What Is Sleep Apnea?

What Is Sleep Apnea? by Bonner Springs, KS sleep expert Dr. Thomas Drake.

Video Transcript

What Is Sleep Apnea?

I’m Dr. Tom Drake, and I’ve been a dentist in the Kansas City area for over 40 years. In the last six years, I’ve concentrated my studies on the treatment of people with snoring and sleep apnea using oral appliances. Sleep apnea is when your airway closes off during sleep. This can cause gasping and loud snoring. Ultimately, this reduces oxygen to your vital organs, which can result in high blood pressure, heart attacks, stroke, congestive heart failure, or arrhythmias.

Many people don’t realize that it can also increase your risk for seemingly unrelated conditions, like diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, GERD, mood disturbances. Or even ED can even result in sudden death. In the US, one out of five people has sleep apnea. So it is more common than you think. Unfortunately, 80% of these people don’t even know they have it.

There are basically three ways to treat sleep apnea– CPAP, surgery, or an oral appliance. If you have mild to moderate sleep apnea or even if you have severe sleep apnea and are looking for an alternative to your CPAP machine, oral appliance treatment could be your treatment of choice. There are many different designs for oral appliances, but they all work the same way. They are laboratory made and FDA approved. We also provide follow up care for at least 90 days. And we work with your physician to maximize the success of your treatment.

Sleep apnea is a condition which lowers the quality of a person’s life and has been shown to even shorten a person’s life. If you are concerned that you or someone you know may have sleep apnea, my recommendation to you is to call our office and get your sleep apnea treated as soon as possible. My team and I look forward to your visit.