Does humming do anything for your skin? What the evidence shows, and where it stops
Humming is being recommended for calmer nerves, better sleep and a lifted jawline. The calm and the sleep have research behind them, and that is where the skin benefit comes from. Only the jawline is still waiting for a study.
Humming has turned up everywhere this year. Face-yoga accounts recommend it for jowls, breathwork teachers call it the quickest way to the vagus nerve, and the fascia channels on YouTube say it reshapes your face. Underneath all of that sits a small but real body of research. It backs the calm and the sleep, which is where the skin benefit comes from, and it has not yet caught up with the jawline claims.
I have hummed most evenings for about two years, first as a composer who noticed what a sustained low note does to the body, then because it took the edge off the migraines that arrive with my cycle. So I came to this with a bias. Here is what I found when I went looking for the evidence rather than the anecdotes, mine included.
What the studies on humming have found
The best-known finding is about the nose. In 2002 two researchers at the Karolinska Institute measured nitric oxide in the exhaled breath of ten healthy adults, once while breathing out quietly and once while humming. During humming, nasal nitric oxide rose fifteenfold. The mechanism is mechanical: the vibration pushes air in and out of the sinuses, which is where much of the nose's nitric oxide is made. Other groups have repeated the result since.
Nitric oxide widens blood vessels and has antimicrobial properties, and the authors suggested humming might help keep the sinuses ventilated. It is a local effect in the airway, and no study has yet followed it any further than that. If you read that humming "boosts nitric oxide for glowing skin", the nitric oxide part is well measured and the skin part is not, at least not by this route. The route that does reach the skin runs through the nervous system.
The finding that connects to skin is about the nervous system. Humming is a long exhale with vibration added, and slow exhalation is one of the best-documented ways to shift the body towards its parasympathetic state, the rest-and-repair mode in which heart rate drops and muscle tone eases.
A 2023 pilot study in Cureus fitted 23 people with heart monitors and compared their heart rate variability during humming, exercise, emotional stress and sleep. Humming produced the lowest stress index of the four, lower than sleep. Several small studies of Bhramari pranayama, the yogic humming-bee breath, point the same way: parasympathetic markers rise during the practice and stay up for a while afterwards.
These are small, early studies in healthy adults, and none has measured a skin outcome yet, so they point the right way rather than settle the question. What they agree on is that five minutes of humming nudges the nervous system towards the calm state that chronic stress pulls it away from, and the shift shows up on a heart monitor.
Why a calmer nervous system reaches your skin
The pathway from stress to skin is the best-mapped thing on this site, so I will keep it short here. Under stress, cortisol rises, and cortisol thins the skin barrier, increases sebum, slows repair and keeps low-grade inflammation running. Most people's skin looks worst in their worst weeks for exactly this reason. Anything that lowers the stress load lowers the cortisol load, and the skin gets a calmer body to repair itself in overnight.
Humming belongs in the same category as a long exhale, a warm bath or twenty minutes of low-frequency sound. It changes the state your skincare lands on rather than treating the skin directly, and that indirect route (a calmer body, lower cortisol and inflammation, better overnight repair) is well documented. That is a quieter claim than the videos make, and the one you can count on.
Humming for jowls, the jawline and fascia
If you searched "humming for jowls", this is the claim that brought you here, and it deserves a proper answer.
No study has yet looked at humming and the lower face. The face-yoga argument is that humming works the platysma and the muscles around the mouth, and that toning them lifts the jawline. Facial exercise in general has only a little research so far: one small 2018 study found twenty weeks of daily exercises produced a modest gain in cheek fullness in sixteen women, and humming was not among the exercises. The fascia argument, that sound vibration reshapes connective tissue and therefore your face, is an idea nobody has tested yet.
What humming can do for the lower face is more modest, and still worth having. It is very hard to hum with a clenched jaw. If your lower face looks heavier at the end of a tense day, some of that is muscle tone: masseter, platysma and the muscles around the mouth held tight for hours. Anything that unclenches them changes how the lower face sits for a while, and you can see it in the mirror. It is a tension effect rather than a structural change, and one worth repeating every evening. The facial tension page goes into it properly.
Humming is a good answer to a jaw you can feel you are clenching. For reversing jowls the evidence is not there yet, and I would not promise it.
How to hum so it does something
Lips closed, teeth slightly apart, tongue resting on the roof of the mouth. Breathe in through the nose for a count of four. Hum the whole exhale out, low in pitch, until you are comfortably empty, which takes somewhere between eight and fifteen seconds. Feel for the vibration in your nose and cheekbones; if it sits mostly in your throat, drop the pitch. Five rounds is enough to notice a change, and five minutes is what most of the studies used.
It works better if you keep the face soft while you do it; a hum with a furrowed brow is working against itself. Lying down at the end of the evening helps too, rather than humming at your desk, because the parasympathetic shift lands more deeply when the body is already still.
Where this fits in a Skin Resonance routine
The Skin Resonance routines rest on the same principle: a sustained low-frequency sound gives the nervous system something to settle onto while you do the skincare you already own. Humming is the same idea produced by you rather than by headphones, and the two stack well. Hum for the first two minutes of a routine, then let the frequencies carry the rest. There is no guided humming step inside the app yet, though it is on the list, and the free ten-minute routine is a good place to try the pairing tonight.
Humming costs nothing and takes five minutes, and what it delivers, a measurable shift towards calm and a better night for your skin to repair in, is real. The face-shape claims will have to wait for a study.
The studies referenced here are listed below with links to the original papers. If you spot anything wrong, or you work in this area and want to argue with me, the email is at the bottom of the site.
Hum for the first two minutes of this, then let the frequencies carry the rest.
Calm for stressed skin: the free 10-minute routine
The same routine as the free try page, on YouTube: 396 Hz to settle, 7.83 Hz Schumann, then 4 Hz theta. Headphones on for steps 2 and 3.
Watch on YouTube →Sources & further reading
- Weitzberg E, Lundberg JON. Humming greatly increases nasal nitric oxide. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 2002;166(2):144–145. PubMed
- Maniscalco M, et al. Nasal nitric oxide measurements before and after repeated humming maneuvers. European Journal of Clinical Investigation 2003;33(12):1090–1094.
- Trivedi G, et al. Humming (simple Bhramari pranayama) as a stress buster: a Holter-based study to analyze heart rate variability parameters during Bhramari, physical activity, emotional stress, and sleep. Cureus 2023;15(4):e37527. PubMed
- Nivethitha L, Manjunath NK, Mooventhan A. Heart rate variability changes during and after the practice of Bhramari pranayama. International Journal of Yoga 2017;10(2):99–102. PubMed
- Laborde S, et al. Effects of voluntary slow breathing on heart rate and heart rate variability: a systematic review and a meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 2022;138:104711.
- Alam M, et al. Association of facial exercise with the appearance of aging. JAMA Dermatology 2018;154(3):365–367.
Skin Resonance is a wellness web app, not a medical device, and does not diagnose, treat or cure any condition. For a diagnosed skin condition, please see a dermatologist.
Frequently asked
Does humming really increase nitric oxide?+
Yes, in the nose. The 2002 Karolinska study measured a fifteenfold rise in nasal nitric oxide during humming compared with quiet exhalation, and later studies repeated it. It comes from vibration moving air through the sinuses. It is local to the airway, and the route from humming to skin runs through the nervous system rather than through nitric oxide.
Does humming stimulate the vagus nerve?+
Indirectly, as far as anyone has measured. Humming is a long, slow exhale with vibration through the throat, and slow exhalation shifts the body towards its parasympathetic state, which is largely governed by the vagus nerve. Studies pick this up through heart rate variability, which rises during and after humming. Nobody has measured vagal nerve activity directly during humming in a controlled trial, so "stimulates the vagus nerve" is a reasonable summary rather than a proven mechanism.
Can humming lift jowls or tighten the jawline?+
Not yet, as far as the research goes. No study has looked at humming and the lower face, and the research on facial exercise in general is small and shows modest effects. What humming can do is release a clenched jaw, because it is difficult to hum with the masseter tight. If your lower face looks heavier after a tense day, some of that is muscle tone, and releasing it changes how the face sits for a while. That is a tension effect rather than a structural change, and it is one you can repeat every evening.
How long should I hum for, and how?+
Lips closed, teeth slightly apart, tongue on the roof of the mouth. Breathe in through the nose for four, then hum the whole exhale out on a low pitch until you are comfortably empty. Five rounds is enough to notice a shift; five minutes is what most studies used. Keep the face soft and, if you can, do it lying down in the evening.
Is humming the same as what Skin Resonance does?+
Same principle, different source. Skin Resonance plays sustained low-frequency sound through headphones so the nervous system has something steady to settle onto while you do your skincare. Humming produces a similar effect with your own voice. They stack well: hum for the first couple of minutes of a routine, then let the frequencies carry the rest. There is no guided humming step in the app yet, though it is on the list.