Child Airway
Airway treatment improves your child's sleep quality and overall health!
Dr. Sara Stock DDS and her Airway & Sleep Dental Team treat mild-to-moderate sleep apnea, snoring, and sleep-disordered breathing using Vivos oral appliance therapy (OAT) in both adults and children. OAT addresses the root cause of sleep-disordered breathing, narrow dental arches and/or underdeveloped jaws.
Archway (jaw) expansion increase airway and sinus capacity, which improves your sleep quality, as well as your overall health and wellness.
Many parents don’t realize sleep-disordered breathing and sleep apnea affects children as well as adults. In fact, even two-year-olds have been diagnosed with this troublesome sleep disorder. Left untreated, sleep-disordered breathing can impair your child’s physical development and well-being.
What is Child Sleep Apnea?
Sleep apnea refers to pauses in breathing during sleep due to a blocked airway. A child with sleep apnea could stop breathing repeatedly for seconds, as often as 20 to 30 times per hour. In severe cases, this occurs thirty times or more an hour. The brain responds by rousing the child to breathe. These continuous sleep interruptions lower your child’s oxygen to unhealthy levels with negative health impacts that can carry forward into adulthood.
Dr Sara Stock and her Airway & Sleep Dental Team can address and correct the underlying cause of sleep apnea so children can live happier, healthier lives without sleep devices.
What is the underlying cause of sleep apnea? You may be surprised to learn it is your child’s underdeveloped jaws/arches/airway that plays a major role in this condition.
Prevention with Vivos
The Vivos® System includes specific preventative treatment protocols for children who demonstrate early signs such as crooked or crowded teeth using a series of Vivos Guides.
Does your child struggle to get a good night’s sleep due to sleep disorders like snoring or obstructive sleep apnea?
Dr Stock specializes in treating sleep disordered breathing.
With Dr. Stock’s guidance, your child can start to address the underlying causes of sleep disordered breathing with the Vivos oral appliance. This revolutionary treatment method is a non-invasive, non-surgical solution to address issues like snoring and sleep apnea. The Vivos appliance can help your child:
• Get better quality sleep
• Improve their physical health
• Be able to focus better in school
• Improve their emotional wellbeing
At your child’s examination, Dr. Stock will get the full picture of their oral health with diagnostic imaging. This will help her to see the shape and positions of your child’s jawbones and teeth.
If the Vivos appliance can address your child’s needs, Dr. Stock will create a customized treatment plan to reduce their disordered breathing symptoms. When you help your child follow their treatment plan, as directed, you can help them improve their quality of sleep and overall health.
What is Sleep Disordered Breathing?
Sleep disordered breathing is an umbrella term for conditions that negatively impact your child’s ability to breathe while asleep. One of the most common types of disordered breathing is sleep apnea, in which your child will abruptly stop breathing repeatedly throughout the night. This interferes with their sleep because their body feels as though it is suffocating. Causing them to wake up many times during the night to get air.
Because your child is not getting enough deep, restful sleep that their growing body needs, they can start to develop physical and emotional troubles such as:
• Exhaustion during the day
• Trouble focusing on schoolwork
• Headaches in the morning
• Irritability, anxiety or depression
• Sudden mood swings
• Behavioral problems similar to ADHD:
such as hyperactivity, rebelliousness and impulsiveness
• Delayed physical growth
Signs of Problems in Oral-Facial Health
While your child is sitting (watching TV or in the car) does he or she:
- Put things in his mouth?
- Suck her lips?
- Have an open mouth, even if only a little?
- Have his tongue between his teeth?
- Rest her face on her hand?
- Breath through his mouth?
- Have a hard time sitting still?
While your child is sleeping does he or she:
- Sleep with her mouth open?
- Snore?
- Wet the bed?
- Toss and turn?
- Stretch his head backwards?
- Wake up frequently?
- Have nightmares?
- Grind their teeth?
- Have trouble waking up?
- Have dark circles under their eyes?
- Wake up drooling or with dry saliva on their face?
While your child eats does he or she:
- Eat with an open mouth?
- Stop to breathe through the mouth between mouthfuls?
- Stick her tongue out when swallowing?
- Stick his tongue out when drinking?
- Drink a lot of liquids with their food?
- Make a lot of boise when chewing?
- Take a breath when drinking?
- Tighten his lips when swallowing?
- Wrinkle her chin when swallowing?
- Tilt his head when swallowing
While your child speaks does he or she:
- Talk too fast?
- Talk too slowly
- Lisp?
- Do the lips only rarely come in contact during speech?
- Note: Ideally, lips should touch between each word
Conditions related to Sleep Apnea in Children
Child sleeping issues, child sleep apnea and their related symptoms and conditions can be confusing to sort out, here are the conditions related to child sleep and breathing conditions:
• Crowded or crooked teeth
• Dark circles under their eyes
• Snoring
• Wetting the bed
• Mouth-breathing when awake and/or asleep
• Pauses in breathing during sleep
• Gasping during sleep
• Restless sleep
• Nightmares
• Trouble waking up in the morning
• Daytime fatigue/or sleepiness
• Underweight or stunted growth
• ADD/ADHD
• Poor or confused reasoning
• Behavioral problems/or aggression
• Trouble at school
• Poor scholastic performance
• Weight issues
• Severe allergies
• Swollen tonsils and adenoids
• Frequent headaches
• Chronically ill
Sleep Apnea in Children
Dr. Sara Stock and her Airway & Sleep Dental Team work with children who struggle to breathe when they sleep by using a system of orthodontic appliances and therapies. These treatments will help the upper and lower jaws to develop and reshape the oral cavity to its naturally intended state and size.
As these areas develop the child’s airway will widen and expand, allowing the child to breathe better, and some of these symptoms may lessen or disappear. When children can breathe properly, they can begin to grow, learn, and flourish into their full potential.
Parent Educational Presentation
Please contact us today to request the parent educational presentation to learn more about how these symptoms may be affecting people of all ages. Ready to learn about treating these symptoms?
• ADD/ADHD
• Bed Wetting
• Chronic Allergies
• Dark Circles Under the Eyes
• Snoring
• Irritability
• Chronic Ear Infections
• Swollen Adenoids and Tonsils
• Daytime Drowsiness
• Nightmares/Night Terrors
• Aggressive Behaviors
• Problems at School
• Restless Sleep
• Frequent Headaches
• Delayed Growth and Development
• Crowded and Crooked Teeth
Do you know someone who is struggling with any of these conditions? They could all be linked to one root cause: underdeveloped jaws and a compromised airway! Call Dr. Sara Stock today at 617-731-3364 and sign up for a parent education meeting! There is a solution and it begins with a sleep study.
Child Vivos® Guides
The Vivos® Guides are made to work with your child’s natural growth cycles, guiding and promoting their growth in the right direction. This leads to better development of their jaws, airway, and facial symmetry.
The Vivos® Guides are registered with the FDA as Class I devices for orthodontic tooth positioning.
Oral appliance therapy enables:
• Deeper sleep
• Better tooth eruption patterns
• Easier swallowing
• A wider airway for breathing
To learn more about how children develop a compromised airway, watch the short video below, created by Right to Grow (a non-profit organization).
Western Diet and the Affects on Narrow Jaws and Airways
The Western Diet could actually be doing more harm on a child's development when it comes to proper arch and jaw growth.
Home Sleep Study
If you or someone you love is dealing with mild to moderate sleep apnea, you likely have experienced the impact. Sleep apnea can affect an individual’s mood, behavior, vitality, and energy.
VivoScore consists of a single-sensor ring recorder that works with a mobile phone application and proprietary cloud-based algorithms to evaluate sleep quality and clinically diagnose sleep apnea.
Key VivoScore features include:
- Use of a single-sensor ring recorder device that patients wear overnight on their finger with automated Bluetooth connectivity to a mobile application which facilitates a data capture and upload.
- No consumables are required, which is expected to allow for broad distribution and multi-night sleep evaluations using.
- High degree of accuracy comparable to industry standard in-lab polysomnogram (PSG) tests. VivoScore creates comprehensive proprietary sleep quality measures, such as the Sleep Quality Index (SQI), that go beyond clinical diagnosis for sleep apnea to more effectively manage treatment benefit and improve patient outcomes.
