Airway Centered Dentistry

• Do you suffer from clenching, grinding, or gritting your teeth?
• Do you have a history of having to have an expander for braces?
• Does your tongue have teeth marks on it from pressing your tongue up against your teeth all the time?
• Do you snore?
• Have you been diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)? As many as 30 million Americans suffer from OSA while reportedly an estimated 10 million more remain still undiagnosed.
• Do you wake yourself up from sleep gasping or choking?
• What about chronic headaches, neck aches, or backaches?
• Do your jaws pop or click when you open and close your mouth?
• How is your blood pressure? A little bit high?
• What about your blood sugar? Is it high?
• Are you struggling with your weight?
• Have you had teeth removed for orthodontic reasons?
• What about your digestion? Is it great? Or do you have bowel issues?
• What about anxiety or depression?
• Do you feel anxious often?

If any of these apply to you, you should determine whether airway issues are involved.

Often, one of the early warning signs of sleep apnea & sleep disordered breathing is the disturbance of the natural sleeping cycle by snoring, grinding, clenching or gritting. The snorer likely doesn’t know these disruptions are even occurring. While snoring itself can keep your bed partner awake, it can also represent a serious health risk.  And grinding, clenching or gritting of the teeth will destroy teeth, either by wear, fracture, or abfraction.

Airway Centered Dentistry
What is Airway Centered Dentistry, might you ask? To answer that question, we first need a little history lesson. There are some very interesting things that have been happening to us as human beings over the past several hundred years. But they have seriously accelerated during the past 80 or so years. Here is a very abbreviated history.

If you have been doing any research on Dr. Weston Price, you will know that he wrote a book called “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.” He studied the 14 longest lived societies on the planet and tried to figure out what they had in common. He discovered out that they had the lowest rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, among other things. Because he was a dentist, he also looked at their teeth and their dental and jaw development. That makes us very lucky people indeed, because he THOUGHT to look at their teeth. Unfortunately, the medical profession tends to look past the teeth and don’t even think of the teeth as an integral part of the body. Dr. Price believed that oral health and systemic health were intimately and intricately connected. This is why many consider him to be the father of Biological dentistry.

Anyway, going back to Dr. Price’s research, he discovered that the longest-lived societies also had the best teeth – their jaws were well developed and broad, their teeth were straight, and they had very little dental decay or gum disease. THAT was a fascinating finding, because at the time, Dr. Price was seeing a huge increase in dental decay and periodontal disease in modern society patients. The societies he studied were from all over the world. They were unconnected – meaning – they were pristine – they really did not participate in modern world things, and they were disconnected from each other – from the Inuit in Alaska to the Native tribes of Africa.

What all of the societies had in common was a diet high in saturated fats (something that the modern medical establishment has been telling us is a bad thing), high in fermented foods (things like pickles, kombucha, kvass, kefir, yogurt, sauerkraut and kimchi), high in mineral rich bone broths (these societies lived snout to tail, and wasted nothing, not even the bones of the animals they ate), as well as no real processed sugars. Even things like honey and maple syrup were a rare, occasional treat, not the norm. In contrast, modern society has increasing numbers of people with rotten, crooked teeth, poor periodontal health, and much higher rates of cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, and other modern diseases.

The other significant researcher to have done some seriously important work was Francis Pottenger. If you research a book called “Pottenger’s Cats”, it’s fascinating! PETA would have been up in arms at the research that Mr. Pottenger did, because while studying the effects on nutrition on cats, he removed their adrenal glands. Putting aside the animal ethics, the research was the first of its kind to prove that nutritional injury was a real thing, and that it could affect succeeding generations.

To summarize Mr. Pottenger’s research, what he did was study what diet did to cats. Cats are SUPPOSED to eat raw meat and raw milk. They are carnivores. So, Mr. Pottenger fed a group of the cats he studied their natural diet. But he fed other groups of cats different diets. One group got pasteurized milk. One group got powdered milk. One group got evaporated milk. One group got sweetened condensed milk. And then he simply let them do what animals do – they procreated. What he found was that the first generation of cats after the initial dietary changes got crooked teeth. The second generation of cats got scoliosis in addition to even more crooked teeth. The third generation had hip dysplasia’s, scoliosis and crooked and congenitally missing teeth and were starting to have fertility issues. And by the fourth generation, the cats began having reproductive issues.

This is the concept of epigenetic generational nutritional injury. In other words, what your grandparents ate/failed to eat, might eventually come to haunt you. Mr. Pottenger discovered that it took 3 generations to do that damage. And 9 generations to UNDO it!

What does all of this have to do with Airway Centered Dentistry? Well, if you take Mr. Pottenger’s research and apply it to humans, what are we noticing about our modern society’s ailments? Where crooked teeth used to be a fairly rare thing, MOST people nowadays have VERY crooked teeth. Very few people can get away with NOT needing some kind of orthodontic care. Very few people have enough room for their wisdom teeth. And it turns out that other parts of his research are playing true. Most of us know someone who has back problems, or scoliosis, or degenerative discs. That was quite rare 100 years ago. And almost ALL of us have either experienced infertility or have close friends who are experiencing infertility. Meaning, epigenetically speaking, we are on the cusp of generation 3 and 4, if we apply the same timeline of degenerative conditions from Mr. Pottenger’s research to what is happening in our own society. OUR AIRWAYS ARE COLLAPSING!  Dr. Price showed us what our teeth are supposed to look like and how our nutrition should look for optimal human health. Mr. Pottenger showed us what happens when we screw the nutrition up over the generations.

Now, putting ALL of that together – Dr. Scott is among the first dentists in the US to become educated on the effects of an ineffective airway on our overall health. She has undertaken the continuing education necessary to be able to diagnose and treat airway insufficiencies, and to understand what that means in terms of not just oral health, but systemic health. When you choose to consult with Dr. Scott for your dental work, your exam will also include an airway assessment. If Dr. Scott finds that your airway is compromised, based on criteria that she has learned from her extensive continuing education, she will be sure to inform and educate you as to what your options are. These options may include the DNA appliance, by Vivos Life.

Treatment Without Surgery or CPAP
Holistic Dental Alternatives offers both effective snoring relief and an alternative to CPAP therapy for obstructive sleep apnea patients. The Vivos DNA Appliance System has been effective in the resolution of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and other sleep and breathing disorders in both children and adults. Sleep apnea is typically treated with a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure device or CPAP, which is thought to be the most effective treatment, though it is not a cure. However, patients frequently stop using the device after a short period of use, thus leaving themselves vulnerable to the medical complications from OSA.

Patients who successfully complete the 12-24 month Vivos treatment may no longer require CPAP or Mandibular Advancement (oral devices worn while sleeping over a lifetime). The FDA-cleared Vivos oral appliance treatment is an all-natural, non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical solution effective in addressing some of the underlying causes of OSA. Researchers have published about 80 clinical studies showing clear and compelling evidence of changes in the overall size and position of the upper airway and surrounding facial structures. Many of these articles can be found on the vivoslife.com website.

How it works
The Vivos experience is a journey of hope and healing. It begins with a preliminary consultation with Dr. Scott, a Vivos Certified healthcare provider. Vivos Certified Providers have received extensive training and are specialists.

Your Vivos appliance is fitted and created by Dr. Scott. The appliance is well suited for both snoring relief and mild to moderate forms of sleep apnea. Similar to an athletic mouth guard, the device is worn orally in the evening and while sleeping, then removed in the morning. The Vivos System works by helping to prevent soft tissues in the throat from closing – and thus keeping the airway free of obstruction.

Let us help you Breathe New Life into you and your body. Call us today at (281) 655-9175 to see if you are a candidate for the Vivos System.

The Benefits Are Obvious
Although dental appliances may not be suitable treatment in severe obstructive sleep apnea, the remedy has already proved to be a practical option to painful surgery, drugs and CPAP in the vast majority of cases. Oral appliance therapy has been so successful in treating snoring and sleep apnea that today postgraduate courses are helping dentists learn more about it. Our objective is to encourage people to seek medical attention. We work closely with patients to determine if their condition, their teeth, bone structure and their desire for alternate therapy make them a potential recipient.

We’re Available to Help You
Made and fitted especially for you, our safe, effective and simple dental device has excellent patient approval. Contact our office today and let the doctor perform an evaluation to see if you’re a candidate for treatment.