ANYTHING that negatively effects quality sleep can be harmful or even detrimental to your overall health. The importance of good sleep trickles down and effects almost every body process that occurs within us, all the way down to the cellular level. The sooner you recognize the signs and symptoms of sleep disordered breathing the better! Myofunctional Therapy can help to reduce or alleviate the symptoms of sleep disordered breathing in many individuals by retraining and establishing nasal breathing during sleep, as we were designed to do.

Sleep Disordered Breathing is your body’s physical response to airway resistance or obstruction during sleep. Your body recognizes that your are essentially suffocating so it reacts by raising blood pressure and heart rate, waking up the brain, and disrupting your sleep cycles.

Mouth Breathing and Snoring

These are some of the very first signs of sleep disordered breathing! If you are mouth breathing when you sleep, you are very likely snoring some or all of the time. ANY AMOUNT OF SNORING IS SLEEP DISORDERED BREATHING, and a sure sign that you are disrupting the oxygen flow to your brain during sleep.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

OSA is the partial or complete blockage of the airway during periods of sleep. Individuals with undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea are at high risk for many serious health issues including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, depression, anxiety, weight gain, Alzheimer’s Disease, and cancer to name a few. It is important to take your sleep seriously. Your life literally depends on it!

• Chronic congestion
• Chronic headaches
• Grinding/Clenching
• Snoring
• Allergy shiners (dark circles)
• Abnormal craniofacial development (long narrow face)
• TMJ issues
• Lip incompetence (unable to keep lips closed at rest)
• Acid reflux and other digestive issues
• Need for orthodontics and/or orthodontic relapse
• Tongue thrust swallow patterns
• Sleep walking/talking/night terrors
• Chronic daytime fatigue
• ADHD diagnosis/behavior issues
• Prolonged bedwetting

How can Myofunctional Therapy help with sleep disordered breathing?

When a person is mouth breathing, the tongue is not in the proper rest position in the roof of the mouth. Instead it is down in the floor of the mouth, and during sleep falls to the back of the throat which restricts the airway and causes sleep disordered breathing. 2 of the 4 goals of myofunctional therapy are establishing nasal breathing and establishing correct tongue posture. These 2 seemingly simple goals of myofunctional therapy can vastly improve or even correct sleep disordered breathing in many cases. Sometimes we do enlist the help of other professionals for help, but myofunctional therapy is imperative for correcting oral and tongue rest posture and to establish nasal breathing.