Dangers of this celebrity-endorsed wellness trend exposed
Parents are being warned about the dangers of mouth taping their children in an attempt to improve sleep or stop mouth breathing, as new research finds the celebrity-endorsed practice could pose serious health risks.
Growing awareness about the health impacts of mouth breathing, which is linked to sleep disorders, has spawned an industry promoting mouth tape which claims to improve sleep, reduce snoring and enhance overall health by encouraging nasal breathing.
The mouth taping trend has also become popular on TikTok, with videos from influencers and celebrities including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Emma Roberts and model Ashley Graham receiving millions of views.
Many of the advertised products are designed for children, but experts warn that resorting to mouth taping can be extremely dangerous for kids, who are usually mouth breathing due to an underlying health condition such as allergies or enlarged adenoids.
Perth orofacial myofunctional therapist and Whole Child Co founder Tash Duffin, who specialises in paediatric sleep and conditions related to the face and mouth, said the majority of young patients in her clinic were mouth breathers.
'The causes are so varied and it can be so multi-factorial, it might be allergies, it might be the way the palate is formed, it might be related to tongue function and rest position, or adenoids or tonsils,' she said.
She urged parents against trying to find a 'quick fix' by using mouth tape to encourage nasal breathing. Gwyneth Paltrow's promotion of mouth taping on social media. Credit: Unknown / Supplied
'Mouth breathing is an adaptation, if you're doing it, you're doing it for a reason,' she said.
'Putting tape over your mouth closes the mouth but it doesn't change or treat why you're doing it in the first place.
'If kids have an inflammation in their airway and you put a tape over their mouth it's really dangerous because how are they going to get air in?
'It's a band-aid solution, you're not understanding why it's happening in the first place.'
It comes as new research found the practice failed to improve sleep and posed health risks. Emma Roberts is an advocate of mouth taping. Credit: Unknown / Supplied
An evaluation of 10 studies published in PLOS ONE on Thursday found that only two saw evidence of slight improvements for people with sleep apnea.
The remainder found no evidence that mouth taping helped to treat sleep related conditions, while four studies warned that for some, the practice posed 'a potentially serious risk of asphyxiation.'
'Mouth taping is a contemporary practice that is often celebrity-endorsed, but is not necessarily scientifically accurate,' researcher Dr Brian Rotenberg of Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, said.
'Many people are not appropriate for mouth taping, and in some cases it can lead to risk of serious health harm.'
Oscar winner turned wellness entrepreneur Gwyneth Paltrow has promoted mouth taping on social media, describing it as 'the single best wellness tool she has found recently.'
She told Glamour magazine: 'I'm a big proponent . . . my heart-rate variability and sleep scores are so much better when I do the mouth tape, because we're actually designed to breathe through our nose for a number of reasons.
'You filter your air better that way. You produce more nitric oxide when you breathe through your nose, so that helps dilate all of the blood vessels.'
Ms Duffin said Ms Paltrow's comments were correct around the benefits of nose breathing, but she disagreed with her approach when it came to mouth taping as a way to achieve it.
She said taping could potentially form part of therapy for adults, but they first needed to establish their airway was clear, and attempt it during the day first.
'As an adult, you could play around with it during the day, and if you feel like you can't breathe then it's not a good idea as it can make your breathing way worse.'
The analysis included 10 studies which evaluated the potential benefits of mouth taping for 213 patients.
Two studies suggested that amongst a subset of people with mild obstructive sleep apnea, mouth taping may be associated with a slight improvement.
But others found no benefit, with four finding a potentially serious risk of asphyxiation for people whose mouth breathing was caused by a serious restriction or blockage of nasal airways.
'On the basis of these findings, the authors conclude that existing evidence does not support night-time mouth taping as a treatment for sleep-disordered breathing, including obstructive sleep apnea,' the report read.
The authors also called for further research into the practice.
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Read the original article. If you've been on social media lately - perhaps scrolling in the middle of the night, when you know you shouldn't but you just can't sleep - you might have seen those videos promoting a get-to-sleep technique called "cognitive shuffling". The idea, proponents say, is to engage your mind with random ideas and images via a special formula: It's popular on Instagram and TikTok, but does "cognitive shuffling" have any basis in science? The cognitive shuffling technique was made famous by Canada-based researcher Luc P. Beaudoin more than a decade ago, when he published a paper about how what he called "serial diverse imagining" could help with sleep. One of Beaudoin's hypothetical examples involved a woman thinking of the word "blanket", then thinking bicycle (and imagining a bicycle), buying (imagining buying shoes), banana (visualising a banana tree) and so on. 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It offers a calm, neutral path for your racing mind, and can reduce the stress associated with not sleeping. Cognitive shuffling also helps tell your brain you are ready for sleep. In fact, the process of "shuffling" between different thoughts is similar to the way your brain naturally drifts off to sleep. During the transition to sleep, brain activity slows. Your brain starts to generate disconnected images and fleeting scenes, known as hypnagogic hallucinations, without a conscious effort to make sense of them. By mimicking these scattered, disconnected, and random thought patterns, cognitive shuffling may help you transition from wakefulness to sleep. And the preliminary research into this is promising. Beaudoin and his team have found serial diverse imagining helps to lower arousal before sleep, improve sleep quality and reduce the effort involved in falling asleep. However, with only a small number of research studies, more work is needed here. As with every new strategy, however, practise makes perfect. Don't be disheartened if you don't see an improvement straight away; these things take time. Stay consistent and be kind to yourself. And what works for some won't work for others. Different people benefit from different types of strategies depending on how they relate to and experience stress or stressful thoughts. Other strategies to help create the right conditions for sleep include: If, despite all your best efforts, night time thoughts continue to impact your sleep or overall wellbeing, consider seeking professional help from your doctor or a trained sleep specialist. Melinda Jackson, Associate Professor at Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University and Eleni Kavaliotis, Research Fellow in the Sleep, Cognition, and Mood Laboratory at Monash University, Monash University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
