Taping your mouth shut to sleep, not swallowing any liquids before going to bed, stuffing yourself with kiwis... what is this new trend flooding social media to "optimize your sleep"?

This "wellness" and "health" 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 to "maximize" the quantity and quality of their sleep.

Influencers therefore advise taking magnesium supplements and melatonin, swallowing kiwis, falling asleep with your mouth taped - at 10 p.m. at the latest - and above all not drinking anything two hours before bedtime , a guarantee of sweet dreams.

You also have to sleep in a very dark, cool room , with a heavy bedspread on your whole 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 reported this year that a person had died in their sleep after being "hanged by the neck," experts are sounding the alarm.

"Ridiculous and dangerous"

These kinds of extreme "sleepmaxxing" practices are both "ridiculous and potentially dangerous " and provide "no medical or scientific evidence," Timothy Caulfield, who works on disinformation at the University of Alberta in Canada, told AFP.

"It's a good example of how social media normalizes the absurd ," he explains.

Especially since insomnia and anxiety can be "effectively treated non-medicinally," emphasizes Harvard psychiatry professor and sleep specialist Eric Zhou.

"Cognitive behavioral therapy can dramatically reduce insomnia symptoms within weeks," he wrote in a March article from the prestigious university's medical school outside Boston.

As for taping your mouth to breathe only through your nose and avoid snoring and bad breath, no medical study supports this , criticizes a recent paper from George Washington University.

This practice would also be dangerous for people suffering, sometimes without knowing it, from sleep apnea.

Kathryn Pinkham, a UK-based insomnia specialist, also says she is "concerned" about "sleepmaxxing advice shared on platforms like TikTok, which can be at best useless and at worst dangerous for people with genuine sleep problems."

"Perfect sleep"

Certainly, scientists acknowledge, wanting to sleep well is part of the legitimate quest of our time for well-being and health.

But, Professor Zhou points out, "orthosomnia" , the search, which can turn into an obsession, for "perfect sleep", and which "is part of this culture of +sleepmaxxing+" , poses a "problem".

"Even good sleepers have irregular nights ," he writes.

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.

"Sleepmaxxing" is reminiscent of another social media trend: "looksmaxxing," or when influencers promote practices that are supposed to "maximize" a supposed form of male beauty.

"Many of these tips and tricks come from novices and have no medical basis ," says British expert Kathryn Pinkham.