Sleep is something we all need, essential to good oral, systemic, and mental health. (True story: Scientific evidence suggests that lack of sleep may be a risk factor for gum disease.) Sleep is an opportunity for your body to take care of business that it can’t do when you’re up and about – to repair and restore itself. It’s when your brain consolidates memories and metabolic waste products are cleared away from it; when your immune system replenishes its defense systems. Yet for many of us, a good night’s sleep is an elusive thing, and we all know what it feels like when we fail to get it. Yo ..read more

As long as there have been mouths, there has been stinky breath, but it took modern advertising to turn it into a cause for mortification, fueling fear of total social ostracism. The marketers even created a new, medical-ish sounding name for the condition: halitosis (from the Latin halitus, meaning breath, and the Greek osis, indicating a disease state). Suddenly, if you had bad breath, you were now known as “halitoxic.” Anxiety sold a whole lot of Listerine. And while it does “kill germs,” it does so indiscriminately, killing helpful bacteria right along with the harmful kind. A healthy mou ..read more

Although people with TMJ disorders (TMDs) have a lot in common with each other, each person’s case is different enough that there’s no one course of treatment that will work for everyone. Sure, there’s overlap among the customized treatment plans that Dr. Abdulla develops for patients who come to her seeking long-term relief from painful, even debilitating TMDs. Most will involve some sort of splint therapy, for instance, or dietary changes to reduce the inflammation that accompanies these disorders. But every so often, we’ll see a patient for whom the more common therapies fail. This doesn’t ..read more

A rather surprising study came out last year, suggesting that CPAP might not be especially helpful for elderly adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Even though CPAP-users over the age of 70 showed significantly improved snoring and AHI scores, no clinical improvement was seen in daytime sleepiness, quality of life, neurocognitive function, OSA-related symptoms, depression, anxiety, or blood pressure. (“AHI” stands for “apnea-hypopnea index,” which reflects the number of times a person stops breathing during an average hour of sleep. Five to 15 episodes is considered mi ..read more

Although the name of our practice highlights Dr. Abdulla’s expertise in treating obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) holistically, she is just as expert in the treatment of TMJ disorders (TMDs). Frankly, we think it’s only right that a dentist who’s well-versed in one of these conditions should be equally well-versed in the other. As we’ve noted before, OSA and TMDs often accompany each other. TMDs are more common in patients with apnea. Apnea can make TMD symptoms worse – and vice versa. But these facts also raise an interesting question: Could treating one condition help improve the other? If the ..read more

Last month, we talked about food – specifically, how inflammatory diets fuel gum disease while anti-inflammatory diets tame it. The typical American diet is the epitome of an inflammatory diet. It contains lots of sugars, refined grains, refined starches, processed meats, and especially hyper-processed foods (fast food, ready-made meals, and other foods that contain at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in the average home kitchen). An anti-inflammatory diet, on the other hand, includes lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, beans and other legumes, lean meats, oily fish, whole grains, a ..read more

Oral appliance therapy is a terrific option for many people with obstructive sleep apnea. It can be as effective as CPAP but a lot more comfortable and convenient. You don’t have to sleep with a mask tethered to a machine. You don’t have to plug into an outlet or worry about having back-up power in the event of an outage. You simply wear a lightweight appliance as you sleep to hold your jaw in an optimal position, keeping your airway free and clear through the night. You can breathe easy and sleep easy. Oral appliance therapy isn’t always an option, though. For instance, if you don’t have enou ..read more

One of the gnarliest things about obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is how it can impact other aspects of a person’s health and well-being. Conditions that have been scientifically linked to OSA include Hypertension. Heart disease. Heart failure. Stroke. Type 2 diabetes. Weight gain. Metabolic syndrome. Acid reflux. Depression. Brain fog. Memory loss. Note those conditions related to the mind. Although there’s some evidence now that treating sleep apnea may actually improve cognitive health, it’s long been thought that any OSA-related cognitive issues were an effect of other comorbidities, such ..read more

Despite all the chatter these days about banning TikTok, the video platform remains as popular as ever. And let’s face it: While there’s no shortage of junk content on TikTok, there’s a lot of entertaining stuff, too. And, of course, influencers galore. So. Many. Influencers. One thing that’s been trending lately in certain circles is a thing called buccal massage. It’s a gentle massage that’s done on the inside of your mouth and said to be popular with celebs such as J. Lo, Meghan Markle, and Kristen Bell. Why? It’s seen as a kind of nonsurgical facelift. “By releasing the tension of the bit ..read more

We’ve talked before about the relationship between TMJ disorders (TMDs) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) – not to mention the links between apnea and systemic health – but OSA is hardly the only condition associated with jaw joint problems. Anxiety and depression sometimes come along for the ride. One 2019 study of chronic TMD patients found that over 31% of them also had anxiety, while just over 36% had depression. Those rates are roughly 10 times higher than in the general population. A more recent study showed that people with TMD symptoms were more likely to experience psychological distr ..read more