Millions of people suffer from a severe lack of quality sleep. Sleep disruption can come from a variety of causes. One of the most serious conditions that can cause it is a medical disorder caused by your tongue as it blocks your airway while you sleep. The type of blockage is called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

When the muscles in your throat, soft palate and tongue do not function properly, your tongue drops to the back of your airway while you sleep. If the tongue causes a partial blockage, the vibrations of the tongue tissue against your airway cause a snoring sound. If the tongue blocks your airway completely, you cannot breathe and your body reflexes cause you to grind your teeth, partially wake up, toss and turn and gasp for air in an attempt to open up your airway to get oxygen.

Treatment for sleep apnea includes C-PAP/A-PAPs, oral sleep appliances and surgeries in some cases.

Untreated obstructive sleep apnea is a life altering disease. It has been shown to increase risk and severity of heart disease, high blood pressure, heart attacks, cardiac arrhythmias, sexual dysfunction, diabetes, stroke and other chronic health conditions. OSA results in your body being unable to enter REM sleep which leads to daytime sleepiness, chronic fatigue, short term memory loss, early onset dementia and personality disturbances. Children with sleep disordered breathing are often misdiagnosed with ADHD.

How can Myofunctional Therapy help?

The overarching goal of myofunctional therapy is to improve airway health. We help to do this by improving tone of the muscles of the tongue and airway. Current literature demonstrates that myofunctional therapy decreases apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) by approximately 50% in adults and 62% in children. Myofunctional therapy can also serve as an adjunct to other OSA treatments.