Serving patients of Erwin, Jonesborough, and Greeneville TN
If you’re not getting the right amount of quality, restful sleep, it’s impossible to be at your physical and mental best. We all experience a restless night from time to time but for many, getting to sleep or staying asleep are everyday challenges. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 70 million Americans suffer from a chronic sleep disorder. At Tusculum Dental Care, we believe everyone deserves a good night’s rest. That’s why our sleep apnea dentists in Greeneville came up with this guide to help you sleep at night.
The Importance of Quality Sleep
Poor sleep could compromise your immune system, causing you to get sick more often. The typical adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep each night. However, the amount of sleep doesn’t matter as much as the quality of sleep. Five or six hours of deep, restful, uninterrupted sleep is preferable to eight or nine hours of disjointed sleep. One restless night won’t have much of an impact, but over time, night after night of poor sleep affects your health. It impacts your ability to concentrate, as well as your mood. Long-term, living with sleep loss can raise your risk of serious medical conditions, including depression, obesity, and heart disease.
Causes and Home Remedies for Insomnia
Your sleeplessness could stem from a variety of factors. Stress, anxiety, and depression all can make it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep. Other causes could include having a bedroom that is too hot or has too much light or surrounding noise. Lifestyle issues also can play a role—namely the use of alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, recreational drugs, or as a side effect of certain pharmaceutical medications.
Altering your routine or making lifestyle changes can help improve your sleep quality.
These include:
- Daily exercise
- Keeping a regular sleep schedule, and going to bed at the same time every day, no matter if you’re working or not
- Refrain from napping during the day so you’ll be tired at bedtime
- Improving your diet
- Reducing or eliminating your alcohol and caffeine intake
- Abstain from screen time right before bed, as the full-spectrum light from electronic screens can have a stimulating effect on the brain
- Try to designate the final two hours of your day for rest and relaxation to help prepare your body for sleep
Sleep apnea can make it impossible to get proper rest
If you have obstructive sleep apnea, you’re dealing with a blockage in your airway that either impedes breathing or cuts off airflow altogether. These airway issues typically stem from a collapse of soft tissue into the airway when throat muscles become relaxed, an obstruction caused by the tonsils, or the tongue blocking the airway because it doesn’t have enough room in the mouth to rest comfortably. Every time one of these blockages happens, your oxygen levels drop to the point that your brain sends warning signals to the body, bringing you out of the sleep cycle so that normal breathing can resume. Someone with a severe, untreated case of sleep apnea may experience these blockages hundreds of times per night. It’s no wonder why the eight hours of sleep that you think you’re getting doesn’t feel like near enough!
Sleep apnea is a serious medical condition, and treatment is vital. Otherwise, your condition will get worse over time. At Tusculum Dental Care, we’re trained in sleep apnea dentistry, a specialization focusing on airway management. We can treat sleep apnea through oral appliance therapy. We can provide you with a custom-made oral appliance, specifically fabricated to fit your mouth and made of high-quality materials, built to last. When worn, one of our oral appliances guides the jaws into their preferred alignment, helping you maintain a wide and open airway throughout the night, thus preventing the blockages that occur during sleep apnea.
Sleep Apnea Treatment in Greeneville
Stop living with sleep apnea and chronic sleep loss. Call the dentists at Tusculum Dental Care if you have any questions about our sleep apnea treatment or would like to schedule a consultation. You can reach our office by calling (423) 639-7575.