Mouth taping picked up most of its recent momentum from a handful of elite athletes describing it in interviews. Those clips get flattened into listicles fast, and the flattening loses two things that matter: what the athlete actually said, and whether they were talking about sleep at all.
So here is the sourced version. Three public figures in professional sport who have described taping their mouths, what each of them actually said, and the important distinction between the two completely different practices getting lumped together.
Then the part most of these articles leave out: what the best available evidence says, including a 2025 systematic review that is considerably less enthusiastic than the highlight reel.
One thing up front: none of the people below has said anything about which brand they use, and none of them is known to use or endorse any product this site recommends. They are cited here because they described a practice publicly, not because they endorse anything.
Erling Haaland — taping for sleep
The Manchester City striker is the reason a lot of people first heard about this.
Speaking on Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast in August 2023, Haaland described taping his mouth shut at night as part of a broader evening routine. The line that travelled furthest was his framing of why he bothers: "I think sleep is the most important thing in the world." On the practice itself he was direct — "You should try and tape your mouth. I sleep with it".
His stated reason is the standard one: forcing breathing through the nose rather than the mouth overnight. The routine he described also included wearing blue-light-blocking glasses for a few hours before bed, which I have broken down separately in the Haaland routine article.
The quote worth keeping is the one about method rather than mouth tape: "Doing a lot of things is not good but doing small things every single day for a longer period really pays off." That is a better summary of sleep intervention generally than most of what gets written about it.
Joe Mazzulla — taping for sleep
The Boston Celtics head coach — a coach rather than a player, which most listicles get wrong — described the same nighttime practice on 98.5 The Sports Hub's Zolak & Bertrand show in March 2023.
His assessment was short: "I still do it. Highly recommend it." He framed it as part of a wider effort to hold up physically across an NBA season, having felt worn down and tired after his first year in the league, and said plainly that sleep is really important to doing the job well.
He also mentioned having moved on to a sleep mouthpiece — a detail that gets dropped from most retellings, and worth noting because it points at the thing tape is a proxy for. The goal is a closed mouth and a stable airway overnight; tape is one route to that and not the only one.
Brian Ortega — taping during training, not sleep
This is the one that gets miscategorised constantly, and the distinction matters.
Ahead of UFC 303, the UFC featherweight was shown in the promotion's Embedded series training with his mouth taped — while working out, not while sleeping. His stated reason was regulating his own arousal: the tape stops him getting too excited and keeps him, in his word, mellow.
That is a fundamentally different intervention from nighttime taping, and the rationale behind it is different too. Nasal-only breathing during exercise restricts airflow, which raises carbon dioxide tolerance over time and forces a slower breathing pattern. Athletes who train this way are generally after CO2 tolerance and pacing control, not sleep quality.
Do not copy this one. It is reported here because it is what he described, not as something to try.
Taping your mouth during physical effort removes your ability to increase ventilation at the exact moment your body is demanding more air. A professional fighter doing it under a coaching staff, with years of conditioning and people watching him, is in a completely different situation from someone trying it alone in a gym. The downside is not a bad night's sleep — it is a respiratory emergency during exertion.
If you want the benefit athletes are chasing here, you can get it without tape: breathe through your nose only during easy, low-intensity work, and simply open your mouth the moment you need to. That is voluntary, self-limiting, and safe, and it builds the same carbon dioxide tolerance. The nasal breathing training article covers how to do that properly, and the retraining protocol has the phased version.
Everything else on this page refers to taping while asleep, which is the only use I recommend.
The two practices people keep confusing
Worth separating cleanly, because the risk profile differs:
| Nighttime taping | Training taping | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Nasal breathing while asleep | CO2 tolerance, pacing, arousal control |
| Who described it | Haaland, Mazzulla | Ortega |
| Effort level | None — you are asleep | High |
| Main risk | Nasal obstruction, undiagnosed apnea | Cannot increase ventilation on demand |
| Do we recommend it? | Yes, after screening | No — do not do this |
When someone says "athletes use mouth tape," they are usually collapsing these two into one claim. They are not the same practice and they do not have the same evidence behind them.
What the evidence actually says
Here is the part the athlete-endorsement genre tends to skip, and it deserves more weight than any podcast quote.
In May 2025, researchers led by Brian Rotenberg at Western University published a systematic review in PLOS One examining mouth taping in people with mouth breathing, sleep-disordered breathing, or obstructive sleep apnea. They reviewed 10 existing studies. Two findings matter:
- The benefit is thin. Evidence of meaningful improvement was minimal across most groups, with small effects appearing in a few studies of patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea and not much beyond that. The underlying studies were mostly small, often uncontrolled, and short.
- There is a real risk pathway. For people with nasal obstruction, sealing the mouth carries an asphyxiation risk. That is not a theoretical concern — it is the specific danger of blocking your backup airway when your primary one does not work.
I think both of those are correct and I do not think they cancel the case for taping, because they are answering a narrower question than most people are asking. The review is largely assessing tape as a treatment for sleep-disordered breathing and apnea — and as a treatment for apnea, it is not one. That is exactly right, and anyone selling tape as an apnea fix is being irresponsible.
The more common use case is different: an adult with a patent nasal airway, no apnea, who habitually sleeps with their mouth open and wakes with a dry throat. For that person the intervention is mechanical and the outcome is easy to check within a few nights. That is a much smaller claim than "treats sleep-disordered breathing," and it is the only claim worth making.
What the review should change for you: if you have any nasal obstruction, or any suspicion of apnea, screening comes first and is not optional. Not because a study was unflattering, but because that is precisely the group the risk applies to.
The benefits worth expecting, if you do try it
Calibrated to what actually shows up rather than what gets promised:
- Less morning dry mouth and throat. The fastest and most reliable change, usually within a few nights. If it does not happen, either the seal is failing or mouth breathing was not your issue.
- Less snoring, if the open jaw was driving it. A lot of ordinary snoring is soft-tissue vibration that stops when the jaw stays shut. Partner report is your instrument here.
- Better overnight saliva protection. A dry mouth overnight is worse for teeth and gums; keeping it closed helps.
- Gradual morning grogginess improvement. Slower, subtler, usually noticeable in retrospect around week three.
- A more usable nose over time. Nasal breathing generates nitric oxide in the sinuses and the airway tends to respond to being used.
What not to expect: a fix for apnea, a dramatic HRV transformation, or anything resembling what a striker at the top of the Premier League is getting from his overall recovery programme. The markers worth tracking are here, and the honest limits are in what happens when you stop.
Who should not try this
Non-negotiable, and it maps directly onto the review's warning:
- Anyone with diagnosed untreated obstructive sleep apnea
- Anyone whose partner has witnessed them stop breathing, gasp, or choke in their sleep
- Anyone who cannot breathe comfortably through their nose — congestion, significant deviated septum, chronic rhinitis
- Anyone who has been drinking heavily or is taking sedatives
- Anyone with an acute respiratory illness, or nausea
- Children, without paediatric guidance
If you are unsure, run a STOP-BANG screen first. Our apnea-versus-mouth-breathing article covers how to tell the difference, and the full risk list is here. None of this is medical advice, and a suspected airway problem belongs with a clinician.
If you want to try it
Start with the screening above. Then use something designed for the job — skin-safe adhesive, made for hours of wear on lip skin, and pre-cut so the habit survives tired nights. General-purpose surgical tape works but has failure modes that show up around week three; the case against it is here.
The tape I use and recommend is Titan Recovery's bamboo silk mouth tape, which publishes its third-party lab testing openly — ISO 10993 biocompatibility results on the adhesive and a PFAS screen on the finished tape. To be explicit, since this article names athletes: that is my recommendation, not theirs. None of the people quoted above has said what brand they use.
Run it 14 nights, track morning dry mouth and partner-reported snoring against a written baseline, and you will know. That is a faster and more honest answer than any endorsement.