Are you feeling tired all day and having trouble sleeping? If your answer is yes, you may be suffering from sleep apnea in McKinney, TX, a common condition that affects millions of people, and in some cases, they do not even know they are affected by.
Sleep apnea takes a tremendous impact on a person’s quality of life. Ignoring sleep apnea can cause the immune system to be suppressed, making it more difficult to stay healthy as individuals may have an increased risk of high blood pressure, stress, sleep deprivation, depression, chronic fatigue, and the inability to concentrate. This is why at Sloan Creek Dental, we address the side effects and long-term health implications of sleep apnea and provide holistic and minimally-invasive sleep apnea treatments.
Everyone wants a good night’s sleep. But if you have obstructive sleep apnea (common form of apnea), these common symptoms will have a negative impact on your daily activities as well as your overall health. Besides missing out on a good night’s rest, this sleep disorder can cause high blood pressure, lead to weight gain, behavioral changes, and put you at risk for other major health problems. The good news is that you don’t have to live with symptoms of sleep apnea as they are treatable.
Excessive and loud disruptive snoring
Grinding or clenching teeth while you sleep
Frequent awakenings throughout the night & a sore throat in the morning
Lower energy, daytime drowsiness, or irritability throughout the day
The feeling that you never get enough sleep no matter what time you go to bed
“Pain, sleep deprivation, and stress affect so many people and creates such negative consequences. As a medical professional, there is nothing more rewarding to me than to be able to empower my patients and restore their quality of life.”
– Dr. Tina Feng
Did you know recent data show that up to 1 in 5 Americans have some form of sleep apnea? Unfortunately, most people with sleep apnea are undiagnosed, which means they’re not aware they have a potentially life-damaging problem. Some of the signs of sleep apnea include loud snoring, grinding or clenching of the teeth, morning headaches, high blood pressure, sleep deprivation, mood swings, inability to concentrate, waking up in the night while gasping for air, brief pauses in breathing – occurring hundreds of times in a single night, and chronic fatigue. As a result, you spend less time in deep sleep and more time in light sleep, thereby leaving you more lethargic. With the lack of quality sleep, in addition to battling obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), it can cause the immune system to be suppressed, making it more challenging to stay healthy.
OSA occurs when the airway is physically blocked by either the throat muscles, soft palate, tongue, or tonsils, preventing adequate breathing during sleep, affecting the body’s natural healing processes, and increasing inflammation. Untreated obstructive sleep apnea is associated with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, chronic pain, restless sleep, and obesity. Getting diagnosed and treated for obstructive sleep apnea also improves other health problems for many people.
For your dentist to treat your OSA, a sleep assessment (sleep study) is performed in a sleep facility or at your home. This sleep study monitors your breathing, heart rate, brain activity, blood pressure, and oxygen levels while you sleep. Your sleep physician will examine the results, and if the sleep doctor prescribes treatment, your dentist will be able to treat your OSA.
At Sloan Creek Dental, we take a unique approach to treating sleep apnea. We know that traditional treatments, like a CPAP machine, can be cumbersome and difficult to manage, which is why we recommend a couple of treatment options for moderate sleep apnea, either the NightLase laser airway therapy or oral appliance therapy. The benefits of using either the NightLase laser airway therapy or the dental oral appliance are that they are both non-invasive and do not require surgery. Perfect for the patient looking for a holistic approach to treat sleep apnea and get a better night’s sleep.
Sloan Creek Dental offers NightLase laser airway therapy for patients who have been diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea and cannot tolerate the use of a CPAP. The procedure is a short 20-minute treatment where Dr. Feng uses the Fotona Lightwalker laser to tighten tissues at the back of the throat, reducing airway obstruction and allowing you to sleep better and feel better. The tightening of airway tissues means NightLase is also a non-invasive and effective solution to reduce snoring. Once the treatment is complete, you can return to your daily schedule with no downtime or recovery needed.
The best part about NightLase therapy is that it’s virtually pain-free and lasts for up to a year. With NightLase, you won’t need to wear a device in your mouth throughout the night to get the benefits of a good night’s rest. Although it is recommended to complete three sessions of NightLase over 6 weeks, many patients start to feel better after just two treatments!
Another treatment option for obstructive sleep apnea is an oral appliance, a mouth guard you wear while you sleep. Some of the benefits of an oral appliance compared to a CPAP breathing mask includes:
Unlike NightLase, which tightens your throat tissues, an oral appliance helps keep your airway open by adjusting the position of your lower jaw. Lying on your back while sleeping closes the airway because gravity pushes your tongue and jaw towards the back of the throat. The oral appliance prevents your jaw and sometimes even your tongue from moving backward as you sleep. By wearing it every night, the bones in the face remodel themselves over time to correct airway obstruction, TMJ, and alignment issues.
There are many types of OSA appliances available today. If oral appliance therapy is for you, we will do a thorough evaluation to determine which type of appliance would work best for you.
Throughout your treatment and diagnosis, Dr. Feng and the rest of the Sloan Creek Dental team will be available to answer your questions, and help you while you take your first step in treating sleep apnea. We address the root cause of compromised airways instead of the symptoms, and we’re committed to delivering the best possible dental care treatment for your snoring or sleep apnea.
If you think you or a family member may suffer from sleep apnea, please contact us today to schedule an appointment with our top-rated sleep apnea dentist near McKinney. We work with patients of all ages to address their concerns, and do so in a comfortable office that puts people at ease.
To learn more about the treatment and diagnosis of sleep apnea and how Sloan Creek Dental near McKinney can help you stop snoring so you can sleep better, contact us today at (972) 468-1440, or schedule a sleep apnea consultation online to get started.
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We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to