Dental devices (DNA appliance, etc) for palatal expansion—reviews & results?

OMG CG...where do you find these pictures?

Pugsy wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:42 pm

OMG CG...where do you find these pictures?

I would post the link, but you would accuse me of spamming.

ChicagoGranny wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 10, 2018 5:12 pm

I would post the link, but you would accuse me of spamming.

Not true and you know it.
Forum veterans get a lot more leeway with the links they post than new member accounts get.
Age has its benefits and that includes forum membership age. We are special.

ChicagoGranny wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 10, 2018 8:37 am

nikkwong wrote: ↑

Mon Apr 09, 2018 3:40 pm

I've been using the CPAP for several months now and have not had great results, my AHI is usually between 3-4 and I often feel very sleepy during the day.

I've been using CPAP for 6+ years. On the rare night that my AHI is 3.0 or higher, I feel like crap all day. Usually, my AHI runs 1.0 or less and I feel good.

I say that to say you should use Sleepyhead and the forum members' expertise to drive down your AHI to a lower level. You likely will find you do much better. In my experience, an AHI of 3 - 4 is not optimized and is not healthy. Think about it. If your AHI is 3.0 and you sleep 7 hours, that is 21 awakenings. How would you feel if your phone rang 21 to 28 times every night?

After you get your CPAP therapy optimized, you can still pursue changes to your jaw and palate. How old are you? For young people, I am a big proponent of structural changes to improve breathing. What about your teeth? How many do you have? Are any of them crowded or crooked? Do you have an overbite?

Hi, thank you for the response.

Yeah, the CPAP treatment is not good. I have gotten it down to 1.5 AHI some nights but on those nights must sleep 10 hours to feel alert the next day—so it hardly feels like a win. The best results from the CPAP have been from using a chin strap to keep my mouth shut ultra tight and a nasal mask. Even with that, I sometimes start exhaling out of my mouth which wakes me up. The advice to address this issue is to lower the pressure, but then that doesn't catch the apneas, and I find that i have to later raise the pressure, which leads to the former mentioned problem.

I'm 26. My teeth are in almost perfect shape, had braces before, not crowded or crooked. No overbite. IMO my chin is not even underdeveloped:



But my tongue does maybe feel a bit 'crowded'. At least if I tried the palatal expansion there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. The CPAP pressure levels always seems to have some unfortunate side effect which prevent me from getting restful sleep.

You do have a good jaw line front to back. Of course, side to side is not visible in the photo.

Have you been examined by an ENT and had a discussion about sleep apnea? It could be something as simple as enlarged tonsils and/or adenoids.

nikkwong wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:10 pm

Even with that, I sometimes start exhaling out of my mouth which wakes me up. The advice to address this issue is to lower the pressure

The correct advice is to use a full face mask (FFM). When your mouth opens, the FFM maintains the therapeutic pressure.

ChicagoGranny wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:22 pm

You do have a good jaw line front to back. Of course, side to side is not visible in the photo.

Have you been examined by an ENT and had a discussion about sleep apnea? It could be something as simple as enlarged tonsils and/or adenoids.

nikkwong wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:10 pm

Even with that, I sometimes start exhaling out of my mouth which wakes me up. The advice to address this issue is to lower the pressure

The correct advice is to use a full face mask (FFM). When your mouth opens, the FFM maintains the therapeutic pressure.

Thanks for the response. I seem to have even worse luck with the FFM as I can't reliably stop it from leaking. The advice seems to be to tighten the FFM, which I believe pushes my tongue further back into my throat requiring more pressure, leading to more leaks... a continuous cycle of terrible sleep.

I did chat with a dentist who said my tonsils were enlarged and then tried to sell me a 4.5k dental device (the ALF). I then went to a doctor who said they were of normal size and that I would not receive relief by having them reduced/removed. The whole experience is very frustrating.

Do not return to that dentist!
Just saying.

chunkyfrog wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 5:19 pm

Do not return to that dentist!
Just saying.

Yeah, didn't plan on it:)

nikkwong wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:27 pm

I did chat with a dentist who said my tonsils were enlarged

I then went to a doctor who said they were of normal size

Reckon one of them is wrong? Have you seen an actual ENT? ENTs are the experts in this field. An ENT should scope your airway from the nostrils down to the vocal cords. They can give you a good evaluation. If surgery is reccommended, they should tell you what the probability is of curing your sleep apnea. (I'm not speaking of UPPP which has fallen out of favor because of a poor success rate and permanent undesired side effects.)

nikkwong wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 4:27 pm

I seem to have even worse luck with the FFM as I can't reliably stop it from leaking. The advice seems to be to tighten the FFM, which I believe pushes my tongue further back into my throat requiring more pressure

You need some help here, and you may have gotten some bad advice. The FFM should not be pushing your tongue back. If you overtighten a FFM, it might push your lower jaw back a bit which would cause a narrowing of the airway.

I think you should work on retrying the FFM. If you want to do this, it would be a good idea to start a new thread asking for help with your FFM. Please identify the mask model and include your machine model and machine settings. There is a lot of experience and expertise on this board regarding using FFMs.

I believe your CPAP therapy is far from optimized. Once it is optimized, you may feel entirely different.

BTW, the success of this forum is helping people get their therapy optimized. The medical profession just does not have the resources to spend working one on one with a patient on a daily basis.

ChicagoGranny wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 11, 2018 5:39 pm

BTW, the success of this forum is helping people get their therapy optimized. The medical profession just does not have the resources to spend working one on one with a patient on a daily basis.

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THIS! THIS! THIS! AND SO MUCH THIS!!