It seems that everyone’s favorite beauty hack these days is “things to improve your appearance while you sleep.” And, honestly? That’s something I can get behind. It started with heatless curls, the hair accessories to hold your style in place during the night getting more and more elaborate and ridiculous as time went on. Now, we have full “morning shed” videos, in which beauty gurus undo everything they applied, wrapped up or stuck to their faces before bed the night before. And mouth tape is almost always part of that routine.
TBH, I get behind most of the morning shed inclusions. A fully curled head of hair without turning on a heat tool? Count me in. Eye masks and pimple patches? Why not?! I could even be convinced to start using Frownies, the new favorite in wrinkle-prevention measures. But mouth tape gives me pause.
Let’s start with why people subscribe to taping their mouths shut during the night. If you’ve watched “Stranger Things,” you know that being a mouth-breather is basically a criminal offense. Mouth tape, then, encourages breathing through our noses. And, in doing so, the idea is that you’re reducing snoring, staving off morning breath and actually improving the quality of the air you’re taking in.
I think we can all agree that you typically get a better night’s sleep when you spend it breathing through your nose. But to completely remove the ability to switch to mouth-breathing if you need to? The jury — aka medical professionals — is still out. It’s important to note that the few studies that have been conducted around mouth tape haven’t proved that it really treats anything.
In fact, if you’re mouth-taping to treat snoring, the recommendation is that you…don’t — the reason being that snoring, depending on the severity, can be indicative of sleep apnea, which should be legitimately treated by a sleep specialist, not Scotch Tape.
So, is mouth taping legit? Sure. Is it bogus? Also likely.
Personally, the idea of waking up at 2 a.m. and not being able to take a long gulp of the water on my nightstand without untaping my mouth kinda turns me off.