Do you suffer from sleep apnea? Are you aware that sleep apnea dental appliance can reduce or eliminate the effects of sleep apnea? Here’s a brief overview of several commonly used appliances.

How Sleep Apnea Dental Appliance Help Sleep Apnea Symptoms

What causes sleep apnea? There are a few reasons that may give rise to sleep apnea: 1. the muscles in the throat relaxes too much and significantly narrows the airway. 2. The air passage and the normal flow of breathing may be disturbed when the tongue collapses, or folds back, thereby shutting off the breathing. This is considered to be a severe condition which may affect important organs like the brain and heart. What should be done? Oral appliances have been used to provide positive results in sleep apnea patients due to their effectiveness in treating spleep apnea by controlling the movement of the tongue or by repositioning the lower jaw to allow the airways to stay open. Sometimes, what a patient need is a sleep apnea dental appliance to help their sleep apnea symptoms, but most cases, they are used together with a Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) machine. To decide if a sleep apnea dental appliance is suitable for you, both your medical doctor and your dentist should jointly study your condition. However, it’s paramount that you opt for a dentist that has experience in fitting these oral appliances. Not every dentist knows how, and bear in mind that a poorly fitted appliance may cause other problems.

Different Types Of Oral Appliances

You may feel overwhelmed with over forty different types of sleep apnea dental appliance to choose from to help sleep apnea symptoms. Don’t panic your dentist is going to inform you the principles used in these devices which fall into two general categories. Therefore it will make your selection much easier. Basically, oral appliances are divided into how they perform or how they are designed.

Tongue retaining appliances and mandibular repositioning appliances are the two most widely used sleep apnea dental appliance. You are going to have the basic idea of how they work because their names are descriptive. How a tongue retaining appliance works is a retainer holds the tongue in a forward position, which prevents the back of the tongue from collapsing during sleep. The next device places the lower jaw in a protruded position to maintain the airway open at all time. Success rate in treating sleep apnea patients with both of these oral appliances have been promising.

Find the Right Dentist

This is the step where getting the right a sleep apnea dental appliance cannot be stressed enough. Check if the dentist you choose have specific knowledge in this area. He will completely diagnose your nasal passages and airways with a diagnostic tool that uses sound waves. The results will help the dentist to get a complete picture and thus enable him correctly fitting the sleep apnea dental appliance.