Mouth Taping for Sleep: What a Canadian Review Found
Clinically reviewed by Dr. Abinaash Kaur, DDS, RCDSO, on 2026-08-03. Dr. Kaur is a general dentist in Toronto (Bloor West Village) registered with the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario.
I wouldn't tape my mouth shut to sleep, and I wouldn't suggest you do it either. A Canadian systematic review published in 2025 pulled together every usable study on the practice, 10 studies covering 213 patients, and its authors concluded that "the existing data does not support mouth taping or oral occlusion as a sound clinical intervention for the general population with sleep disordered breathing" (PLOS One via PMC).
Patients keep bringing me this one. It usually starts the same way. They wake up with a mouth like sandpaper, they've watched the before-and-after videos, and the tape costs less than a coffee.
The instinct behind it isn't silly. Breathing through your nose is better than breathing through your mouth, and I've said so on this blog before. The tape is where it goes wrong.
I've been practising in Bloor West Village for about 25 years, and a bad night of breathing shows up in the mouth before it shows up anywhere else. So this is a fair thing to ask a dentist about.
Where did mouth taping come from?
Mouth taping means sealing your lips with adhesive tape at bedtime so you're forced to breathe through your nose. It spread through social media, and the promises grew fast.
A scoping review in the American Journal of Otolaryngology looked at 50 TikTok videos alongside the published research. The most common claimed advantages were improved sleep and oral health (PubMed, scoping review). Its authors concluded that the literature is markedly heterogeneous, there's little consensus on mouth-taping's benefits, and few TikTok claims about the practice have been evaluated at all (PubMed).
Bigger claims float around too. The Canadian review lists what users allege, "ranging from better sleep quality to anti-aging properties to improvements in dry mouth, bad breath, and concentration" (PMC). A claim isn't evidence. Neither is a good night's sleep you had once.
What did the Canadian review find?
This is the study worth knowing about, because it's the most thorough look anyone has taken.
It came out of the otolaryngology department at London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, and searched MEDLINE, Embase and Google Scholar from February 1999 to February 2024 (PMC). Twenty-four papers went to full text review and 10 met the criteria, covering 213 patients (PMC).
Two of those studies found a real drop in the apnea-hypopnea index, which is the number of breathing pauses per hour of sleep. One reported median AHI falling from 8.3 to 4.7 per hour, and another from 12 to 7.8 per hour (PMC). Three other studies found no significant change in AHI (PMC).
Here's the catch on the two positive results. Both were in patients with mild sleep apnea, and the reviewers weren't convinced the improvement means much in the chair, writing that "it is unclear whether these reported significant reductions in AHI are meaningful clinically" (PMC).
The quality was the bigger issue. "All studies were of poor quality for different reasons as per the Newcastle-Ottawa assessment scale" (PMC). That's the reviewers' own verdict on the entire evidence base, not mine.
What's the risk nobody puts in the video?
This is the part to be careful with, so read it twice.
Four of the 10 studies discussed that oral occlusion, whether by taping, sealing or chin strapping, "could pose a serious risk of asphyxiation in the presence of nasal obstruction or regurgitation" (PMC).
Think about what that means at 3 a.m. If your nose blocks and your mouth is taped, you have no airway. If you bring up stomach contents, you have no exit.
Now look at how the better studies were run. Four of them excluded patients with any form of nasal obstruction before the study started (PMC). The people reaching for tape are usually the ones who can't get air through their nose. Those are exactly the people the research left out.
Most people think a stuffy nose is the reason to tape. It's the reason not to.
How do you know your airway isn't the real problem?
Plenty of people don't know, and that's the uncomfortable bit.
In the Canadian Health Measures Survey for 2016 and 2017, 6.4% of Canadians reported being diagnosed with sleep apnea by a health care professional (Statistics Canada). Among adults who had not been diagnosed, 14.9% screened as high risk and another 14.6% as moderate risk using the STOP-BANG tool (Statistics Canada). For men, the high-risk share was 24.6% (Statistics Canada).
Sleep apnea means pauses in breathing during sleep, and on average those pauses last 10 to 30 seconds until the brain reacts (Public Health Agency of Canada). Blood oxygen drops with each one (Public Health Agency of Canada). It's associated with hypertension, ischemic heart disease, irregular heart beat, heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, depression and type 2 diabetes (Public Health Agency of Canada).
Loud snoring plus a dry mouth plus waking up tired is a screening conversation, not a tape problem. Our post on what your dentist watches for with sleep apnea covers the signs we pick up in the chair, including a scalloped tongue and a narrow palate.
What does mouth breathing do to your teeth?
Now the part that's my department. Mouth breathing isn't harmless, which is why the tape is tempting to begin with.
Air moving across your teeth for eight hours dries out saliva. Saliva is the mouth's rinse cycle, and losing it costs you. Chronic dry mouth "significantly increases the risk of experiencing dental caries, demineralization, tooth sensitivity, candidiasis and other oral diseases" (American Dental Association council report, PubMed).
The effect turns up early in life. In 257 children aged 3 to 5, those who breathed predominantly through the mouth had a higher prevalence of anterior dental caries, at a prevalence ratio of 1.57 (Brazilian Oral Research via PMC). The authors put it down to reduced salivary flow, "since saliva evaporates when air flows through the mouth, causing a decrease in moisture in the oral cavity" (PMC).
Gums react too. A systematic review of 11 studies found mouth-breathing children and adolescents showed increased gingival bleeding, plaque accumulation and gingival alterations (International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry, PubMed). If your gums bleed no matter how well you brush, our post on flossing every day and still bleeding is the place to start.
Breath is the third one. In 55 children aged 3 to 14, the association between halitosis and mouth breathing was statistically significant (Clinics via PMC). Our guide to bad breath that survives brushing covers the adult version.
So the problem the tape aims at is real. The tape is still the wrong tool for it.
Is there any version of this I'd support?
Pretty much one, and it isn't the one on your feed.
A randomized crossover trial published in 2025 gave 62 patients with obstructive sleep apnea a silicone mouth tape to use alongside their CPAP machine, 30 days with and 30 days without (Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, PubMed). Average CPAP use rose by 51.8 minutes per day, and the odds of good adherence went up with an odds ratio of 4.5 (PubMed). Sleepiness scores, snoring, mouth and throat dryness and night awakenings all improved (PubMed).
Notice what's holding that airway open. It's the CPAP, not the tape. The tape is stopping air from leaking out around a machine that a physician prescribed after a diagnosis. That's a supervised add-on for a treated patient, which is a different thing from a healthy person taping their face and hoping.
Who should not tape, full stop
Have no fear, I'm not going to leave you with a pile of maybes and no direction. Tape is off the table if any of this is you:
- You can't breathe comfortably through your nose, lips closed, while awake
- You have a deviated septum, chronic congestion, allergies or nasal polyps
- You get reflux, or you sometimes wake with acid in your throat
- You have untreated or suspected sleep apnea
- You've had alcohol or a sedative that evening
- You were thinking of taping a child. A child may not be able to pull tape off or tell you something is wrong.
- You feel nauseated at night for any reason, pregnancy included
What to do instead
Try this, in order.
Test your nose while you're awake. Close your lips and breathe through your nose for three minutes, sitting still. If that's a struggle, tape won't fix it, and a blocked nose has causes worth diagnosing with your family doctor or an ENT.
Bring it up at your dental visit. We look for a scalloped tongue, a narrow palate and wear from grinding, and those signs travel together. If you're grinding, our night guard guide explains what a custom appliance does and roughly what it costs.
Ask about a sleep study. Diagnosis comes first. Oral or dental appliances that re-align the oral cavity are a recognized treatment option for sleep apnea (Public Health Agency of Canada), and that's a device I fit after a diagnosis, never instead of one.
Protect the mouth while you sort out the cause. Water at the bedside, a humidifier in winter, and fluoride toothpaste last thing at night. If a medication is drying you out, our post on dry mouth from GLP-1 medications uses the same playbook.
Work on nasal breathing in daylight. Our older post on breathing for life covers tongue posture and why nasal breathing shapes a child's palate.
Some days the schedule pushes me and I'm running behind, and this is still a conversation I make time for. Someone taping their mouth shut at night already knows something is wrong. They deserve a better answer than a roll of tape.
Our roundup of which viral dental hacks are safe puts this one alongside the rest of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is mouth taping safe? Not for everyone, and the evidence behind it is thin. A 2025 Canadian systematic review of 10 studies and 213 patients concluded the data doesn't support mouth taping as a sound clinical intervention for the general population with sleep disordered breathing (PMC). Four of those studies discussed a serious risk of asphyxiation in the presence of nasal obstruction or regurgitation (PMC). If you can't breathe well through your nose, don't do it.
Q: Does mouth taping help sleep apnea? Only two of the 10 reviewed studies found a significant drop in AHI, from 8.3 to 4.7 and from 12 to 7.8 events per hour, both in mild cases, and the reviewers questioned whether those reductions are clinically meaningful (PMC). Three other studies found no significant change (PMC). Sleep apnea needs a diagnosis and a real treatment, and oral appliances are one option after that (Public Health Agency of Canada).
Q: Will taping stop my snoring or my dry mouth? It might, and the reason you have them still needs looking at. A scoping review of the literature alongside 50 TikTok videos found the research markedly heterogeneous with little consensus on benefits, and few of the social media claims evaluated (PubMed). Waking with a dry mouth most nights is a symptom to investigate, not to seal shut.
Q: Is mouth breathing bad for my teeth? It's linked to real problems. Chronic dry mouth increases the risk of dental caries, demineralization and tooth sensitivity (PubMed). Preschoolers who breathed mainly through the mouth had a higher prevalence of front-tooth cavities, at a prevalence ratio of 1.57 (PMC), and a review of 11 studies found mouth-breathing children and teens had more gingival bleeding and plaque (PubMed).
Q: Can my child use mouth tape? No. I wouldn't put tape over a sleeping child's mouth. The asphyxiation risk the reviewers named applies whenever the nose is blocked or stomach contents come up (PMC), and a young child may not manage to remove it or say something's wrong. Ongoing mouth breathing in a child is worth an assessment, since it's associated with gingival bleeding and plaque build-up (PubMed).
Q: My partner uses tape with a CPAP machine. Is that different? Yes, and that's the one setting with decent support. In a randomized crossover trial of 62 patients on CPAP, adding a silicone mouth tape raised average use by 51.8 minutes a day and improved sleepiness, snoring and mouth dryness (PubMed). The CPAP is doing the work of holding the airway open. Keep the prescribing physician in the loop.
Q: What should I do if I keep waking up with my mouth open? Find out why your nose isn't doing its job. That means looking at congestion, allergies and nasal structure with your physician, plus a screening conversation about sleep apnea if you snore or wake up tired. Among Canadian adults who had never been diagnosed, 14.9% still screened as high risk on the STOP-BANG tool (Statistics Canada).
Reviewed by Dr. Abinaash Kaur, B.Sc., DDS (University of Toronto Faculty of Dentistry), who has practised general and family dentistry in Bloor West Village for about 25 years. This article is general oral health information, not a diagnosis or a substitute for an examination, and it isn't medical advice about sleep disorders.
Waking up with a dry mouth, a sore jaw, or teeth that look more worn than they did a year ago? Bring it in and we'll tell you what your mouth is showing us before you buy anything. We're at 750 Annette Street in Bloor West Village, serving the Junction, High Park, and Baby Point. Book a check-up with The Village Dentist and we'll take it from there.
