Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Redefining Sleep Apnea Stereotypes | How Mouth Taping Fixes Sleep Apnea Without a CPAP

25 Apr 2025 · 0 min

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Aaron Hartman, MD (speaker) describes his clinical observations about people he diagnoses with sleep apnea: many have small/skinny necks, underdevelopment of the lower face (often an underbite), and small posterior airways. He explains that mouth breathing while supine can pull the tongue back and obstruct the airway, contributing to nighttime suffocation-like events. This excerpt frames anatomical and behavioral contributors to sleep apnea.

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 jaws back a little bit. You look at people's faces and you'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 when 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.