Check following post from The Villages Daily Sun :
For seven years, Linda Ericson relied on a continuous positive airway pressure machine — a device designed to help people suffering from obstructive sleep apnea to breathe more easily during sleep.
But hooking herself up to a machine every night and taking it with her every time she traveled was almost as difficult, Ericson said, as not getting a good night’s sleep.
“CPAP is not comfortable,” the Village of Hadley resident said. “There are nights you lay there and you just want to tear it off. You don’t get used to it — you just have to use it.”
Fed up, Ericson approached her dentist, Richard Hall II, about another way to fight sleep apnea — oral appliance therapy.
At the time, the dentists at Village Dental were not creating the special appliances used in the therapy, so they began to research them.
Eight months later, Ericson said not only is she no longer hooked up to a machine every night, but she also is sleeping better than before.
“I used to want to sleep 10 to 12 hours,” Ericson said. “Now I sleep seven to eight hours. I don’t need as much sleep, because now when I sleep, the quality is there.”
Expanding service
Oral appliance therapy involves using a custom-made oral appliance to reposition a person’s tongue and lower jaw, therefore opening his or her airways.
Although some dentists have been using oral appliance therapy for years, Hall said the therapy now is gaining ground because more and more sleep apnea patients are seeking alternatives to the traditional CPAP machine.
“Dentistry has been doing this for a while, but I think it’s really coming to the forefront now,” Hall said. “More and more dentists are beginning to realize that we can help patients like Linda — who are uncomfortable with the CPAP — just with a dental appliance.”
When first approached by Ericson about creating an appliance, Hall said he wasn’t completely convinced it was something his practice should get into.
But after helping Ericson find a more convenient, peaceful way to sleep, the three dentists who make up Village Dental — Hall, Edward Farrell and Michael Hards — are moving forward and have begun traveling throughout the country to learn more about oral appliance therapy.
Their work has opened up a whole new aspect of their practice and is giving patients who suffer from sleep apnea another option.
“I think it can help out tremendously, especially for this community that we have right here in The Villages,” Hards said. “They are really in a group of people that are mostly affected by it.”
Hall said so far, the results have been nothing short of amazing.
“The interesting thing with Linda is we didn’t know a lot about it, so we sent her back to get a sleep study, because we wanted to make sure that she was not having the sleep apnea with the appliance,” Hall said. “We sent her back to get a sleep study, and the sleep study people called me and asked about it. They said her readings were better with the dental appliance than they were with the CPAP.”
In addition to working closely with their patients, Hall said he and his staff also have begun working closely with some sleep doctors in the area in an effort to provide patients with the most, and best, options available.
“We as dentists don’t diagnose sleep apnea, but we can screen,” Hall said. “We can get you in here, we can screen you, find out some preliminary information and get you directed in the right direction.”
As for Ericson, switching to an oral appliance has been beneficial not only for her, but for her husband as well.
“She gets better sleep, she’s got more energy. It’s a major difference,” John Ericson said. “When we travel, it’s not a hassle — she just has (the appliance) in her pocketbook. So it’s been a lot easier.”
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