Every summer brings a new viral health trick, and this one comes with the label of a top athlete. Erling Haaland, the twenty-five-year-old Norwegian striker, sleeps with his mouth taped shut - so-called mouth taping - to force himself to breathe through the nose and, as he claims, to rest better. The idea spread fast across social media. The problem? What's safe for a tightly monitored elite athlete can be dangerous for the ordinary person copying it from a video.

Advocates of the practice say taping the mouth improves sleep, reduces snoring and boosts physical fitness. It sounds simple and cheap. But that very simplicity is the trap - the trick treats the symptom, not the cause. If someone has a blocked nose or an undiagnosed condition, a taped mouth solves nothing, it only makes things worse.

Dentist Ivan Malagon is blunt: the practice is dangerous without a prior medical assessment. The greatest risk is for people with undiagnosed sleep apnea - a condition where breathing stops during sleep. "If a person doesn't breathe well, they can go many seconds without air, without oxygenating the brain, which can have fatal consequences," he warns. This isn't a trifle to copy off a phone.

The point isn't that Haaland is wrong - he has an entire medical team behind him monitoring every breath. The point is that a viral health trick, pulled out of context and shared without a warning, becomes a risk precisely for those who don't have such a team. Before you tape something to your body because a star does it, ask a doctor. What keeps one top athlete in shape isn't automatically a recipe for you.