t inhaling, you should begin to breathe out of your nose.
However, some patients’ brains do not adapt to this properly; many patients have sleep apnea caused not by a physical obstruction of the airway or mouth positioning but rather by the brain’s failure to consistently send signals for respiration. When these individuals try mouth taping, they’re more likely to wake up—or worse, suffocate—than automatically switch from oral to nasal respiration.
Another concern is the discomfort that mouth taping can cause.
- If you’re used to breathing through your nose, it can be difficult to stop yourself to breathe through your mouth, and forcing it can be anxiety-provoking and distracting, preventing you from being able to fall asleep.
- We’re also willing to bet you’re not used to having something stuck to your face while you sleep. Tape on your face can feel itchy, the adhesive can irritate your skin (especially if you have latex allergies or otherwise sensitive skin), and you could actually damage your skin’s natural moisture barrier.
Can mouth-taping serve as an alternative to OAT?
Absolutely not. If you have sleep apnea that needs intervention with an oral appliance or CPAP, mouth taping will not be a sensible or safe substitute for your treatment. We do not recommend interfering with your existing treatment plan.
If you suspect you have sleep apnea based on your symptoms but have yet to undergo a sleep study, we think you should wait before trying mouth-taping. It is hazardous to try self-diagnosing and treating what you believe is sleep apnea.
We also want to warn you that very little clinical research has been done on mouth taping for sleep benefits. Our experts also predict that this trend could lead to patients suffering from jaw pain because it is an unregulated and unsupervised technique that could misalign the jaw.
What do you recommend instead of mouth taping?
We recommend trying sleep breathing exercises or getting to the root of the problem with a sleep study.
We Help Solve Sleep Problems
At TMJ & Sleep Solutions of Alabama, we are passionate about giving our patients the sleep and pain relief they deserve with effective, long-term solutions worth their time and money. We devise a treatment strategy that works to improve issues so you can return to your everyday life without suffering from pain and sleeplessness.
Call us today at (205) 874-9699 or contact us to easily set up an appointment. When you get in touch, don’t hesitate to ask our friendly staff any questions you might have about insurance coverage, costs, treatment, and more.
Thanks for reading this edition of our sleep advice blog! We create content like this so that potential and current patients (and other visitors) have the resources to take charge of their sleep health instead of letting sleep problems rule their lives.
If you learned something new or want to spread awareness about this trend with us, don’t forget to share this post on your favorite social platforms! You can also ask questions about sleep health, TMJ disorder, or sleep apnea in our Instagram comments, and we might just feature them in our next blog.