According to a scientist, this bad habit is the reason why the population tends to become ugly. Here’s how to get rid of it.
In 2025, the new resolutions are still there. This year, around one in three French people have made one or more good resolutions, as revealed by a survey carried out as part of Consumer Insights from Statista. Among them, 17% want to do more sport or exercise, 15% want to eat healthier and 13% want to lose weight. Concerns about health and physical condition are therefore at the top of the French people’s objectives.
If your fitness or appearance matters at all, this information may be of interest to you. According to Andrew Herbman, an American neuroscientist, a habit shared by many people is the source of facial deformation. Under its influence, humanity is even becoming “uglier” year after year, he says.
The reason? Mouth breathing. Indeed, few people know it, but this bad habit can have harmful consequences on our appearance. “It is not normal to breathe through your mouth, except occasionally, if you have a blocked nose due to a cold for example,” explains Morgane Warnier, a trained speech therapist in an interview with Figaro.
Sleep tends to be disrupted. In fact, breathing through your mouth prevents you from entering a deep sleep phase and therefore from enjoying a restful night. This gives rise to dark circles “which have nothing to do with fatigue”, but which “are due to non-existent oxygenation of the blood capillaries of the nose”, according to the Breath Foundation. Enough to make a face look ugly for a very bad reason!
Physically, the mouth breather may develop deviant facial growth: the chin recedes downward and the eyes become droopy due to lack of stress on the sinuses. In children, cases can be more severe if the upper teeth no longer close normally with the lower ones. “What is scientifically proven is that, in children, mouth breathing causes skeletal changes in the face during growth and that these changes persist into adulthood,” underlines specialist Morgane Warnier.
In the case where “the problem is not caught early enough, the asymmetry of the face becomes more pronounced and the deviation of the chin to one side becomes even more obvious”, specifies the doctor Sébastien Beaupuis. This is why, although it is difficult to control your breathing while sleeping, it is recommended to breathe through your nose during the day to get used to it. It’s not that hard to put on and your face will thank you.