Norway's Erling Haaland is FIFA World Cup 2026's breakout star: Here's what doctors think of his now-viral sleep routine

Erling Haaland is having the kind of month that turns a very famous footballer into an inescapable one.

The Norwegian striker has scored seven goals at his first-ever World Cup, just one goal behind Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé, who lead the tournament's Golden Boot race, and catapulted Norway into the quarterfinals for the first time in the country's history, past Brazil no less.

He's also become the unofficial face of the tournament's fun side: leading fans in Norway's viral "Viking Row" celebration, dropping a now-viral remix with Kygo of a rap song he made in 2016, and posting an Easter egg telling people to Google his name, which now triggers an animated graphic of Vikings rowing across the search page.

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In between all that, an old clip of him talking sleep habits with Logan Paul and KSI on the "Impaulsive" podcast has resurfaced and gone viral all over again. In the video, Haaland laid out a routine that sounded more like a biohacker's checklist: blue-light-blocking glasses, a mouth taped shut, and a bedroom stripped of anything that might interfere with rest.

"I think sleep is the most important thing in the world," he told them, adding that it's rarely one dramatic intervention that moves the needle. "Doing a lot of things is not good, but doing small things every single day for a longer period really pays off."

The mouth-taping trend, and who should skip it

That mouth-taping line has had the longest afterlife online, spawning its own wave of TikTok explainers and routines.

The idea behind it is straightforward: taping the mouth shut forces nasal breathing, which filters, warms and humidifies air before it reaches the lungs. For some people, that can mean less snoring and a drier mouth in the morning. But the science backing it up is thinner than the trend suggests.

"The current evidence is still limited and should not be taken as a recommendation for the general population," says Dr Pradeep Bajad, Senior Consultant, Department of Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine, Amrita Hospital, Faridabad. He points out that while a handful of small studies hint at benefits for people with mild sleep-disordered breathing, that's a long way from a blanket recommendation.

More importantly, he flags who should stay away from it altogether — anyone with nasal obstruction, chronic allergies, a deviated septum, obesity, asthma, COPD, or suspected sleep apnoea, unless they've been medically evaluated first. In those cases, restricting mouth breathing doesn't necessarily improve airflow; it can make things worse.

What about the blue-light glasses?

The blue-light glasses are a gentler sell, scientifically speaking, but still not the slam dunk influencers make them out to be. It's well established that blue light exposure in the evening can delay the body's internal clock and suppress melatonin production. What's murkier is whether the glasses themselves meaningfully change sleep outcomes in otherwise healthy adults.

Dr Bajad's take is that they have a place, but a limited one: "Blue-light-blocking glasses can be useful in certain situations, particularly for people exposed to bright screens late at night, but they aren't a replacement for healthy sleep habits."

The stronger, better-supported move, he says, is simply cutting screen exposure and dimming household lights in the hours before bed, letting the brain wind down gradually rather than trying to counteract the light at the eleven o'clock hour with a pair of tinted lenses.

What science actually backs

Buried further down Haaland's routine, and largely ignored by the viral clips, are the two habits that actually have the most robust science behind them: morning sunlight and a consistent sleep-wake schedule.

Morning light exposure is the strongest cue the body's circadian clock responds to — it's what tells the brain to be alert during the day and to release melatonin at the right point come evening. Keeping wake and sleep times consistent reinforces that rhythm further, with knock-on benefits for cognitive performance and physical recovery.

"If I had to pick two interventions for better sleep, it would be morning sunlight and a regular sleep schedule," Dr Bajad says. "These are supported by decades of circadian science and have a much greater impact than most viral sleep hacks. The body works best when it can predict when to be awake and when to be asleep."

Where red light, magnesium and sleep gadgets fit in

That's really the tension running through Haaland's routine, and through the sleep-optimisation trend more broadly: the habits that circulate online well — mouth tape, tinted glasses, red-light panels — aren't necessarily the ones doing the heavy lifting.

Red-light therapy has some biological plausibility, since it avoids the wavelengths known to suppress melatonin, but convincing clinical evidence that it meaningfully improves sleep is still lacking. Magnesium supplements can help specific groups, like people with a diagnosed deficiency, but there isn't enough evidence to recommend them across the board. Wearable sleep trackers are useful for spotting long-term patterns, but they're not diagnostic tools, whatever the graphs and scores might suggest.

Dr Bajad's closing point tends to get lost in the algorithm-friendly version of this story: the basics still do most of the work. Seven to nine hours of sleep, consistently. Morning light. Regular exercise. Cutting caffeine later in the day. Dimming lights in the evening. A cool, quiet room. And seeing a doctor if there's chronic snoring, gasping during sleep, or excessive daytime tiredness — signs that something more than a hack might be going on.

Elite recovery, in other words, isn't built on any single gadget or trend someone picked up from a podcast clip. It's built on the unglamorous stuff, repeated daily, for long enough that it stops looking like a hack and starts looking like a habit. For Haaland, that discipline is showing up where it matters most right now, on the pitch, where Norway is chasing a first-ever World Cup semi-final on the back of a tournament run that's already rewritten the country's football history.