What is Airway Focused Orthodontics?
Sleep apnea is a medical issue that can be treated with an orthodontic solution. Airway focused orthodontics examines the link between optimal, effective breathing and long-term health benefits. Some oral habits and breathing obstructions will force your body to compensate for lower than desirable oxygen levels.
Research has proven that a continuous struggle for adequate oxygen, over an extended period, can result in an increased risk for a number of health problems. Periods of partial or complete upper airway obstruction during sleep, known as the medical term obstructive sleep apnea, happens with more than 18 million American adults, and even up to 5 percent of children.
Orthodontic treatment is now developed around supporting the best, optimal airway possible, particularly in growing children when an airway problem can be caught early. Their airways can be treated and enlarged. This is essential if you suffer from sleep apnea and critical in a child at risk of developing sleep apnea. Potential risks are associated with various medical health problems like learning and behavioral problems, heart disease, and even impaired growth.
Treating Airway Disorders Is Cutting-Edge Orthodontics
Airway orthodontic treatment does more than straightening teeth. It incorporates research about the harmful effects of airway blockage and sleep disorders. Your orthodontist also will analysis your facial structure, nasal passages, sinuses, and jaw development. They will identify the most effective orthodontic treatment for conditions like sleep apnea, snoring and other airway disorders.
For children, they can expand their arches with braces or an orthodontic appliance, to address constrictions with the arches. They might use a retractive device, such as a cervical traction headgear. This device pushes the upper jaw back, which constricts the airway.
Traditional sleep apnea remedies, like a CPAP machine, can be effective, but they do not treat the underlying anatomical problem. An airway focused orthodontist will address the underlying problem that is causing the symptoms of the sleep apnea, not just the symptoms alone. When a treatment is focused on just the symptoms of a disorder, it is like placing a band aid on it, and hope the problem will eventually go away on its own.
Airway focused orthodontics does not believe in that treatment and will do everything possible to leverage advanced training and technology to treat the actual cause of your problem, not just the symptoms.
Symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea:
- Snoring, restless sleep, daytime drowsiness.
- Moodiness, aggressive behavior, ADD/ADHD, short attention span.
- Ear/Sinus infections, swollen tonsils, enlarged adenoids.
- Narrow Jaws.
- High Blood Pressure, lung disease, chronic allergies.
- Mouth breathing, bed wetting.
- Overweight or obesity.
- Overlapping incisors, facial and jaw deformities.
- A diminished mental capacity, or IQ.
Airway focused orthodontics starts the process by using diagnostic scanning technology to construct a high-quality 3D image of the mouth, neck, and the throat. This advanced technology reveals any structural issues causing restricted airways or abnormalities. Often this 3D image accurately pinpoints why you or your child are not sleeping well, waking up sleepy, have a runny nose, or having frequent ear infections.
Using this scan as a base, airway focused orthodontics can create a treatment plan just for you or your child. This treatment plan usually consists of a series of steps that will help relieve you of sleep apnea and over time help your breathing become healthy and sustainable. They will continue with future scans to ensure you are making progress towards normal and healthy breathing.