University News

Q&A: Should You Tape Your Mouth Shut Before You Sleep?

You read that correctly. There are people taping their mouths closed before bedtime to try to stop snoring and prevent “potentially sleep apnea,” said Dr. Eric Davis, a University of Virginia sleep expert.

When UVA Today reached out to talk to him about this social media-stoked trend, he’d just finished talking about mouth taping with one of his patients.

“I’m really glad you are taking this on,” he said. “It’s a really important topic.”

The trend started where many do these days, on TikTok and other social platforms. “I will start by saying that this is not an approved treatment for snoring or sleep apnea,” said Davis, who heads UVA’s Sleep Disorders Center. “The data on this is extremely limited, to the point that I frankly do not recommend it to patients.”

Still, the doctor said he has seen “a ton of patients who have done it.”

Q. So, what are people doing when they are taping their mouths shut?

A. What it entails is taking some sort of hypoallergenic strip of tape and taping one’s mouth closed and then going to sleep.

Q. What are some of the theories floating around on social media?

Dr. Eric Davis earned his medical degree from UVA in 2006 and returned in 2014. He is an associate professor of medicine and runs University’s Sleep Disorder’s Center. (Photo by Kim Kelley-Wagner, UVA Department of Medicine)

A. The idea behind it is that we are really designed to breathe through our noses during sleep. And that has a lot of advantages, right? Our nose provides humidification. It helps trap viruses or particles that are allergenic and kind of cleans the air like a filter.

Q. What happens when people sleep breathing through their mouths instead of their noses?

A. When we open our mouths, we lose a lot of those benefits. We also kind of pinch off the back of our airway a little bit when we open our mouths because our jaw opens and pushes back and that can worsen things like snoring and sleep apnea.

Q. Why do some people breathe through their mouths?

A. We want to be able to breathe when we sleep, and people that open their mouth to breathe, they are probably doing that because they need to. If you have nasal obstruction or it’s hard to catch your breath because you have a cold and a lot of nasal congestion, you’re going to open your mouth to breathe.

‘Inside UVA’ A Podcast Hosted by Jim Ryan

Q. How often does the topic of mouth taping come up in your practice?

A. I would say at least on a weekly basis I hear about someone trying this approach, if not more frequently. I generally use it as an opportunity to say, “Well, it sounds to me like you’re not sleeping as well as you’d like to. Let’s try to get to the bottom as to what’s going on.”

I use this as an opportunity to say, “Let’s get some data and do a home study or something in the sleep lab to figure out if you have a sleep apnea, how severe is that? Or do you just have snoring?” Because a lot of patients have snoring without sleep apnea.

Q. What comes after a diagnosis of sleep apnea?

A. At that point, there’s a good argument to say, “Let’s get an approved treatment that we know will help you breathe better and is safe, something like a CPAP machine.” We even have a pacemaker to treat sleep apnea. There are other treatments out there that are approved.