Some videos on social media recommend recording your mouth completely closed to improve sleep, while others are only advised to partially close it
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There is a little good quality evidence to support the direction of social media represented in registering your mouth at night to reduce breathing difficulties-and some scientists fear that it may bring a set of its problems.
“The heresy has started on social media,” he says Ken Ouraran At College Cork University in Ireland, who has not participated in the new research. “In the end, there is little evidence that works.”
In the past few years, some users have recommended platforms like Tiktok and Instagram using adhesive tape to close your mouth during sleep, in videos that have seen combined millions of times. This forces nasal breathing, which some people claim to bring different health benefits, which are to reduce breathing problems and thus deepen sleep.
To explore if there is evidence to support this, Brian Rottenberg At the Western University of Ontario, Canada, and its colleagues reviewed eight studies that included nearly 200 people suffering from sleep apnea. This is a common condition where breathing stops temporarily or becomes restricted during sleep, which often leads to snoring people and wakes up again and again due to low oxygen levels.
Studies have given mixed results. In two of them, the researchers followed people’s breathing while sleeping for two nights, with without a tape. They found that the tape reduced the number of times they temporarily stopped breathing or restricted air flow. “This happened several times less per hour,” says Rutnberg.
But the remaining six studies, one of which was randomly controlled, found that registration in the mouth was not useful for these problems. “The results were very mixed, and therefore the evidence was weak, and studies were generally poorly with about dozens or a few of the people concerned,” says Ohleran.
Rottenberg also says that oral registration may be a problem itself. “If your nose is blocked and your mouth is closed, it is more likely that you have those situations that stimulate panic to not get any air.”
“People can pull the tape, but I imagine that someone can feel very anxious when they wake up, so I will not advise him,” he says. David Garly In a better sleep clinic in Bristol, UK.
Rottenberg says that some of the differences in the results may be due to the differences in how to do mouth registration. Some of the studies I have identified as a horizontal strip covering the entire mouth, while others were less specific, so in some cases it is possible that the mouth be partly closed only, he says.
Another restriction is that none of the studies tracked the symptoms of the day. “It is fatigue and headache on the day that causes major problems for people in the clinic [with obstructive sleep apnoea]”They did not look at it,” says Garly.
In order for more research available, people should talk to the doctor if they suffer from breathing difficulties, he says. Garley says that the treatments approved, such as CPAP machines that gently push the air via a mask to keep the airways open, have been proven to help stop breathing during obstructive sleep.
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