The Airway Dentist on the Sunshine Coast
At Lake View Dental, our team of dental health professionals work to restore more than just the dental side of patients but also aim to improve overall health and wellbeing.
Our team has established the link between dentistry and airway difficulties to be incredibly related and many people go years without receiving the correct treatment, or just ignore the signs of difficulties and symptoms.
However, you should never ignore signs of breathing difficulty as an unrestricted airway is more than essential for carrying oxygen to cells to the body in order to promote healthy bodily function.
If you have breathing difficulty or would like to learn more about airway management and the modern use of oral appliances, we encourage you to read below to find out more.
The History Behind Oral Appliance Therapy
Oral appliances were first utilised in the 1930s to help people breathe properly during sleep.
By the 1980s, physicians and dentists began to seriously study the effectiveness of oral appliances to treat snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea and found them to be effective in many, but not all cases.
Recent studies show oral appliances to be most effective in treating snoring and mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnoea. However, some appliances have been shown to effectively treat severe apnoea in some cases.
Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP)
A common treatment for managing your airway and breathing has incorporated the use of a specially designed mask that is strapped onto the head at bedtime.
This plastic device completely covers the nose and mouth and is connected to a machine with an air hose. This device has become commonly referred to as a CPAP Mask. The machine has been tested, rated and is commonly used day-to-day by health and dentistry professionals to be the gold standard for the treatment.
Often overlooked, yet imbalances in the way we breathe affects body chemistry
Ideally, we should breathe through our nose 8-12 times/minute, with our tongue resting on our palate.
Our nose is designed to filter, warm and humidify the air we breathe. More than that nasal breathing allows for the generation of Nitric Oxide a very important compound due to the ability to expand blood vessels or vasodilation. Nitric Oxide makes the blood vessel walls relax and more flexible and lowers blood pressure and increase blood flow. Humming or playing the didgeridoo also increases the generation of NO in the paranasal sinuses due to the vibrations it generates. Inhalation of NO increases the blood flow in the alveoli in the lungs and this results in more oxygen being taken up into the blood by 10-15%. NO is like the nitroglycerine mouth spray in treatment for angina that relax the blood vessels of the heart.
NO also has a strong inhibiting effect on bacteria fungi and viruses and a beneficial effect on the little cilia movement helping to remove particles and help in keeping the upper airway healthy.
There is also a link between low NO levels and many diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, digestive tract issues such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, erectile dysfunction, and bladder issues
We swallow 1000-2000/day and ideally our tongue is resting on the roof of our mouth. In this way, our upper jaw may develop to its full potential with enough room for our lower jaw and for all 32 teeth that nature has provided us.
If we breathe through our mouth, our breathing is dysfunctional. Our upper and lower jaws may not develop to their full potential, the air will not be filtered, our bodies may be more acidic and our posture can also be affected.
Mouth breathing or dysfunctional breathing affects whole-body health.
Most people if asked if they are a nose or a mouth breather, will answer that they breathe through their nose. However, a large percentage of the population are mouth breathers even without them realising this.
Yet with correcting the breathing pattern the soft tissues and muscles will follow, resulting in a stable tooth position and proper function in the oral environment.
Airway & Breathing Management with Lake View Dental
Contact our friendly team to discover more about our premier dental treatments offered at our Sunshine Coast dental practice.