The first time I heard about mouth taping while exercising was a few months ago at a wellness retreat. Someone at the dinner table talked about running with their mouth taped shut. “It’s so much better for you,” they said.
Some weeks later, an email with the subject line “The weird mouth taping trend Gwyneth Paltrow swears by” hit my inbox. My interest was piqued.
The Rising Popularity of Mouth Taping
Last year, tennis player Iga Swiatek wore mouth tape during a game. She told reporters after: “For sure you can see the difference in how everything you do on the court is getting more and more hard with that tape on your mouth. So I guess it’s the way to […] work on my endurance […].”
Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Graham have spoken about mouth taping while they sleep. In an Instagram story in November 2022, Paltrow called it the single best wellness tool she’d found recently. “Breathing through your nose at night apparently creates alkalinity in the body and promotes best quality sleep,” she wrote.
Elite athletes have been using mouth tape for decades so it’s nothing new, says Luke McLeod, meditation and breathwork coach. He thinks people are catching on to mouth taping because they now have access to information and advice traditionally reserved for elite athletes.
Its popularity has increased because of its relation to how we breathe, which has become a hot topic in recent years. This is thanks to Andrew Huberman’s discussion about its virtues on his podcast Huberman Lab, James Nestor writing about it in Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art and Patrick McKeown touching on it in The Oxygen Advantage.
The Benefits of Mouth Taping
“The biggest benefit of wearing mouth tape when exercising is that it forces you to breathe through your nose,” says McLeod.
Breathing your nose can help filter warm and humidified air, release nitric oxide (which lets blood and oxygen travel around the body efficiently) and induce hypoxia. Hypoxia happens when oxygen is insufficient at the tissue level. According to the Australian Institute of Sport, hypoxic training can improve performance in sport disciplines requiring high levels of aerobic endurance.
“The idea of training hypoxia is that [athletes] tax their aerobic system without having the muscles work too hard,” says Tony Blazevich, a professor of biomechanics at Edith Cowan University, told Sydney Morning Herald. “Many athletes use their muscles a lot and need to let them recover, so they might try this training to continue the aerobic adaptations whilst minimising stress on muscles.”
It’s worth noting that research on the efficiency of mouth taping while exercising is limited — as is the research behind mouth taping while sleeping. “Mouth taping has not been proven to treat any health issue,” writes WebMD. “Some people use mouth taping to control chronic or heavy snoring.” Mouth taping while sleeping can also be highly dangerous as it can cause obstructed breathing and create more serious sleep disorders like obstructive sleep apnoea and sleep disruption.
My Experience With Mouth Taping
I decided to try mouth taping while going for a run. Unfortunately I picked the worst time and location to try it: a sunny Sunday afternoon along Sydney’s Bondi to Bronte coastal walk. I waited until I was past Bondi’s busy promenade and Icebergs to wear my Respire mouth tape.
But the rest of the path to Bronte was still packed. I don’t think it was just in my imagination that I thought everyone was looking at me with my mouth taped shut. At one point I even spotted someone I knew giving me a curious look but because my mouth was taped shut, I couldn’t even explain myself.
I didn’t think mouth taping while running would be as hard as it was. Seconds into my running with the tape, I felt light-heated, likely due to a lack of oxygen. I wanted to rip the tape off so I could breathe properly. Also my nose started running. I had to stop at a toilet along the walk to blow it so I could breathe out of it. I didn’t notice any difference in my stamina.
“At first when you try nasal-only breathing, your ability to provide enough air flow nasally isn’t there,” George Dallam, a professor in exercise science at Colorado State University in Pueblo told Washington Post. “That changes over time.”
If I keep trying mouth taping to test if I could build up to it, I’ll be sure to run a less busy route — one where I’m sure not to see anyone I know.
How You Can Try Mouth Taping
“At first, mouth breathing may feel a little awkward, especially if you’re predominately a mouth breather,” says McLeod. “If you stick with it, it can help improve your workouts and recovery. I was a little skeptical at first but have found it to be quite helpful.”
If you’re keen to try it, McLeod suggests you start wearing mouth tape around the house to get yourself comfortable breathing in and out of only your nose. Then, once this feels natural, wear the tape while warming up before exercise.
“Continue to progress the intensity of your workouts by wearing the mouth tape until it feels natural to wear it when you exercise at full effort,” he says.
Dean Gladstone, lifeguard at Bondi Rescue and founder of Power of the Breath, which runs workshops, seminars and courses on breathing, says you could also just focus on nasal breathing before you use the tape. You could also try filling your mouth with water to force that nose breathing.
“The third option is to put the tape on while watching TV or cooking dinner — any activity that doesn’t need you to talk to people,” Gladstone says.
“It could be difficult simply because the nasal airways are much smaller than our mouths. It will take time to adjust. If you are running, run slower and build up. Don’t let your ego get in the way.”
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