When understanding the link between snoring and oral health, things are clearer through the side effects associated with both conditions, like dry mouth, gum disease, tooth grinding, and jaw joint issues. If left untreated, snoring can lead to long-term issues for your overall dental health.
How Snoring Impacts Your Oral Health
If you snore often, it’s likely that you wake up with a dry mouth. While this may not seem like a big deal, snoring-induced dry mouth increases the likelihood of cavities, gum disease, and bad breath. Saliva is essential for washing away bacteria and neutralizing mouth acids. When saliva is reduced by mouth breathing at night, your teeth and gums are at greater risk for decay and infection. Another problem that may not be known is that snoring can irritate the soft tissues of your mouth and throat, leading to inflammation over time.
Can Sleep Apnea Cause Dental Problems?
Certainly. Sleep apnea patients can have oral health problems, such as the following:
- Teeth Grinding (Bruxism): Some patients with sleep apnea grind their teeth, and they occasionally do it unconsciously. Such a correlation of teeth grinding and sleep apnea may result in worn out enamel, tooth fractures and/or jaw pains.
- TMJ Disorders: Teeth grinding or interrupted breathing can cause some form of pressure to the jaw and the temporomandibular joint to some extent. The outcome may be pain in the jaw, headache, and inability to chew, which is also known as TMJ and sleep apnea.
- Gum Inflammation: Again, due to absence of oxygen, body inflammation can be provided even in the gums at rest. This may be a cause of periodontal disease.
Concisely, when you are posing the question, “Can sleep apnea cause dental health issues? Yes, and the more one delays, the more he or she damages.
How Sleep Apnea Affects Teeth and Gums
Research indicates the impact of how sleep apnea affects teeth and gums is frequently undervalued. Sleep apnea may contribute to:
- Gum Recession: Reduced saliva production and chronic mouth breathing dry out, irritate, and may actually break down gum tissue.
- Cavities: Saliva plays an important role in protecting clean teeth from bacteria and cavities, when saliva is eliminated or reduced teeth become more prone to decay.
- Oral Inflammation or Infections: In severe cases of untreated sleep apnea, the oral condition can change, shifting from healthy to one which fosters pathogenic bacteria.
This underscores the explanation around the importance of both sleep health and oral health for long-term health and well-being.
Signs That Sleep Apnea Is Affecting Your Oral Health
Identifying the overlap with snoring and oral health issues is difficult and not easy to see, but here are some warning signs:
- Regularity of morning headaches or soreness of the jaw
- Cracked, flattened, or worn-down teeth (from grinding, etc.)
- Red, swollen or bleeding gums
- Consistent dry mouth in the morning
- Jaw joint clicking or discomfort
If you recognize some or all of these issues, it is probably time to initiate sleep apnea treatment in Valencia CA to avoid those complications in-or-oral health.
Why Dental Offices Play a Role in Sleep Apnea Care
Even though sleep apnea is usually diagnosed by sleep doctors, dental offices are in a prime position to identify signs of sleep apnea and other sleep-related problems through an oral examination. A dental office in Valencia CA, can assess your teeth, gums, and jaw for signs of wear specific to snoring and sleep apnea. Dentists may also recommend oral appliances which are its own custom mouthguards that ensure that your airway is not blocked when you are asleep.
Oral appliances reduce snoring, protect your teeth from wear due to grinding your teeth, and help take pressure off of your jaw joint. Oral appliances may be a more comfortable treatment option than the CPAP machine used for sleep apnea treatment.
Conclusion
There is a stronger connection between snoring and oral health than many perceive. With dry mouth from snoring to TMJ and sleep apnea, your oral health can be an important indicator of how well you sleep. Un-treated, the association between sleep apnea and oral health can result in serious dental problems such as cavities, gum disease, and jaw problems.
If you have questions about how sleep apnea can impact teeth and gums, or if you need sleep apnea treatment in Valencia, CA, the friendly staff at ToothDox Dental Office can help! Our friendly professional team can analyze the health of your mouth, provide treatment options, and help you achieve a healthy smile and healthy sleep. Schedule and appointment with a dentist near you in Valencia!
