Why Must You Seek Sleep Apnea Treatment If Affected by This Problem?
Sleep apnea is a severe sleep disorder that repeatedly stops and starts breathing. You could be snoring loudly and waking up tired even after getting a full night’s sleep. These are classic symptoms of sleep apnea that may be affecting you.
Loud snoring is never fun but is a potentially severe problem. However, not everyone is affected by sleep apnea snores. You will have challenges diagnosing the problem yourself. Still, if your bed partner complains about the loud noises you make when sleeping, you must take it seriously and discuss it with your doctor to understand how you can overcome this problem. Sleep apnea not just affects your quality of sleep but also leaves you tired, irritable, and sleepy.
What Are the Symptoms of Sleep Apnea?
You can either be affected by obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea. The signs and symptoms of both these conditions overlap, and the typical symptoms include loud snoring, gasping for air when sleeping, morning headache challenges staying asleep, irritability, difficulty paying attention while awake, and others. If you are affected by any of the symptoms, you can either contact your doctor for a diagnosis or seek dental sleep apnea treatment near you provided by dentists.
Why Is Treatment for Sleep Apnea Essential?
As mentioned earlier, sleep apnea is a severe sleep disorder where snoring is a symptom of the condition. The snoring may lead your bed partner awake during the night. However, the snoring also leaves a set of problems for you to confront. They are:
- Daytime Fatigue. You can’t get a full night’s sleep because of the repeated awakenings during the night. The awakenings result in daytime fatigue, leaving you with drowsiness and irritability. You may have difficulty concentrating on work or falling asleep when driving, leaving you at an increased risk of accidents.
- Hypertension, Or Heart Problems. The sudden drops in oxygen levels occurring during sleep apnea increase your blood pressure to strain your cardiovascular system. Sleep apnea makes you susceptible to hypertension resulting in heart attacks or arterial fibrillation.
- Type II Diabetes. Sleep apnea enhances your risk of developing insulin resistance and type II diabetes.
The conditions mentioned above should convince you either to seek dental sleep apnea treatment in 77379 or contact your physician to have yourselves diagnosed or the situation.
Having Sleep Apnea Diagnosed
Getting sleep apnea diagnosed is also another challenge because the diagnosis is inaccessible or unaffordable. Suppose you contact your doctor with your symptoms. In that case, you are likely to be referred to the sleep medicine specialist, who in turn will refer you to a sleep clinic to undergo a nocturnal polysomnography test.
If you thought snoring was funny, you won’t find the polysomnography test a relief. You have hooked up the equipment with wires and tubes to monitor your heart, Lung, breathing patterns, and everything else in your body. The tests are expensive, and the results require a lot of time before they are available.
Presently portable at-home sleep apnea tests are also available, and your doctor may recommend one to diagnose sleep apnea. Unfortunately, mobile monitoring devices are not considered efficient at detecting all cases of sleep apnea. Therefore your doctor may again recommend a polysomnography test to frustrate you to no end.
Dental Appliances for Sleep Apnea
Dentists with special training in treating sleep apnea have pioneered an oral appliance that helps to keep your airway open when sleeping. If you contact dental sleep apnea treatment in Spring, TX, the dentist refers you to a sleep medicine specialist to diagnose your condition. If your results are abnormal, the dentist provides the oral appliance without further testing.
Traditional sleep apnea treatments are also uncomfortable with the CPAP machine hooked to your body when sleeping. Thankfully, the oral appliance pioneered by dentists is portable and easy to use. The dentist treating you will customize the oral appliance specifically for you. The device is useful to keep your lower jaw in a forward position when sleeping, thereby opening your airway and preventing it from collapsing. Dental appliances offered by dentists are an effective method of treating sleep apnea. Dentists work in cohesion with sleep medicine specialists before providing the oral appliance. Therefore you will find it better to seek treatment from dentists providing dental sleep apnea treatment around your vicinity.