Social Media. "Sleepmaxxing": These Crazy (Even Dangerous) Tips From Influencers for Sleeping Well

Taping your mouth shut to sleep, covering yourself with a heavy bedspread, or even stuffing yourself with kiwis... Here are the crazy, even dangerous, tips from various influencers on "sleepmaxxing" (in French "sleep optimization") for sleeping well.

This trend on X and TikTok and in the specialized magazine press emerged in the fall, followed by an explosion of tens of millions of posts of all kinds promising poor sleepers how to "maximize" the quantity and quality of their sleep. Thus, some advise taking magnesium supplements and melatonin, swallowing kilos of kiwis, falling asleep with your mouth taped shut—by 10 p.m. at the latest—and definitely not drinking anything two hours before bedtime. They also recommend sleeping in a very dark, cool room, with a heavy bedspread covering your entire body.

And to combat one of the most serious psychological sleep disorders, the vicious cycle of insomnia and stress, a video with 11 million views on X even suggests keeping your head suspended above the pillow using a rope attached to the headboard. But in China, after state media this year reported that a person died in their sleep from being "hanged by the neck," experts are sounding the alarm.

These kinds of extreme practices are both "ridiculous and potentially dangerous" and provide "no medical or scientific evidence," protests Timothy Caulfield, who works on disinformation at the University of Alberta in Canada. "This is a good example of how social media normalizes the absurd," he explains. Especially since insomnia and anxiety can be "effectively treated non-medicinally," points out Harvard psychiatry professor and sleep specialist Eric Zhou. Moreover, "even good sleepers have irregular nights." "Cognitive behavioral therapy can dramatically reduce insomnia symptoms within a few weeks," he wrote in March in an article from the medical school of the prestigious university outside Boston.

As for taping your mouth to breathe only through your nose and avoid snoring and bad breath, no medical studies support this, a recent paper from George Washington University also criticizes. This practice is also dangerous for people who suffer, sometimes unknowingly, from sleep apnea. Kathryn Pinkham, a UK-based insomnia specialist, also says she is "worried" about these "tricks" which can be dangerous "for people with real sleep disorders," and which " come from novices and have no medical basis."

As for taking melatonin for insomnia, this is not recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, which explains in a 2015 article that this pharmaceutical product is intended for adult air travelers to reduce the harmful effects of jet lag.