Sleep Apnea's Younger Cousin: Profound Snoring

Sleep apnea can make your life miserable -- but sometimes, when your air passages don't actually close off entirely but still sag a bit, you end up with a problem that makes everyone around you miserable; snoring. About 10% of the population snores, and not all of them do it often or loudly enough to disrupt the sleep of the people they live with. If you are -- or live with -- a profound snorer, Dr. Eric Johnson and Dr. Tom Risbrudt want you to know that help is just a phone call away.

Before you make an appointment for an expensive surgery or other route to address your snoring problems, however, here are some things you can do to address the problem at home:

• Lose weight -- for many people, even just losing 4 or 5 pounds is enough to take the weight off of their soft tissues and allow them to breathe without snoring.
• Avoid sedatives -- alcohol, sleeping pills, and relaxants can all cause snoring by encouraging the soft tissues to over-relax during sleep.
• Sleep on your side -- this keeps the tongue and soft tissues out of the back of your throat, allowing the air through. Even if you have to duct-tape a tennis ball to the back of your pajamas so that you don't roll over onto your back in the middle of the night, learning to sleep on your side is great for killing the snore.
• Prop your head up -- again, gravity can help you keep the flesh out of your airways. Just sleep with an extra pillow, or if necessary get a foam wedge that will keep the top of your body a few degrees above flat.
• Open your nose -- nasal strips, neti pots, and even prescription nasal dilators can help you keep breathing through your nose, which prevents about half of all snoring.

If you've tried these things and your companions still complain about your snoring, it's time to tackle the problem professionally. Call Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt's office to make an appointment to come in and get your snore turned off for good.

How a Dentist Tackles Sleep Apnea

Some people have asked us, why are we taking on obstructive sleep apnea? Isn't that the realm of the otorhinolaryngologist (ear/nose/throat doctor)? The answer is sure -- you could get a referral, see a specialist, pay an excessive amount of money for a cure and watch your insurance rates skyrocket. Or, you can see someone you already know and trust to take care of your smile, pay a lot less money, and end up with the same positive result.

How Do We Fix It?

There are a lot of different kinds of obstructive sleep apnea -- or rather, the obstruction can happen in a lot of different places. Obstructions where the tongue slides backwards to block off the throat have to be treated differently than ones where the throat collapses in on itself, which in turn are different from obstructions where the tonsils and palette fall together to block the air.

Depending on which of the kinds of obstructive sleep apnea you have, there are different approaches that can work to fix it. For the tongue-blocking kind of sleep apnea, there's an oral appliance that you can wear while you sleep that will keep your tongue from sliding backward. If you have the tonsils-and-palette kind of blockage, there's a different appliance you can wear that will force your lower jaw forward, which creates enough space that the air can get around your relaxed palette.

In cases severe enough that the dental appliances don't work, or in cases where the problem is further down the throat, there are two options. The first is surgery by a medical surgeon. The second is a machine called a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine. You wear a mask over your face while you sleep, and it continuously pushes air into your moth. Between the pressure from the outside and the suction from your lungs expanding, almost any natural blockage of your airways can be overcome.

How Do You Know if You Have Sleep Apnea?

Sleep apnea can be a tricky thing to diagnose. The lucky ones have a partner who pays attention to them while they're sleeping and can tell when they've stopped breathing. But if you live alone, or your partner is a deep sleeper themselves, determining whether or not you have sleep apnea or if something else is keeping you from sleeping properly can be very difficult.

The major symptom of sleep apnea is simple: you're tired no matter how long you sleep. But there are other things that can cause the same symptom, so you'll have to look for a few additional factors to make the diagnosis of sleep apnea.

Here are some other common symptoms related to this condition:

• Morning headaches
• Waking up with a dry mouth or sore throat
• Going to the bathroom frequently during the night
• Insomnia or frequent nighttime awakenings
• Moodiness, irritability, or depression
• Forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating
• Waking up feeling out of breath

Children with sleep apnea may also exhibit additional symptoms:

• Hyperactivity or inattention
• Decrease in school performance
• Developmental and growth problems
• Breathing through mouth instead of nose
• Irritable, angry, or hostile behavior

If you're still not sure, try keeping a sleep diary. Record each night how long you slept, how many times you woke up, and how sleepy you were the next day. If you fall asleep during normal activities, make a note of that. If you find that you're waking up more than twice each night or that you for more than three days in a row without getting restful sleep, you need to talk to an expert.

Finally, if even the diary leaves you uncertain, there's one definite way to figure out once and for all whether you have sleep apnea; record yourself while you sleep. Record one night all the way through, and then listen to it one hour at a time over the next week. Write down every time you hear your breathing stop for 10 seconds or more at a time. If you get a number above a dozen, you have sleep apnea and you need to seek medical help.

In addition to dental services, Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt offer solutions for sleep apnea and snoring. Stop by our office today and start sleeping well at night.

Let's Talk About Sleep Apnea

As Americans get less fit and more obese, there are a number of things that can and do go wrong with our bodies. Some of them are obvious, some of them less so. Many are things that only a specialist doctor -- like a cardiologist -- can handle, others can be tackled at home. Still others can be addressed in some surprising ways, like obstructive sleep apnea -- a soft tissue disorder of the palate and throat that can have disastrous effects on your physical and mental health. Dr. Eric Johnson's office wants you to know that obstructive sleep apnea may be affecting your life -- about one in a thousand of us have it -- and if it is, he's here to help you.

Obstructive sleep apnea happens when, as you sleep, the muscles that support the soft tissues in your nose, tongue, palate, and throat relax. In most people, that's not a problem, but for some of us, the relaxation allows our throat to close up completely, preventing us from breathing. In others, only the nasal passages close up, forcing us to breathe through our mouth all night long.

In order to keep us alive, our nervous systems panic when we stop breathing, and they send just enough of a jolt to our brain to knock us out of sound sleep. We wake up enough to force our throats open and start breathing again -- and usually, we immediately drift back off to sleep, often without ever realizing that our sleep was interrupted.

Unfortunately, even those non-waking interruptions utterly ruin the quality of our sleep...and they can happen hundreds of times every night. For people with obstructive sleep apnea, it's not uncommon to wake up after ten or even twelve hours of sleep and want nothing more than to go back to bed.

If you consistently wake up feeling tired and unrested, and it's been happening for so long that your behavior is changing for the worse, you need to stop by our office and talk to Dr. Johnson about how he can help you combat obstructive sleep apnea. Call and make an appointment today -- you owe it to yourself to get a good night's sleep.