Sleep apnea is a common and treatable condition that affects millions of people.
While the snoring and restless nights might seem like minor (if annoying) inconveniences, their effects can still impact both your physical and dental health.
What Is Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea is a disorder that occurs when a person’s breathing is interrupted while they sleep. It involves the frequent collapsing of the back of a person’s throat, causing snoring and inconsistent, disrupted breathing during the night. The disruption not only interferes with your breathing and your quality of sleep, but also leads to less oxygen being delivered to the brain and vital organs.
Even mild cases can have a number of negative consequences. Due to the brain being deprived of oxygen, those affected often wake up during the night (even without realizing it), sometimes hundreds of times. These short interruptions in sleep might only last seconds, but they disrupt the sleep cycle, causing fatigue, grogginess, and even depression.
Do you have sleep apnea?
Take our symptoms quiz to find out.
Causes of Sleep Apnea
While there are many potential factors for what causes sleep apnea, or worsens it, these are considered the most common:
Family History
- Some patients have a history of sleep apnea in the family. If you have loved ones with sleep apnea, you could be at greater risk of developing it yourself.
Neck and Airway Circumference
- People with thicker necks may have narrower airways, which can contribute to sleep apnea. In addition, some people inherit naturally narrow airways. Whenever the airways are narrower than average, there’s a greater chance of collapse.
Weight
- Obesity may cause some people to be four times as likely to suffer from sleep apnea as those within their medically ideal weight range. Fat deposits around the upper airway may obstruct breathing, causing collapses in the throat.
Gender
- Men are twice as likely as women to have sleep apnea. Though the risk for women increase if they are overweight or have gone through menopause.
Age
- Sleep apnea occurs more often in older adults, though younger patients with several other indicators can also regularly suffer from this condition.
Smoking
- Smokers are three times more likely to have sleep apnea than are people who have never smoked, because smoking increases the amount of inflammation in your airways. If you quit smoking, the risk level drops.
Alcohol and Drug Use
- Substances with a tranquilizing effect, like alcohol or drugs, can cause the muscles in your neck to relax too much. This can result in frequent airway collapses during sleep.
Nasal Congestion
- If you have difficulty breathing through your nose—whether it’s because of permanent sinus issues or allergies, etc.—you’re could be more likely to develop sleep apnea.
Do You Snore?
Persistent snoring can be an annoying problem. But no matter how much it aggravates you (or your loved ones), it may be a sign of a much more serious issue. Loud, frequent snoring could actually be a symptom of sleep apnea.
Millions of Americans suffer from this condition every night and 3 million people each year are diagnosed. While snoring is just one of its symptoms, sleep apnea can have major complications if left untreated.
Symptoms of Sleep Apnea
Since it can be tough to identify an issue that occurs when you’re not conscious, here are the most common symptoms of sleep apnea to look out for.
Insomnia
- Sleep apnea doesn’t just affect you during the night. Sleep deprivation caused by interrupted sleep can also have a snowball effect. That means that the more you don’t sleep, the more difficult it becomes to fall asleep.
Waking with a dry mouth or sore throat
- You may wake up with a dry mouth, chapped lips, or a scratchy throat, as If your mouth is open during the night while you try to breathe. This can be especially bad for your dental health, as dry mouth allows harmful bacteria to flourish and can contribute to tooth decay and gum disease.
Loud snoring
- Snorting, choking, or gasping sounds while snoring may indicate apnea. While snoring often happens for many other reasons, it is the condition’s most prevalent symptom.
Interrupted breathing
- Sleep apnea causes you to literally stop breathing for short periods. Patients might appear to stop breathing entirely for a few moments, then make a loud noise (like choking or gasping) when they catch their breath again.
Morning headache
- Because your blood oxygen levels drops when you stop breathing, then rise again after you catch your breath, sleep apnea can often result in a headache the next morning.
Waking abruptly
- You may not remember when it happens, but if you do have any memories of waking abruptly during the night —especially with shortness of breath—it could be an indication of sleep apnea.
Irritability, anxiety, or depression
- Loss of healthy sleep can lead to changes in your mood or more pronounced and intense mood disorders. Attention problems, irritability, anxiety, depression, or other significant changes in your mood could be caused by sleep apnea.
Feeling tired during the day
- Untreated sleep apnea means prolonged, untreated sleep deprivation. You may feel exhausted on waking and throughout the day, even if you think you had a good night’s sleep.
Sleep Apnea Symptoms Quiz
Find out if you exhibit the signs of sleep apnea with our quick and simple quiz.
Sleep Apnea Coordinator
At My Family Dentistry, we’re experienced in helping sleep apnea patients achieve healthy, restful sleep through custom-fitted dental appliances. Dedicated professionals, like Jenny Morrow, help to make the process easy to understand.
Meet Jenny
Jenny is a Registered Dental Hygienist and the Knoxville Sleeps Coordinator at My Family Dentistry. As a hygienist, she enjoys helping patients feel better about their smiles, but she wanted to make more of an impact on their overall wellness. That’s when she began studying sleep apnea to help her patients live healthier.
The My Family Dentistry treatments truly help patients feel and sleep better. Not only does your sleep improve, but the following health risks are also lowered:
- High blood pressure
- Heart attack
- Stroke, and
- Diabetes
Home Sleep Test (HST)
Initially, we referred them out to a sleep physician. However, we found that many did not follow up on their sleep test referral – meaning their condition often continued untreated. As a result, we got our own HST machine and began providing the option to let patients perform their own sleep apnea testing in the comfort and privacy of their own bedrooms. After the home test, the results are read by an affiliated physician licensed by the state of Tennessee. After their diagnosis, we’re able to offer treatment options based on patient needs.
Why see a Dentist for Sleep Apnea?
At My Family Dentistry, we often notice when patients have damaged teeth or other oral health problems associated with sleep apnea. If you have this sleep disorder, it’s important to seek out all the available treatments. We find that many patients benefit from a custom snoring therapy appliance, which helps you breathe better while asleep and ultimately protects your teeth, too.
Here is how sleep apnea affects your teeth:
Dry Mouth
Over time, sleep apnea affects your teeth by encouraging dry mouth conditions. Saliva contains acids that neutralize the bad bacteria in your mouth, so dry mouth can lead to enamel damage and infections of the teeth and gums.Sleep apnea makes many people sleep with the mouth wide open. This tends to dry out the mouth, especially when abnormal breathing patterns disrupt normal oxygen flow.
Sleep apnea devices can move your jaw into a comfortable position and help keep the breathing passages open. You may still breathe through the mouth while sleeping, but your mouth will only be slightly open and your breathing patterns will normalize. That helps reduce the dry mouth. And because your breathing passages will remain more open, you may also breathe through the nose more comfortably.
By helping regulate your breathing, you can prevent the dry mouth and discourage bacteria from damaging your oral health overnight.
Teeth Grinding
Patients with sleep apnea tend to grind their teeth while asleep. This is partly due to discomfort and poor sleep quality, and partly out of the body’s unconscious attempts to get the breathing passages open.
For a dentist, this is the most obvious way that sleep apnea affects your teeth. In fact, many people realize they have sleep apnea only after a dentist has noticed the symptoms of teeth grinding.
Possible effects of teeth grinding start with worn down teeth and crowns, and may progress to a cracked, broken, or chipped tooth. All these problems create extra places where bacteria can grow, so you may end up with infections and cavities.
My Family Dentistry’s Sleep Apnea Solution
When we think of sleep apnea devices, many might picture face masks, tubes, and loud air pressurizers. However, by getting the exact measurements of your mouth and teeth, dentists are able to provide silent, comfortable devices that increase the airflow one receives while sleeping.
These mouthpieces, which fit around the teeth, work either by keeping the tongue from blocking the airway or by changing the position of the jaw. For example, My Family Dentistry offers the Dental Crafters’ Intraoral Snoring Therapy (IST) Appliance: a custom-fitted, acrylic mouthpiece that pushes the jaw forward and keeps the airways open. Similar appliances are sold over-the-counter, but these one-size-fits-all devices can cause a great deal of discomfort with less consistent results.
While regular sleep apnea appliances are a very popular option, some people are simply unable to tolerate having a mask over their face all night long. We offer oral appliance therapy, which is less bulky and typically a lot more widely accepted by patients. All of the appliances we use to treat sleep apnea are FDA-approved, but they are not an over-the-counter “quick fix.” Each appliance is custom-fabricated to each patient’s specific needs. We then follow up throughout treatment to get them adjusted to the most comfortable and effective point.
After a quick, simple fitting, these custom mouthpieces prevent snoring, teeth grinding, and sleepless nights. If you or a loved one suffer from sleep apnea, consider a consultation with My Family Dentistry.
Schedule a Sleep Apnea Consultation
At My Family Dentistry, we’re experienced in helping sleep apnea patients achieve healthy, restful sleep through custom-fitted dental appliances. When you’re looking for sleep apnea diagnosis and treatment in Knoxville, My Family Dentistry is the ideal choice.
Fill out the form to schedule your consultation today!
American Academy of Sleep Medicine Member
American Thoracic Society
American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine