Dr. Aaron Hartman explains how mouth taping can help mild-to-moderate sleep apnea by encouraging nasal breathing and shifting the jaw forward. Nasal breathing produces nitric oxide that improves oxygen uptake. He shares patient cases where oxygen levels improved and discusses who should get screened, especially adults over 50.
Questions this episode answers
About 91–92% oxygen saturation.
About four events per hour (AHI ≈ 4).
Oxygen saturation dropped into the ~60% range.
Chapters
Mouth taping is a way to actually treat mild to moderate sleep apnea that we'll talk about. But the bigger elephant in the room is sleep apnea itself. If you have headaches in the morning, you wake up feeling groggy, these can all be markers that you have some kind of sleep disturbance. And the most common one is sleep apnea. Is mouth taping a thing? What is mouth taping? Why are people talking about it? That's what we'll talk about in this little bonus section today. We're doing this, starting this once a week based on people asking questions, just any deep dives into topics that are trending and things people are asking about, just to help people understand a little more about what's going on. So mouth taping, you know, this is a topic that has come out actually breathe. But I think James Nestor at the book Breathe, he actually talked about in his book, great book about, you know, why we breathe and things like that. Do you want to take a deep dive into reading? But it's become more popular in bunch of different things. And so what is mouth taping? Why do it? The big picture about mouth taping is sleep apnea is huge. It's something that's underdiagnosed. Even mild sleep apnea. I would typically do sleep analysis on patients at home, and they'll have their mind. My oxygen, mine personally dropped to like 91, 92%. I had four sleep events an hour. It's called an AHI, or apnea hypopnea index, which is not considered sleep. That's mild, whatever. And as soon as I started treating it, I started to dream. I had not dreamt up to that point in time at all in my life. And I started doing this early 40s, so I had sleeping issues probably for decades and started treating it. And now I dream pretty much every night. Mouth taping is a way to actually treat mild to moderate sleep apnea that we'll talk about. But the bigger elephant in the room is sleep apnea itself. If you're hypermobile, if you had nutritional issues when you're younger, if you had dental crowding, if you had orthodontics, had to get teeth pulled, if you grind your teeth at night, if you have tmj, if you have headaches in the morning, you wake up feeling groggy, these can all be markers that you have some kind of sleep disturbance. And the most common one is sleep apnea.
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So what causes it? You know, obesity is the most common cause that people talk about. And usually you think about the big, the male, the big thick neck, overweight, big puffy face. You know, those are the people you can diagnose with sleep apnea without a test. Most of the people I'm diagnosing now with sleep apnea look like me. They have skinny little necks. You know, I got a little bit of an underbite, so my jaw's back. A little bit of people's faces, and they'll see they have a little bit of underdevelopment in their lower face and their airways are just small in the back of their throat. And so you lay down on your back at night, just open, if you open your mouth and breathe through your mouth, you can almost kind of breathe and pull your tongue back and almost suffocate. So if you're all, you're laying on your back, what happens? You just breathe your tongue down. Now if you close your mouth and breathe, pay attention to where your tongue is. It's actually touches the back of your teeth. Your tongue is a forward maybe 3 or 4 millimeters. But the gist is it gives you a little more opening in the back of your throat. And that's what a dental orthotic does. If you, if you get a sleep apnea vibration done, you've got mild, mild, moderate. You can probably treat that with a, with a dental device. And then it just brings your jaw forward just a smidgen Voila, your sleep apnea is treated. But some people like it messes the jaw up. I've had some patients that actually flare their TMJ if I wear mine too, too Long. It actually will flare my dimme. It'll actually dip me. I've never had tmj, but it actually will flare it. And so what are some other options? And I've had a couple of my patients, super bright, you know, an executive type individuals who researched on their own. I had testing on them that showed they had significant sleep apnea. One of them actually was horrible. His oxygen was dropping into 60% range. He was having panic attacks. It was horrible. Got him better with the CPAP machine actually. But then he started researching, started mouth taping and he was like, oh my gosh, the mouth taping works just as well. This is not FDA approved. This is not meant to be medical advice. Talking to a practitioner first rate cannot diagnose or treat anything. That's my disclaimer. But we rechecked him and he was actually treated with mouth taping. And so mouth taping is a way, an unofficial NAFDA approved but just simple basic anatomy. If you keep your mouth closed at night, your lower jaw comes forward a little bit, the back of your tongue comes forward and you can sleep, you can treat mild to moderate sleep apnea. The other thing with mouth taping or breathing through your nose is that you make nitric oxide in your upper nasal and your turbinates or nitric oxide is another rage, another thing. People are doing beets and nitric oxide and all kinds of stuff, but nitroglycerin is a medication that increases nitric oxide to treat heart attacks, is sorbid. Dinitrate is a medication used to treat angina. Viagra for erectiles function is a medication that increases nitric oxide. Well, you actually make it in your, in your upper respiratory tract. And if you breathe through your nose when you sleep, you actually get into your lungs and it goes into your system. How cool of a system is that? If you're breathing through your mouth at night, what happens is you don't get that. So you actually get less of this nitric oxide in your system. So mouth taping can help? Yes, with mild sleep apnea, which is everywhere. Everybody, every adult over 50 should be screened for sleep apnea. And based on your symptoms, based off your snore, what your bed partner says, maybe as early as 40s. And in my clinic, when I see people with chronic fatigue and fibro and chronic health issues that meet some of the criteria I mentioned on my screen them all and probably 15 to 20% of them positive. So it's significant number. But the other thing about again, mouth, mouth taping, it improves nitric oxide levels, which another great thing. So it's a, it's a simple thing. I do not recommend people using mouth tapes that have horrible names like hostage tape or something that's like horrible, like, you know you're going to die if you use it. That's, you know, bad name. I've the pulmonologist. I was talking with one in our local area who was not a fan of mouth taping because when an individual actually inhaled the tape and their lungs, they had to go to the hospital and get a bronchoscopy, which is a scope down their throat to pull it out. So that's something to think about as well. So I think that just speaks to using the right kind of tape. You should always, of course, talk with your healthcare provider, your practitioner to find out, you know, can this be helpful for you? But you know, why are you using it? Are you using it? And if you have allergies, another thing, if you have allergies, your sinuses are your body's natural filter and humidifier for your air. So you should breathe through your nose. And actually breathing through your nose actually helps slow your breathing down. It actually helps calm your nervous system. So just deep breaths through your nose. When people are stressed, they actually will tend to hyperventilate through your mouth. So you can actually also affect your nervous system a little bit by nasal breathing, which again, mouth taping night kind of helps with that. So lots of interesting things about it. It's definitely interesting topic that has scientific merit if you want to take a deep dive into it. Actually Breathe by James Nestor is a book that actually talks about different things about breathing. He mentions mouth taping in there and some other interesting things. That's a, that's an interesting read if you're into reading. It's a lot of book lists on our website. We have a lot of cool books on our website. Things on Vetted that I think are useful. So anyway, if this information was helpful, like share, subscribe, put your comments below. If you have questions, if you have something you'd like us to take a little deep dive on, drop that below and we'll put it into the cycle if we get enough people interested in it. Take care, we'll talk to you soon.
