Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley CA
The American Medical Association estimates that approximately 90 million Americans snore at times, including 37 million American adults who snore on a regular basis. Are you one of them? Loud, regular snoring is considered one of the major warning signs that someone suffers from a sleep breathing disorder called obstructive sleep apnea. Today on the blog, your airway management dentists at Ebrahimian Integrative Dentistry explain how we can provide relief for both sleep apnea and snoring.
Snoring, sleep apnea and your airway
Any issue with your breathing when you sleep classifies as some variety of an airway problem. This includes both snoring and sleep apnea. Benign snoring, which is harmless, is at one end of the spectrum. The sound you make when you snore is generated when air moves past tissues in your throat that have become loose or relaxed. This airflow produces a vibration and, with it, emits a sound.
Sleep apnea, however, is at the serious end of the spectrum. The tissue becomes loose or relaxed in the throat to the point that it impedes the airway, causing breathing to become labored or even completely interrupted. When breathing is cut off, your body and brain react as if you are choking to death, jolting you out of sleep and disrupting the sleep cycle.
Know the signs of sleep apnea
Each time a blockage of the airway occurs, a sleep apnea patient has their sleep cycle interrupted, thus depriving them of the restorative qualities that good sleep has to both the mind and the body. A person with a severe case of sleep apnea may experience these blockages hundreds of times per night. As a result, excessive fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of sleep apnea.
Other frequently reported symptoms of the disorder include:
- Impotence
- Irritability
- Restless sleep
- Clenching or grinding your teeth (also known as bruxism) while asleep
- Poor performance at work or school
Sleep apnea will not go away on its own!
If you do not receive diagnosis and treatment for this sleep breathing disorder from a qualified medical professional, then your problem only will magnify.
Over time, a patient with sleep apnea will become more at risk for many chronic and even life-threatening ailments, such as:
- Cardiac disease
- Obesity
- Depression
- Cognitive decline
- High blood pressure and/or stroke
Sleep apnea dentistry in Scotts Valley, Los Gatos and Santa Cruz in California
Ebrahimian Integrative Dentistry offers services in the area of sleep apnea dentistry, a specialization of dental science that focuses on airway management. We treat sleep apnea and other sleep breathing disorders by addressing the root of the problem—the issue affecting the airway. In many cases, we can resolve sleep apnea or loud snoring through a course of oral appliance therapy. These oral appliances are custom-designed for each patient based on digital impressions of the mouth, keeping the lower jaw in a forward position and helping the airway remain open throughout sleep.
