Downtown Dental Excellence offers Sleep Apnea Therapy in Cleveland, TX
Do you often find that you wake up feeling like you didn’t get any rest—no matter how many hours you slept? Do you wake up through the night gasping for breath? Do you snore? If so, you may have a medical condition called sleep apnea.
What Is Sleep Apnea?
When you breathe, air comes in through your mouth and nose and travels down your throat. It then flows down your trachea into your lungs. While breathing in, your pharynx helps to keep the airway open. During sleep, the pharynx and other muscles will relax—but they shouldn’t relax to the point where the airway is blocked. For patients with sleep apnea, the mouth and pharynx muscles relax more than they should—allowing the tongue to block the air from entering your lungs. Because of this, patients with sleep apnea wake up throughout the night, often gasping for air when they do. This not only makes it difficult to get a good night of rest, but it also leads to a variety of other health issues. This is why it’s important to understand whether or not you have sleep apnea, and how you can treat it.
Speak with Your Dentist Today
For some patients, oral appliances are the best option for treating the symptoms of sleep apnea. A dentist can help to create the perfect appliance for your particular mouth, and to fulfill your needs. While an oral appliance can be a great choice for treating the symptoms of sleep apnea, it is still important to treat the root causes. The only way to truly stop sleep apnea is to discover what is causing it, and to resolve that particular issue.
Still, sleep apnea oral appliances can allow a patient to sleep comfortably throughout the night and wake up feeling rested. It can also be an excellent solution for the spouse of a patient with sleep apnea—allowing them to sleep well throughout the night without having to listen to snoring!
Speak with your dentist about an oral appliance for sleep apnea.
Do I Have Sleep Apnea?
There are a few different signs that you can look out for to see if you have sleep apnea. If you notice any of these signs, you’ll want to get to the root of the issue—which may include visiting a doctor. It is extremely important that you don’t ignore the different signs of sleep apnea, as it can become very dangerous if left untreated.
Some of the signs of sleep apnea include:
- Waking up multiple times throughout the night.
- Waking up in the night gasping for air.
- Extremely loud and annoying snoring.
- Headaches upon waking.
- Dry throat upon waking.
- The loss of memory, or difficulty learning.
- Fatigue throughout the day.
- Falling asleep often throughout the day.
- Mood swings, depression and other mood disorders.
It can be difficult to determine the exact root of some of these issues. If you sleep with a partner, though, they will likely let you know that you snore a lot—and loudly. If you don’t have a partner and no one tells you that you snore, you may simply need to be on the lookout for the other issues listed above. If you are experiencing any, a few or all of these symptoms often, speak with your doctor about whether you may have sleep apnea, and what treatments are available.
Dangers of Sleep Apnea
While sleep apnea can seem like an annoying, yet innocuous illness, this isn’t the case! In reality, sleep apnea can become very dangerous if left untreated. Some of the dangers of sleep apnea include:
- Heart Disease
- High Blood Pressure
- Stroke
- Depression
- Obesity
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Decreased Sex Drive
- Memory Loss
- And More
Sleep apnea can contribute to a variety of different health ailments—some of which are deadly. This is why it’s so important to make sure that you treat sleep apnea as soon as possible.