Madison Families Deserve Better
This information could save your life or the life of someone in your family. We want our family of existing and new patients to understand the risks associated with a disease called sleep apnea. It’s often associated with its most significant (and dangerous) side effect — snoring.
Sleep apnea causes you to wake up several times (it could be up to one hundred times) each night as you gasp for your breath. You’re most likely snoring away and don’t even know any of this is happening. The end result is you wake up with repeated, unexplained:
– Headaches
– Fatigue
– High Blood Pressure
– Depression
– Low Libido
– Worsening ADHD Side Effects
You or your loved one doesn’t have to live like this anymore. There’s more to life than a cycle of bad sleep and feeling awful.
Better Days. Comfortable Nights.
All of our patients receive a screening for sleep apnea as part of our routine dental exams. Based on this exam, you may be asked to fill out a simple questionnaire about your overall health and habits. If you present with symptoms related to sleep apnea, we may recommend a home sleep study or a referral to a sleep specialist. This way, we can find the most effective way to help you feel better and sleep normally again.
The standard of care in terms of treating your diagnosed sleep apnea is generally Continuous Positive Airway Pressure or CPAP computerized technology. This state-of-the-art system is the leading therapy for sleep apnea. CPAP uses a nasal mask that’s connected to a pump to create positive airflow through your nose while you are sleeping. (Say goodbye to those loud, annoying, snore-filled nights!)
Can’t tolerate a CPAP? Not all patients can. If that’s the case, Dr. Lee can create a custom Vivos oral appliance that’s just as effective to help you breathe with ease. Similar to a nightguard, these appliances are custom fit to your mouth and position your jaws in a manner that will comfortably open your airway and allow a better night’s sleep. Don’t worry – we’ll do a full airway assessment in order to determine what is the best solution for your particular needs.
Benefits of a custom oral appliance include:
- Permits normal mouth opening
- Allows for speech and drinking
- Safe and effective
- Clinically validated
- Easily adjusted
- Custom fit
- Full lip seal
- Packs and travels with ease
- Warrantied against breakages
How Can We Help You?
The good news is that we can treat everyone from kids to adults. Sleep apnea is usually curable in kids and treatable in adults. Dr. Lee works closely with an orthodontist, an ENT, and Sleep Specialists to determine what treatment would be most beneficial to each patient.
Even better, Dr. Lee recently obtained Diplomate status with the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, making her a Preferred Sleep Medicine Provider. The requirements to become a Diplomate are rigorous, requiring extensive training, case studies, and tests to achieve this rare level of expertise.
Overnight sleep studies, CPAP therapy, and oral appliance therapy are frequently covered by most medical insurance plans, including Medicare. Let us check for you as we start developing a treatment plan.
When a child is showing signs of sleep apnea, it is important to understand what dynamics may be playing a part in their airway dysfunction. There are even Myofunctional Therapy techniques that can be incorporated into a child’s treatment. They’re designed to use neuromuscular repatterning so that your child enjoys an improvement in breathing, swallowing, and muscle function. This creates more space for healthy adult teeth to grow and to help keep their bite right!
Because this practice is so innovative, we are the only dental office in the area providing Myofunctional Therapy. As Dr. Lee and Courtney, one of our Registered Dental Hygienists, learned more on the topic and how it could really help patients develop better breathing habits, they were inspired by the possibilities of this natural, homeopathic method of treatment. In fact, they were so inspired that they’ve decided to call this treatment – Inspire at Rivertown.
Courtney is scheduling consultations so that you can find out more about Myofunctional Therapy and whether it might be the key to solving a variety of oral health problems.
