The ADA as well as the Academy of Sleep Medicine both recommended that as dentists we do screening for obstructive sleep apnea. So what we do is we screen you clinically, we ask a series of questions associated with that. If we do have obstructive sleep apnea, frontline therapy for mild or moderate sleep apnea would be actually oral appliance.
Oral appliance therapy is an appliance that we make using your teeth to keep the airway open, to prevent the airway from collapsing, prevent you from snoring, choking, gasping, things like that which can be a nuisance to your bedside partner but more importantly can lead to a lot of health implications especially when it comes to the heart. The heart works 24-7, 365. It only gets a rest in our deepest stages of sleep.
If instead of getting to those deepest stages of sleep you are then having it work overtime to make up for that lack of oxygen and pumping extra then you know that can lead to serious issues with the heart which you know you can very easily treat you know and relieve symptoms with something as simple as an oral appliance which takes two visits. When we treat a sleep apnea patient with an oral appliance they are thrilled. It’s such a simple fix, leaps and bounds in terms of quality of life improvement.
They say that their bedside partner is no longer hitting them or you know having to sleep in another room. They wake up more refreshed and you know without headaches and other you know issues that they didn’t even realize were attributed to their lack of oxygen in their rest and they are just you know overall just thrilled with how much of a difference this makes in their cognitive abilities. You know when you are more well rested and breathing better your brain you know relies on oxygen.
You just function so much better.
