Can This Snorer’s Marriage Be Saved? Yes, With Mouth Tape

Before going to bed, David Gesualdi brushes his teeth and washes his face. Then he does the trick that pleases his wife.

He tapes his mouth shut.

It’s a technique Iris Gesualdi says revitalized the couple’s marriage after more than 50 years. “I don’t hate him anymore,” she says.

Couples around the world swear by the previously obscure snoring remedy that’s drifted into the mainstream with a TV show, best-seller and popular social media posts.

Mouth tapers attach a not-too-sticky strip of tape, such as B. Surgical tape, either horizontally or vertically across their lips. Adherents like Mr. Gesualdi, owner of a used car dealership in Rhode Island, say snuff helps snore in part by redirecting breath through the nose.

Believers have received mixed messages from the medical establishment and staunch opposition from skeptics who think mouth taping is best left to hostage films.

The little-studied practice could be risky, say doctors, including Dr. Aarti Grover, medical director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. “Let’s say you have some medical problems like acid reflux disease,” she says. “Having tape over your mouth could be harmful.”

dr Steven Park counters that many medical professionals are overly cautious. A former ear, nose and throat surgeon at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he’s an oral rejuvenator who’s blogged about the benefits. He hasn’t seen any documented instances where anything bad happened, he says, and “worst case scenario, you wake up and take the tape off.”

Mouth tape doesn’t work for all snorers, but it might work for those who breathe through their mouth during sleep, says Dr. Park. Many mouth breathers wheeze when the jaw drops and the tongue falls back, blocking the airway, he says. Taping could bring silence by keeping his mouth closed.

The idea of ​​closing the lips for better sleep dates back to at least the 19th century, when author George Catlin observed Native American mothers closing babies’ mouths to encourage nasal breathing. He advocated sleeping with his lips closed in his book The Breath of Life, later titled Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life.

Taping remained largely a secret until 2019, when entrepreneur Nicholas Michalak appeared on reality TV show Shark Tank to showcase his company SomniFix and its lip-seal tapes. Inspired by his father, who used a device made from surgical tape and strips of cardboard to curb snoring, he spent six months testing prototype tape on himself, trying to find a balance between being too sticky and too weak. “I ended up being the guinea pig,” says Mr. Michalak, the company’s CEO. “I’ve experienced the downsides of really aggressive adhesives on my face.”

A year later, author James Nestor promoted mouth taping in his book Breath and in interviews with Joe Rogan and National Public Radio. This year, videos of young people doing mouth rejuvenation have become popular on TikTok, along with comments calling the practice ridiculous.

Mr. Nestor says that 80% of the people who approach him after speaking engagements tell mouth-opening success stories, sometimes laughing or tearfully saying it has helped their relationships.

“I wish they would talk about something else,” he says. “It’s such a tiny, tiny part of the book.”

Mr. Nestor believes some doctors fear people will seal their lips dangerously tight, say with duct tape. He recommends a piece of surgical tape the size of a postage stamp that can be easily peeled off by parting your lips. Wear the band for five minutes while you’re awake, he suggests, gradually adding minutes each day until you’re comfortable sleeping with it on.

Lara Briden has developed a protocol for comfortable taping. The 52-year-old naturopath from New Zealand sticks a strip of surgical tape on her forearm to reduce some of the stickiness before she slides into bed to watch something on her laptop with her husband. When she wants to sleep, she kisses her spouse, turns over and moves the tape from the arm to the mouth.

“He knows when I’ve forgotten,” says Ms. Briden. Her husband, Jonathan Briden, has considered taping her mouth while she sleeps, but decided he didn’t want to cross that line.

According to studies over the last three decades, nasal breathing can also cause the nose to release nitric oxide, which makes sleep deeper, among other benefits.

That potential intrigued Amy Nosta, a 51-year-old mother who homeschools her children in New Jersey. So is the allure of silencing her sleeping partner. “The loud squeaks make the fat,” says her husband John Nosta, 63, who runs a think tank focused on healthcare technology.

After Mrs Nosta found out about mouth taping from Instagram last year, the couple found it worked for both and say the benefits outweigh the reduced nocturnal pronunciation. “It’s garbled,” she says, “but you can still understand it.”

The benefits of the remedy are mostly anecdotal. The best-known research related to mouth taping comes from Taiwan, where scientists investigated whether sealing the mouths of 30 patients with “habitual open-mouth breathing” could reduce snoring and obstructive sleep apnea, which causes people to temporarily stop breathing. In a study published in 2015, they concluded that a patch, similar to duct tape, is useful for doing just that.

Another researcher, Dr. Ann Kearney, of Stanford University’s Voice and Swallowing Center, says she is organizing a similar study that she hopes will involve 300 patients.

Dr Park, the proponent of mouth taping, says that while duct tape might help people with mild sleep apnea, he suspects it won’t help those with more severe forms of the condition.

Mr. Gesualdi of Rhode Island, 74, had long tried to stop his thunderous snoring, which his wife had once taped to alert him to. He tried braces-like appliances, but they were uncomfortable, dislocated his teeth, and didn’t always stay on all night.

A SomniFix strip. The company’s CEO says he’s tested prototypes first-hand; “In the end, I was the guinea pig.”

Photo: SomniFix

Ms Gesualdi, who runs a women’s boutique and says she is in her 70s, sometimes moved to another bed. “Of course he didn’t like it,” she says. “But honestly, if someone kept waking you up from a deep sleep and you had to work the next day, would you be happy?”

The high school sweethearts were receptive when they saw the SomniFix pitch on “Shark Tank,” and Mr. Gesualdi bought the product online that same evening. The tape worked, Ms Gesualdi says, giving her a new bedtime routine: asking her husband if the tape is on and hoping for a muffled “yes.” He once wore duct tape on a night flight to Europe.

“After all these years of being married to me and snoring and hearing all the craziness, I have to give my wife eight hours of sleep,” says Mr. Gesualdi. “Otherwise she’s a bear.”

https://www.spamchronicles.com/can-this-snorers-marriage-be-saved-yes-with-a-mouth-band/