Snoring – How Your Dentist Can Help.

At Museum Dental Suites we see a lot of patients who come to us for help with snoring. It is a common problem. Snoring affects a lot of people to some extent or another but the kind of snoring that stops you breathing called sleep apnoea can be dangerous. Here are some frequently asked questions about snoring.

Why Does Snoring happen?

Snoring is vibration of tissue in the nose and the throat when the breathing is partially obstructed. Sleep apnoea and snoring affect some 50% of the population. The Somnowell snore guard is an excellent long lasting solution to snoring that will help patients and will cost about £1900, including consultation and review.

Does snoring mean that I have Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA)?

Snoring can be a sign that you have OSA but it could be due to other factors such as:

• Pregnancy
• Allergies
• Congestion
• Obesity,
• The use of alcohol.

The symptoms of sleep apnoea will typically be

• Snoring when you sleep
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Feeling sleepy during the day
• Headaches in the morning
• Restlessness during sleep
• A sore throat
• Being woken in the night, gasping or choking
• Chest pain at night
• High blood pressure
• Snoring so loudly that it disturbs the sleep of your partner

How can snoring be treated?

One of the most efficient ways of treating loud snoring that is caused by obstructive sleep apnoea is to use an oral appliance, that will help to keep breathing passages open when you sleep.

Oral Appliance Therapy

This is an excellent way to treat moderate obstructive sleep apnoea. This kind of device efficiently repositions the jaws and stabilises the tongue, enlarging the airway and stopping tongue obstruction. This will promote good airflow while you sleep.

Advantages of Oral Appliance Therapy

The advantages of oral therapy is that it is not noisy and is easily transported. Other advantages include:

• It is Non-invasive: no surgery is required
• Helps with compliance: It makes it easy to comply with your regular treatment to eliminate the adverse health risks associated with sleep apnoea.
• Easy to use: It is comfortable to wear.
• Small and easily portable: Travelling with the treatment for your sleep apnoea will be easy.
• High rate of success: This kind of oral appliance has a high success rate.

How your Dentist Can Help

As well as prescribing an oral device, your dentist might recommend some other strategies that will help reduce your snoring such as:

• Losing excess weight
• Drinking little or no alcohol in the evenings and nights
• Trying not to sleep on your back
• Reducing or giving up the use of any sedatives

What is involved in oral appliance therapy?

You will have a complete clinical evaluation, to include examination of your tongue, teeth, jaw and airway. Your dentist will then take some tooth impressions.

Oral impressions will be customised using physical and digital models of your teeth. Those prints will be utilised to make a custom-fitted mouthpiece that will be made in the lab. You will return for a fitting and fine-tuning of the device with full instructions of how to use it. You will come for follow up visits so that the fit of your mouthpiece can be monitored. The benefits you will see will be:

• Better sleep
• More energy and alertness during the day
• No snoring means better sleep for the people around you

Our dentists will be happy to talk over your options with you. At the cutting edge of dentistry and responsible for teaching other dentists the latest dental techniques, you will find all our expert dentists trustworthy and gentle and ready to discuss your dental issues, whatever they are.

• Call us on : 0207 183 0886
• Email Us : [email protected]