Mesa, AZ dentist provides patients with snoring treatment options to stop chronic snoring

We, or someone we know, might keep everyone else awake in the wee hours of the night with loud snores and gasps for breath. Most of the time, we gain comedic fun from this trait with jokes, gibes, and laughter at the snorer’s expense. New Health Dental, in Mesa, AZ, doesn’t laugh at the snores. Often, they are the symptom of a common but potentially serious health condition. That’s why we help devise treatment paths to help combat snoring. If you are being kept awake by a loved one’s snores or are the snorer yourself, we can help! Frequently, chronic snoring is caused by sleep apnea. We want to help you understand what sleep apnea is, including the symptoms to look for beyond just the snores, the long term whole body health effects of untreated apnea, effective treatments for apnea, and lifestyle changes that might help diminish apnea symptoms.

Obstructive sleep apnea:

Obstructive sleep apnea causes the airway to become blocked during sleep. The tissue at the back of the throat will collapse as the upper airway relaxes during sleep. This will partially to fully block the airway. The result is oxygen deprivation in the body and brain. This can cause a person with apnea to awake multiple times during the night, even if they don’t remember waking. Severe cases can cause a person to wake hundreds of times during the night. The snoring and choking noises that occur are due to the limited air coming in through the partially obstructed airways. Sometimes, breathing will cease totally for 10 seconds or more.

Symptoms to look for other than snoring:

• Gasps and chokes while asleep
• Memory loss
• Depression
• Morning headaches
• Insomnia
• Fatigue
• Sleepiness during the daytime
• Getting up multiple times in a night to use the bathroom
  

The impact that it can have on your overall health:

New Health Dental takes pride in our commitment to holistic dental healthcare for our patients. This means we focus on the ways that the body works in harmony for overall health and well-being. Someone suffering from sleep apnea is heading down a path towards bad health. There are a couple of different reasons for this, the main one being the importance of sleep in maintaining good health. It’s long been known that sleep is beneficial and necessary, but in the last decades, more studies are backing up this assertion. Everything from mental health to weight gain to recovering from illnesses can be traced back to the role sleep plays in our day to day life and to how our bodies regulate our health. Sleep apnea, if left untreated, has been directly linked to high blood pressure, strokes, diabetes, suicidal thoughts, severe depression, heightened symptoms in bipolar disorder and heart disease.

Effective medical treatments:

• CPAP machines: Continuous positive airway pressure uses a mask that is worn over the nose and mouth while the person sleeps. It hooks to a machine that delivers a steady stream of air into the nose. This causes airways to remain open and breathing to stay regular.
• Dental oral airway devices: These devices are designed to keep your jaw in the optimal position to keep your airway open while sleeping. They fit in your mouth while you sleep and are not connected to anything else, like a CPAP machine is.

Lifestyle changes that can help:

• Maintaining a healthy weight: People that struggle with obesity often have more advanced symptoms of sleep apnea.
• Changing sleep positions to improve breathing: Some positions can aggravate symptoms.
• Quit smoking: Smoking increases the swelling in the upper airway which can aggravate the blocked airway apnea patients struggle to combat.

How New Health Dental can help you!

We work with your physician to determine if your issue is sleep apnea. If so, we work towards fitting you with an oral airway device. Because we want each patient to achieve optimal health, we also work with you to determine lifestyle changes you can help ease symptoms.

Stop the snores! Wake up refreshed every morning! Call us today to schedule your consultation to discuss how we can help. (480) 830-3305 .

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