Mouth taping got its review: ten studies, 213 people and a warning

Taping your mouth shut at night is a social-media sleep hack with millions of views and, as of today, a systematic review in PLOS ONE. Ear, nose and throat researchers at Western University in Ontario found ten studies with a combined 213 patients. Two reported a slight improvement in a standard sleep-apnea measure among a subset of people with mild obstructive sleep apnea. The rest found no evidence that tape helps with mouth breathing, sleep-disordered breathing or apnea. Four flagged a risk of asphyxiation for people whose mouth breathing comes from a blocked nose — allergies, chronic rhinitis, a deviated septum, enlarged tonsils. The authors' summary: many people are not appropriate candidates.

What 213 people can tell you. Not much, and that is the point. The evidence base for a product that has been sold to millions is ten small studies, most with no benefit, and a plausible mechanism of harm for exactly the people most likely to try it — the ones who cannot breathe through their noses. A hack does not need evidence to spread. It needs a before-and-after video.

Loree’s take

The patients who tell me they tape are often the ones I want in a sleep study. Snoring, waking unrefreshed, a partner who says you stop breathing: those are the signs of sleep apnea, which is treatable and dangerous when it is not treated. Tape addresses the symptom you can see and does nothing about the one you cannot. If you are reaching for tape, you have already told me something is wrong with your sleep. That something deserves a diagnosis, not an adhesive.

Ben’s take

A roll of tape became a category because it is nearly free to make, photographs well and ships with a story about ancestral breathing. There is no clinical trial budget in that business and no reason to run one; the product sold before the review existed and will sell after it. The only defense against a category like this is the question we keep asking: what was studied, in whom, for how long, measuring what?

This post reports on evidence and expert disagreement. It is not medical advice; decisions about treatment belong with you and your clinician.