Oral Appliances For Snoring and Sleep Apnea Before Appliance
Restriction of the airway causes Snoring. Closure causes Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA).
After Appliance
Oral appliances for snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnea open the airway allowing air to freely flow.
An amazing 1/3 of the population, or about 80 million people, snore while they sleep, often repeatedly disturbing spouses and children. Watch this video to learn more.
Question. Did you know that snoring can lead to serious health problems?
Answer. As you snore, you are struggling to breath causing the blood pressure in your carotid arteries to soar. This pressure can lead to damage in the walls of the arteries, increasing your risk of stroke.
Question. What causes snoring?
Answer. As you sleep, the muscles and soft tissues relax and make the breathing airway smaller. A smaller airspace makes air travel faster, which causes the tissues to vibrate producing snoring.
We can help! If you have routine snoring without grinding or sleep apnea, then a "Silent Nite" appliance may be your solution.
"Silent Nite" Appliance
The "Silent Nite" device has been shown to work 70-100% of the time and it is comfortable to wear. So if you snore or someone you love snores, call us and let us see if we can give you the first of many "Silent Nights."
What if you have been diagnosed or feel you have sleep apnea?
After having a sleep study, which is directed through you physician, we can fabricate a custom appliance designed to treat Sleep Apnea. In our office we use the newest version of the TAP Appliance, the TAP 3.
Sleep Apnea- It's More Than Just Snoring
As many as ten percent of working-age men suffer from obstructive sleep apnea, a condition that causes them to repeatedly stop breathing for as long as ten seconds at a time, night after night. Anyone sleeping in the room with an individual who suffers from the condition may think it's just continuous, loud, irritating snoring. But obstructive sleep apnea is a health problem that can cause serious medical complications if not corrected.
The physiology behind the snore
Just about everyone has slept in the same room with someone who snores. What's going on behind all that middle-of-the-night racket?
As people fall asleep, muscles in the tongue and throat relax, and the tongue drops back into the airway, narrowing it. Air moving through that narrowed airway travels faster and causes the walls of the throat to vibrate, producing a rattling noise commonly known as snoring.
Don't ignore these symptoms
While snoring itself isn't a serious health problem, sleep apnea is. Sleep apnea is like snoring taken to the next level. It occurs when the airway is completely blocked by the soft tissues in the back of the throat. The American Dental Association likens the effect to what occurs when a thick milkshake is sucked through a narrow straw; eventually the straw collapses from the pressure.
When the airway is obstructed to such a degree, less oxygen reaches the blood and the brain. In response, the brain gives the red alert signal to the airway to unblock itself by tightening up. This causes the individual to gasp or snort abruptly, restoring breathing to normal.
With obstructive sleep apnea, this cycle repeats itself throughout the night, disrupting sleep and leaving the individual exhausted after a night of on-again, off-again sleep. The condition can also cause headaches, moodiness, daytime sleepiness and an inability to function properly.