Functional Approach to Treating & Healing Sleep Apnea

Are the options for healing and getting better? You betcha!

Conventional approaches to treating obstructive sleep apnea include mitigating the disease process and management of the symptoms. For children this includes removal of tonsils and adenoids and if the diagnosis is severe, pediatric CPAP therapy.

For adults, the gold standard in medicine for treating obstructive sleep apnea is CPAP therapy. The CPAP machine is known to be a breathing machine that maintains the airway, a not so natural way of breathing while sleeping, but a means to maintain breath.

If you are intolerant to the CPAP machine or have mild sleep apnea, you may have been prescribed an oral appliance to bring your lower jaw and tongue forward to help you breathe while you sleep. But, you may not have been told that these options are for the management of your symptoms and are not making you better, they are helping you survive and live.

You may not have been told that your sleep apnea condition will continue to worsen as you age, as you gain weight, and if you are female when you go through menopause. For children, it is often imperative to remove the tonsils and adenoids, which will help the child to sleep and feel better almost instantly. However, the research shows that symptoms return in 70% of patients within 12 months of surgery UNLESS the cause of the symptoms is addressed.

There is a place for conventional treatments and approaches and those work for many people. You also have the choice of a solution(s)!

The Functional Approach involves treating the root cause of the disease, helping heal and reverse the disease process, increase your longevity, health, and wellness. It involves looking at each patient individually to determine their needs, determine the specific causes of their disease process, and formulating a treatment plan that will create stability of breath, sleep, health, and longevity.

This involves looking at the structures of the head and neck, the nose, the tongue, facial muscles, breathing behavior, sleep stability, and sleep hygiene. It also includes taking a look at bloodwork for deficiencies (ie vitamin D and ferritin/iron levels) that may be altering sleep quality additively.

The Functional Approach works with the Conventional Approach, however, the goal is to wean you off of the breathing machine or jaw appliance. The goal is for you to breathe peacefully and sleep comfortably and well on your own.

Approaches to Sleep Assessment & Treatment

AIRWAY vs. DENTAL SLEEP APNEA TREATMENT

Airway-Centric Dentistry is different than dental sleep medicine. There are a lot of dental providers that offer sleep apnea treatments, namely an oral appliance that positions the lower jaw forward, bringing the tongue with it and hopefully maintaining an open patent airway. While this is a valid treatment option, it is not treating the root cause of sleep apnea. The origin of sleep apnea is often deficiently sized jaws, narrow and dysfunctional nasal passages, dysfunctional tongue and facial muscles, as well as sub-optimal breathing behavior. Airway-Centric Dentistry looks to the anatomical determinants (jaws, tongue-tie, nasal passages), muscle dysfunctions, and breathing etiologies, and gives patients treatment plans to reverse the disease process. The etiology or root cause is multi-faceted and complex; but, with the correct diagnosis and plan of action, wellness is possible!

The “airway” referenced all throughout our website (and ad nauseam by the Drs. Santiago and the AirSync Team) means the upper part of the airway passage, starting behind the nose, extending behind the tongue and down to the fourth vertebrae. An Airway-Centric Dentist is perfectly poised to help make improvements to the 3 dimensions of the upper airway in infants, children, and adults.

RightSleep® Protocol - an innovative approach for sleep repair with vitamins D and B. Using over-the-counter vitamins in doses specific to your body’s needs, you can improve your sleep disorder, whether it be chronic fatigue, insomnia, sleep apnea, or others. Neurologist, Dr. Stasha Gominak, has created a life-changing approach to “taking back the night,” helping repair your brain and body, and reduce/minimize chronic illness.

Sleep disorders are an epidemic in the western world. And, interestingly there is a vitamin D deficiency epidemic as well. Additionally in the last 70 or years, the level of chronic diseases has sky-rocketed. People used to die of hunger or infectious disease. Now we persist with many chronic diseases that did not exist. The link: vitamin D deficiency, vitamin B deficiency, and an altered microbiome, leading to sleep disruption and many disease states (diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea, etc.) that we have now come to believe are common and normal.

The RightSleep® protocol requires commitment, patience, and responding to what your body tells you. This protocol can safely be used in children, adults, expecting and lactating mothers.

WatchPat® Home Sleep Test - an FDA-approved home sleep test, very easy to use, and interpreted by a WA state licensed sleep physician. We have the results within 15min of downloading the data.

HRPO (High-Resolution Pulse Oximetry) - a sleep screening assessment tool evaluating blood oxygen levels, the activity of the flight or fight part of the nervous system (determines how hard the body is working to maintain an airway and take the next breath); the HRPO tool essentially tells how much distress the body is in while sleeping. It is important to see from a physiological standpoint where an individual is starting, how much they are struggling and acts as a quantitative benchmark to monitor and track improvement.