Is your Child a Mouth – Breather?

IF your child is a mouth-breather, taker him/her to the allergist and pediatric ENT. However, don’t forget to make an appointment with a dentist or other airway expert who can join in treatment of the whole picture for your whole child. You and your child will sleep better for it!

If you can see or hear your child breathing, that is a problem! This will lead to jaw malformation, a bad bite, sleep-deprivation, ADHD, trouble thriving in school etc. Observing what should be silent or invisible can affect a child’s ability to restore and rest and grow at night. The child may have no difficulty falling asleep or show any obvious sign of insomnia, nevertheless, the brain is not resting and sleep is not restorative. As much as 2/3 or ADHD kids has disordered breathing during sleep!

Fortunately there is a way to intervene without causing havoc in the child’s life. There are ways to grow the airway and improve a child’s sleep. So, YES, if your child is a mouth breather, take him/her to the allergist and pediatric ENT. However do not stop there. Find a dentist or airway expert who can join in and ensure your child grows up healthy and happy. You may even find that you sleep better as well!

Does your bed partner snore?

Snoring is a sign of unrestorative sleep. Not getting proper restorative sleep can take 7-10 years off our lives! If you or a loved one snore, get help today! Sleep medicine/dentistry is the fastest growing field of healthcare because it affects so much more than the bedpartner who can’t sleep because of the noise. It affects our health!

Q. What causes Snoring?

A. Snoring is caused by vibrations of the relaxed soft tissue in the upper airway as you breathe. Although occasional snoring is normal, snoring because a chronic and potentially dangerous condition. Snoring can cause interruptions to the sleep patterns of you and your loved ones. There are a number of factors that can cause snoring such as enlarged tonsils, position of the teeth, deviated septum, allergies, excess body weight. All of these factors can contribute to narrowing of the airways. When you fall asleep, the muscles supporting the soft palate, uvula, tongue and tonsils relax. The forceful airflow results in loud vibrations.

Q. What are the risks of snoring?

A. Snoring is associated with an increase risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, coronary artery disease, hormonal changes, stroke, temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMD), ADHD. Snoring can cause disruptions to your sleep affecting your performance during your daily activities. Lack of sleep puts patients who snore at an increased risk for vehicle accidents, can cause unfavorable mood swings and poor work performance.

Q. How is snoring treated?

A. Before you begin treatment, ask us at CPDANYC to determine the underlying cause of your snoring. There are a number of effective ways to treat snoring from craniofacial growth, oral appliances, laser therapy. We can work with other health care professionals and other options include CPAP or surgery. Additional treatments for snoring include weight loss, nasal sprays, nasal strips/cones, positional therapy.

Surprising Health Conditions Associated with Inadequate Sleep

Did you wake up from a solid night’s sleep? If so, you probably felt refreshed, happy and ready to take on the day! You wake up feeling that way because sleep facilitates all sorts of amazing processes in your body – your brain and body have a chance to rest and recover, your digestive system has had a chance to digest and absorb nutrient. This quality night sleep is something that too many of us miss out on far too often.

Did you toss and turn last night? Wake up to go to the restroom multiple times? Were you disturbed by your bed partner’s snoring? Those poor nights of sleep can cause us to feel moody, fatigued, unmotivated and sluggish. But those temporary effects of sleep deprivation aren’t the only things to worry about. The lack of quality restorative sleep is associated with several chronic health conditions.

Weight gain

Sleep deprivation leads to multiple adverse effects on your body. One of the most damaging is perhaps weight gain, because excess body weight is associated with an unfortunate slew of health complications such as heart disease, hypertension, fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, and even cancer! Lack of sleep causes changes to the hormones that regulate hunger and appetite thus sleep deprivation influences your cravings. Furthermore, a lack of sleep alters the biology of your fat cells making your body more likely to store fat.

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)

Coronary artery disease is where the major blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients in our blood start to narrow and limit the blood supply. As this happens, the supply of oxygen to decreases and can lead to chest pain, shortness of breath or a heart attack. Sleep apnea is a major risk factor for CAD because fragmented sleep can lead to low levels of oxygen in your body (hypoxia), contribute to inflammation and cause pressure changes inside your heart by intrathoracic pressure swings.

High Blood Pressure

Similarly to CAD, high blood pressure is a cardiovascular disease that affects your circulatory system. High blood pressure or hypertension is when your heart has to work harder to pump the blood through your blood vessels. This extra work on your heart can lead to heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, stroke and many more complications. Research suggests that lack of sleep is a risk factor for high blood pressure. Furthermore, difficulty falling asleep has been related to high blood pressure as well!

Diabetes

Lack of sleep affects diabetes both directly and indirectly. In the direct sense, sleep deprivation causes fluctuations in hormone levels, including insulin – the resistance to which is the main cause of diabetes. Poor sleep changes how your body produces and uses this hormone, which can have detrimental consequences for your blood sugar. Indirectly, the lack of sleep contributes to weight gain and poor lifestyle choices (such as food cravings, lack of exercise due to fatigue) which drive the development of diabetes.

The bottom line – for your overall health, remember, it’s not only how many hours of sleep you’re getting but the quality of sleep!

Oral Health is the start to overall health!

Everybody has heard from their dentist and hygienist to brush their teeth at least twice a day with a soft bristled toothbrush and to floss daily. Most of us have heard it at nausea and dread the dentist asking if we floss. At Central Park Dental Aesthetics, we believe in a strong preventive approach to healthcare and believe that a healthy body starts with a healthy mouth. Flossing is just as important (if not more important) than a balanced diet and exercise. Flossing brushes the portion of tooth that is covered by your gums. It removes the plaque and tartar from the gum pockets and reduces the bacteria load.

Without flossing, the bacteria and toxins in the gum pockets cause an inflammatory response in our gums. This causes our gums to swell, become red and sensitive and can be a source of bad breath and bleeding. Overtime, our bodies will recede away from the calculus causing bone loss and gum recession. The bone and the gums are the foundation to our mouths. If we lose the bone support, we will lose our teeth even if the teeth are healthy and cavity free!

Floss before you brush your teeth. Take a piece of floss (can be a piece of floss attached to your fingers or attached to plastic holders) and place it adjacent to your tooth. Rub the floss up and down alongside to the tooth to remove any plaque or debris. Make sure to get underneath the gums! Remember that each tooth contact has two sides to floss. Brushing will remove all the loosened bits from flossing. Repeat daily for a healthy bright smile!

Does your child snore?

A normal healthy child should not snore, grind their teeth or have labored breathing. Children that snore show a sign that their airway is insufficient which could lead to numerous developmental and growth problems. If your child snores, ask the right questions to get your child help so they can thrive and grow up healthy and strong!

Q. How is the snoring affecting my child’s ability to grow and thrive?

A. A child snoring is a sign that they are not getting enough oxygen while they sleep. If they are not getting enough oxygen, their body is not properly resting, recovering and growing because the brain is focused on trying to get the body back up to normal oxygen levels. This can lead to night terrors, bed wetting, ADHD, trouble focusing at school, daytime drowsiness, irratiblity and so much more

Q. What needs to be done so my child doesn’t snore?

A. Depending on your child’s development and craniofacial structure, the treatment can be as simple as teaching the child to breathe through their nose, or wearing different appliances that can help grow the jaws and airway, or surgical intervention. If your child is a mouth breather, try to encourage the child to close their mouth and breathe through their nose with their tongue suctioned up to the roof of their mouth. Nighttime/sleep appliances have shown to be extremely helpful in changing their airway to help eliminate snoring and promote proper growth. Surgical intervention is always a last resort or if its discovered that there is an anatomical problem that cannot be corrected without surgery.

Are your Migraines from grinding your teeth?

Are you getting tension headaches, trouble focusing, blurred vision that lead to migraines or headaches that just won’t go away? One contributing factor towards your migraines may be coming from your mouth and jaw. When you clench your jaw or grind your teeth, you put stress on your temporomandibular joints (TMJ) that connect your mandible to your skull. Think of your mandible being compressed into your skull -the cartilage getting pushed out of the way and the head of the mandible pushing into the base of the skull. This can cause an inflammatory response which will create pressure on the brain which leads to a migraine.

Don’t think your teeth can be contributing to your migraine? If you have teeth that aren’t properly aligned where the front teeth protect the back teeth and the back teeth protect the front teeth, you are predisposed to bruxism (grinding). If you’re missing a tooth, you’re adding different stresses, like biting harder on one side of your mouth than the other, to your oral environment which can lead to bruxism. If you’re chewing gum frequently, you are putting strain on your jaw which can lead to TMJ problems which lead to bruxism.

Ask your dentist what they can do to help your reduce the frequency of your migraine! Many times it is as simple as decompression of the TMJ which can be done easily with a properly designed nightguard. There are numerous treatments associated with aiding in migraine reduction that can vary from aligning your teeth properly, so you’re utilizing both sides evenly and simultaneously, to craniofacial growth to remodel the TMJ and increase your airway to allow for physiological solutions that will improve your oral health and reduce your migraine frequency and severity. Improving your oral health can help with the migraines!

Nasal Breathing Vs. Mouth Breathing – Which is Better?

Humans are obligatory nasal breathers. Nasal Breathing is essential for our oral health and overall health. Nasal breathing helps humidify, filter and warm the air prior to getting to our lungs to make the air optimal for absorption. Furthermore, nasal breathing releases nitric oxide which is important in our immune response and vasoregulation. Nasal breathing allows us to utilize our entire lung capacity while mouth breathing only allows us to use the top two thirds of our lungs. Nasal breathing helps drive the parasympathetic nervous system which allows our body’s to rest, restore and digest. Nasal breathing can increase the amount of oxygen in our bloodstream by as much as 20%

Mouth breathing dries out our mouth causing xerostomia. Xerostomia is the number one predictor of tooth decay (cavities), periodontal disease (gum disease), and bad breath. Mouth breathing significantly increases your chances of snoring and developing obstructive sleep apnea. Mouth breathing has been connected to anxiety, asthma, poorer athletic performance, chronic fatigue and can exacerbate ADHD.

Check in with yourself a couple times a day to make sure your lips are closed and you are breathing silently in and out through your nose. This will help keep your mouth healthier and your body healthier. Can’t breathe through your nose? Contact us to see ways we can help transform your breathing to improve your oral health and your overall health!