Can Your Abbey Road Dentist Help With Your Snoring?
Get assistance with excessive snoring at your St John’s Wood dentist.
Snoring can be at the very least annoying for the person hearing it, and at most, life threatening for the person with the snoring problem. If you suffer from snoring, you might not know that snoring and dentistry have a direct link. Before we get to that however, let’s have a look at the basic facts of snoring:
What Causes A Person To Snore?
When we go to sleep, our body relaxes including of course our neck, causing the tongue and bottom jaw to fall backwards blocking the airway, hence why lying on the back commonly brings on snoring. When we breath in the bits of skin and tissue at the back of the throat and tongue vibrate causing the sound of snoring. We are more likely to snore if we:
● Have an airway making snoring more likely
● Sleep on our backs a lot
● Are overweight
● Are older and have weaker muscles in our throat
● Have a lifestyle causing our throat to relax more at night (lots of drinking, or taking sleeping tablets)
Sleep Apnoea
At the more extreme end of the snoring spectrum is sleep apnoea which is where a soft tissue collapse occurs in the throat, resulting in air being blocked. When this happens the person would stop breathing temporarily without being aware of it, although at times they may wake up or at least gasp or snort before breathing normally again.
Snoring, Sleep Apnoea And General Health
Sleep breathing disorders can have an effect on our general health and on our lives. Issues like:
● Relationship friction
● Feeling excessively tired in the day
● Having headaches in the morning
● Having issues with thinking
● Suffering from emotional instability
● Feeling stressed
● Suffering from a low sex drive
Sleep apnoea in particular can be life-threatening, putting a strain on the heart due to a shortage of oxygen, plus adrenalin issues with the body gasping for air, and an overall increase in blood pressure. Sleep apnoea can cause an increased risk in many medical issues.
Treating Snoring & Sleep Apnoea
Any mild snoring could be helped with some lifestyle changes like losing weight, stopping smoking, cutting down on alcohol and exercising more. Sleeping on your side can also help you avoid snoring but when a disorder is more serious, a person may have to have a device worn over the nose to supply oxygen during the night. The treatment of an individual sleeping disorder is very personal and specific to the individual.
How Can The Dentist Help?
Here at Abbey Road Dental there are ways we can help with snoring. For those who have a moderate sleep breathing disorder, we can create a personalised dental appliance to help.
There are many different designs, but all of these types of appliances work to fit over the entire set of teeth, pushing the jaw forward to stop the tissues falling back and causing snoring during sleep. Although you can buy appliances online, the best are made by your Abbey Road Dental team because they are personalised and adjustable to your individual needs.
If you need help with your sleep breathing problem, please call our NW8 surgery on 02076241603 and we will be pleased to make you an appointment.