Dr. Katie To explains that mouth breathing during sleep signals nasal airflow problems, poor tongue posture, or airway narrowing, not a habit to tape shut. Look for dry mouth, gum decay, dark under-eye circles, and exhausted kids waking up tired. Fix it with an airway assessment, allergy management, and myofunctional therapy to retrain tongue position.
The real question is, why does your mouth open in the first place? Your mouth opens for a reason. It's not really a bad habit, it's compensation. The nose that isn't moving enough air through, or a tongue that doesn't rest where it should, or an airway that narrows when the muscles relax in sleep. And what I see first is dry mouth. We see decay along the gum line, like in that first photograph, inflamed gums. That can be an irritation when they're not moisturized. If you have your kids waking up exhausted where they have dark circles under their eyes, Or if you hear them grinding at night, this is where the mouth gets caught. Here's what to actually do. Test your nasal breathing while awake. If you cannot, then you have your answer. Don't mouth tape. We also recommend getting your airway evaluated. A sleep study is really the first step for all of our patients. Some patients can do the home sleep test, but if they're very obstructed, we recommend going to an ENT and getting referred to a sleep lab or through your primary care physician. We also do myofunctional therapy, and this addresses how the muscles and the tongue are positioned in the mouth. We definitely want to make sure that your tongue has a lot of freeway space to go through, and that's the mechanism of all underneath everything. We treat the nose through the ENT, the allergies, and the structure. This is often the missing piece for our patients that have trouble breathing through their nose.
