subject: Treat Your Snoring Or Sleep Apnea With Help From Your Dentist [print this page] If you sleep close to someone who snores, you know how much of an annoyance it can be. Not getting enough sleep is detrimental to your overall health and can lead to irritability and difficulty concentrating. But for some people, their snoring is actually related to a serious condition known as sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a type of breathing disorder that is characterized by brief interruptions of breathing during sleep. If you or someone you know is suffering from this disorder, it is important to talk to your Williamsburg dentist to get treatment for this serious disorder.
How Sleep Apnea Affects Your Health
If your sleep apnea is left untreated, your breathing gets interrupted for ten to twenty seconds up to hundreds of times per night. Over time, sleep apnea can lead to potentially serious health problems like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and can be life threatening. If you seek treatment you can control the symptoms of sleep apnea and get much better sleep.
Here are some common symptoms of sleep apnea:
*Excessive daytime sleepiness
*Awakening with a dry or sore mouth
*Morning headaches
*Irritability and impaired mental or emotional functioning
*Insomnia
Treatments For Sleep Apnea
When visiting your dentist make sure you talk about your sleep apnea. An important step to take in order to rid yourself of the condition may be a referral to a sleep medicine doctor for an evaluation. He or she will tell you that there are a few different lifestyle steps that you can take to help with your sleep apnea. For overweight individuals, even a 10% decrease in weight can reduce the number of sleep apnea events that occur. It is also beneficial to avoid alcohol and sleeping pills, which make the airway more likely to collapse during sleep. It is also important to avoid sleep deprivation, as this only makes your sleep apnea problems worse.
If these conservative methods do not work, your dentist has other options to help you. Usually this will include the placement of a dental appliance that will reposition the lower jaw and tongue. This treatment will help your airway stay open during the night. Another possible treatment for sleep apnea is the use of continuous positive airway pressure. With this treatment, you will wear a mask that blows a constant stream of air through your nose and/or mouth to make sure that your airway remains open for the entire night. If these treatments do not work, some patients are eligible for surgery. Surgery is the best option for people who have excessive or abnormal tissue that is blocking their airway. This is typically done after other methods have failed.
To learn more about how to combat snoring or sleep apnea or to schedule an appointment, contact your Williamsburg sleep dentist today.
