If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Are you suffering from sleep apnea? Do you know that sleep apnea dental appliance can mitigate or eliminate the effects of sleep apnea? In this article we are going to see a brief overview of some regularly used appliances.

How Sleep Apnea Dental Appliance Help Sleep Apnea Symptoms

What happened in sleep apnea is that the muscles in the throat may relax too much, and this may narrow the airway significantly. Not only that the tongue may also collapse, or fold back, when this happened the air passage closes off and disturbs the normal flow of breathing. This is not a minor case anymore because this is the one that may affect bigger organs like the brain and heart. Many sleep apnea patients have turned to oral appliances which have been proven to provide positive results. What it does is controlling the movement of the tongue or by repositioning the lower jaw to make sure that the airways to stay open. Sometimes, what the actually need is only a sleep apnea dental appliance to help their sleep apnea symptoms. In addition it can also be used together with a Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) machine. Before you determine which sleep apnea dental appliance is right for you, you have to get both your medical doctor and your dentist to evaluate your condition. For choosing the dentist however, it’s important that you get a dentist that has experience in fitting these oral appliances before. This is because not every dentist knows how to do that and a poorly fitted appliance may cause unnecessary problems.

The Oral Appliances That Are Used

With over forty different types of sleep apnea dental appliance available to help sleep apnea symptoms, you may feel overwhelmed at first. But your dentist will tell you that the principles used in these devices fall into two general categories, which should make your selection much easier. Basically, oral appliances are classified by how they work or by their specific design.

The two most widely used Sleep Apnea Dental Appliance are tongue retaining appliances and mandibular repositioning appliances. The names are descriptive enough to give you the basic idea of how they work. By using a tongue retaining appliance, a retainer holds the tongue in a forward position, which stops the back of the tongue from collapsing during sleep. The second type of device places the lower jaw in a protruded position to keep the airway open. Both of these oral appliances have been shown to be a success in treating sleep apnea patients.

Choose 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.