Sleep Apnea Treatment – Parsippany, NJ
Helping You Rest Easy & Improve Your Health
At Rauchberg Dental Group, we are happy to offer a wide range of treatments to improve our patients’ oral and overall health. While we pride ourselves on creating personalized dentistry plans that keep patients smiling, we also offer a range of other services you may not immediately think about visiting the dentist for. One of those services is sleep apnea treatment from our Parsippany, NJ dentist. We work with local sleep doctors to provide effective therapy for sleep apnea sufferers to help them sleep soundly and wake feeling rested. If you’d like to find out more or schedule a sleep apnea consultation, contact our Parsippany dental office today.
What is Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea occurs when patients stop breathing for ten or more seconds at a time during sleep. While everyone experiences incidents of apnea (complete breathing cessation) or hypopnea (shallow breathing) during sleep, patients diagnosed with sleep apnea can experience these events 100s of times a night.
How Will I Know I Have Sleep Apnea?
The only way to know for sure that you have sleep apnea is to receive an accurate diagnosis by taking a sleep test with a sleep doctor. If you’re trying to determine whether or not you may be suffering from sleep apnea, you can start by taking our short sleep quiz. Patients are at a higher risk if they are male, overweight, over the age of 50, or have a large neck circumference. You should let a sleep doctor or our team know if you experience any of the following warning signs, especially if you’re a high risk patient:
- Loud, chronic snoring
- Waking feeling tired and severe daytime sleepiness
- Waking out of breath, with dry mouth, or a hoarse throat
- Difficulty concentrating and memory loss
- Unexplained changes in behavior or mood swings
- Chronic morning headaches
Why Should I Visit a Dentist for Sleep Apnea Treatment?
Both the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommend that patients visit the dentist for sleep apnea treatment if they fit any of the following descriptions:
- You’ve recently been diagnosed with sleep apnea and want to learn more about treatment
- Your sleep test did not return a sleep apnea diagnosis but you suffer with loud, chronic snoring
- You have struggled to grow accustomed to CPAP treatments, but are deemed CPAP intolerant
- You do not achieve adequate improvement from CPAP therapy alone
How Do Oral Appliances Work?
When giving CPR or mouth to mouth, you’re instructed to shift the patients’ head back and jaw forward. This positioning places pressure on the throat muscles and opens the airway. Oral appliances for sleep apnea rely on this same positioning to keep the airway clear. Rather than moving the head back, the oral appliance shifts the jaw gently forward clearing the airway and allowing patients to sleep soundly through the night. A custom crafted appliance is comfortable and should allow you to sleep deeply for longer, stop snoring, and avoid the potentially adverse health effects of sleep apnea.