Mouth taping means putting a strip of tape over your lips at night so you breathe through your nose. Social media credits it with deeper sleep, less snoring, and healthier teeth and gums. The best evidence so far doesn’t back those claims up. A 2025 systematic review found only ten small studies, rated all of them poor quality, and found a real risk for people whose nose is blocked. And not one of the studies looked at teeth.
That doesn’t mean the problem mouth taping is aimed at is imaginary. Breathing through your mouth at night can dry it out, and a dry mouth is bad for your teeth. It just means tape is an untested fix, and in some cases the dry mouth is a sign of something tape can’t treat.
What the research actually found
In May 2025, a team of ear, nose and throat specialists at London Health Sciences Centre in Ontario published a systematic review of mouth taping in the journal PLOS One. They pulled together the published studies of mouth taping and similar methods in people who breathe through their mouth, snore, or have obstructive sleep apnea.
What they found:
- Very little research. Ten studies, 213 patients in total.
- Weak studies. The authors wrote that “all studies on mouth taping were of poor quality.”
- Small, narrow benefits. Of six studies that measured how often breathing stops or slows during sleep, only two found a significant improvement. Snoring improved in three studies, mostly in people with mild sleep apnea. The reviewers questioned whether those changes mattered clinically.
- A safety warning. Four of the ten studies indicated that closing the mouth, whether with tape, a seal or a chin strap, “could pose a serious risk of asphyxiation in the presence of nasal obstruction or regurgitation.”
Their conclusion: “The existing data does not support mouth taping or oral occlusion as a sound clinical intervention for the general population with sleep disordered breathing.”
The claims about your teeth have never been tested
Many mouth-taping posts promise fewer cavities, healthier gums and fresher breath. The review noted that these benefits are claimed, but none of the ten studies measured any dental outcome: not cavities, not gum health, not bad breath.
The reasoning behind the claim does start from something real:
- Cleveland Clinic lists mouth breathing as a cause of dry mouth, and cavities and gum disease as complications of chronic dry mouth.
- According to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), dry mouth “increases the risk for tooth decay or fungal infections in the mouth because saliva helps keep harmful germs in check.” Saliva also carries calcium and phosphate that help keep teeth strong.
So if you breathe through your mouth all night, your teeth may be at higher risk. Whether taping your mouth shut lowers that risk is a question no study has answered yet.
Decay is where dry mouth gets expensive. A single filling averages $200 to $350 in 2026, and decay that reaches the nerve can mean a root canal and a crown. Telling your dentist about morning dry mouth costs nothing, and they can check for early damage at your next cleaning.
A dry mouth in the morning can be a warning sign
This is the part that gets lost in the trend. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute lists dry mouth among the common symptoms of sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep. Other signs it lists:
- Frequent loud snoring
- Breathing that starts and stops, or gasping for air during sleep
- Daytime sleepiness and tiredness
- Headaches
Many people don’t know about their nighttime symptoms until a partner tells them. If this list sounds familiar, taping your mouth could hide a symptom without treating the cause. See a doctor, who can order a sleep test. Don’t try mouth taping if your nose is often blocked, given the asphyxiation risk the review found.
What works instead
For dry mouth, NIDCR suggests:
- Drinking water throughout the day and sipping it with meals
- Chewing sugarless gum or sucking sugarless hard candy
- Avoiding tobacco, alcohol, and caffeinated drinks
- Using a humidifier at night
For snoring or sleep apnea, there is a dental option with real evidence behind it. A 2015 clinical practice guideline from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine recommends oral appliances for adults who want treatment for snoring. It also recommends them for adults with obstructive sleep apnea who can’t tolerate CPAP or prefer an alternative. The guideline says:
- A sleep physician should prescribe the appliance.
- A qualified dentist should use a custom, adjustable appliance rather than an off-the-shelf one.
- Follow-up sleep testing should confirm that it works.
These sleep appliances are not the same as the guards dentists make for teeth grinding, which our night guard cost guide covers. If you grind your teeth and snore, tell your dentist both, because the right device depends on the problem.
The bottom line
Mouth taping is cheap and popular, but the research behind it is thin and says nothing about teeth. If you wake up with a dry mouth, the useful next step isn’t tape. Tell your dentist, protect your teeth from decay, and if you also snore loudly or feel exhausted during the day, get checked for sleep apnea.