Mouth taping for better sleep? Why this trendy hack might hide a bigger problem

Mouth tape used to be the stuff of horror movies and crime stories.

Now, it’s sold on pharmacy shelves and promoted in online ads promising better sleep. You might have heard that soccer star Erling Haaland, actress and wellness brand founder Gwyneth Paltrow and podcaster Joe Rogan use it. Or maybe you’ve seen people from your favorite reality TV shows including Love Island’s Carl Schmidt or Love Is Blind’s Garrett Joseman taping their mouths when heading to sleep.

Marketed as a way to guarantee you breathe through your nose while dozing, mouth tape is said to improve sleep quality and dental hygiene while reducing morning breath and snoring. Some people say the practice might even help strengthen your jawline.

But before you toss a box of adhesive sleep strips into your cart and spend your hard-earned dollars on this change to your bedtime routine, consider what sleep experts advise:

“There is very little evidence to support mouth taping’s purported health benefits, and some clear evidence of risk and potential harm,” said Dr. Brian Rotenberg, a professor of ear, nose and throat surgery at Western University in Canada. “In the absence of a known diagnosis for why one’s nose is blocked, it does not make sense to mouth tape.”

Nasal breathing has benefits, but mouth tape might not be your best option 

In general, nasal breathing is better for people.

“The nose warms, humidifies and filters inspired air,” said Dr. Aatif Husain, a Duke University Medical Center neurology professor. Husain is the chief of the epilepsy, sleep, and clinical neurophysiology division.

That filtering can help reduce a person’s chances of illness or allergies, research shows. Some early research also signaled that when a person is at rest, nasal breathing is associated with lower blood pressure compared with oral breathing.

“Mouth breathing during sleep causes dry mouth and throat, and over time may contribute to dental problems,” Husain said. Mouth breathing can lead to halitosis — bad breath — and receding gums.

Mouth breathing at night is also linked to more snoring and sleep apnea, a sleep disorder that causes you to stop breathing during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea can happen because of a blocked airway. Central sleep apnea, meanwhile, happens because your brain doesn’t send the correct messages to the muscles that control breathing.

With all that in mind, it might sound like taping your mouth shut when you sleep is a no-brainer quick fix. But Husain said it shouldn’t be considered a replacement for medical evaluations of snoring or poor sleep.

“Chronic mouth breathing is usually a sign of something else, such as nasal obstruction, allergies, deviated septum or sleep apnea,” Husain said. “It is better to find and treat that cause than to ‘tape over it.’”

Study showed most claims about mouth taping lack evidence

A 2025 systemic review looked at 10 studies representing 213 patients and found that existing data doesn’t support mouth taping as a clinical solution “for the general population with sleep disordered breathing.”

For most people, there was “uncertain” and “minimal” evidence to support using mouth taping to treat mouth breathing, obstructive sleep apnea and sleep disordered breathing. Some of the research reported minor improvements in snoring and the severity of mild obstructive sleep apnea.

The review noted that some research showed mouth taping can reduce the severity of mild sleep apnea. But other studies haven’t had the same results, Husain said.

“The jury is still out as to the effectiveness of mouth taping in sleep apnea,” he said.

An earlier 2025 review examined nine studies, noted that few TikTok claims about mouth taping had been studied, called for more high-quality research and found “little consensus on mouth-taping’s benefits.”

Rotenberg said that in certain circumstances, mouth taping might be a way to train someone to nose breathe at night after a nasal breathing obstruction correction.

Mouth taping can have risks

Here’s the catch-22 for mouth tape: Someone whose nose is clear is the least likely to experience any risk from mouth tape. That’s because they are also the least likely to depend on mouth breathing.

“Mouth breathing often occurs due to nasal obstruction from some cause,” Husain said. “Mouth breathing is trying to compensate for that, and if one blocks that with tape, there may be serious consequences.”

The people most likely to try mouth taping are probably chronic mouth breathers, and they “are the ones most likely to have nasal obstruction or undiagnosed sleep apnea or other medical disorders,” Husain said.

Mouth taping might also reduce snoring and mask other problems enough that the person experiencing those symptoms never gets evaluated for potential sleep disorders like sleep apnea, he said.

Untreated sleep apnea can cause headaches and dry mouth and puts stress on the cardiovascular system, makes it difficult to concentrate, increases exhaustion and fatigue.

Multiple studies in the 2025 review warned of adverse effects from mouth taping, including a risk of suffocation if someone has a nasal obstruction and the possibility of inadvertently breathing in stomach contents if someone gets sick in the night when using mouth tape.

Most studies on mouth tape exclude people with nasal obstructions, Husain said.

Ultimately, the 2025 paper found that “there are potential serious detrimental health outcomes to those with nasal obstruction” who use mouth tape when sleeping to improve their mouth breathing, obstructive sleep apnea or sleep disordered breathing.

PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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