Sleep Apnea Treatment in Encino, CA
You sleep eight hours and wake up exhausted
You sleep seven or eight hours and wake up as though you did not sleep at all.
Maybe you have been told it is stress, or your age, or your weight. Maybe your partner has moved to the spare room. Maybe you were prescribed a CPAP machine two years ago and it has been in the closet for most of that time.
There is a version of this conversation that starts at a dentist, and it is shorter than you would expect. It begins with one night of sleep in your own bed.
Signs Worth Taking Seriously
When snoring is more than snoring
Snoring on its own is often just snoring. It becomes worth investigating when it arrives with any of these:
- Waking up tired no matter how long you were in bed
- Headaches in the morning that fade by mid-morning
- Waking suddenly, or gasping, or being told you stop breathing
- Getting up to urinate more than once a night
- Brain fog, a short fuse, or concentration that has been quietly getting worse
- Blood pressure that is not responding well to treatment
- Grinding or clenching your teeth at night
- That last one is why a dentist is often the first person to notice. Nighttime grinding and sleep-disordered breathing turn up in the same patients often enough that it is worth asking about your sleep, though the direction of that relationship is still being worked out and grinding on its own is not proof of an airway problem. What it is, reasonably, is a reason to ask a different question rather than simply fit a night guard and move on.
The At-Home Screening, Step by Step
One night. Your own bed.
Overnight sleep labs put a lot of people off entirely, which is part of why so much sleep apnea goes untreated. This is the alternative.
- You take a small device home. Depending on the unit, it is either a small sensor worn on your finger, or a finger sensor paired with a monitor worn on the wrist like a watch. That is the entire apparatus.
- You sleep in your own bed on a normal night. It records your oxygen levels and breathing patterns.
- The data goes to a board-certified sleep physician, who reads and interprets it and discusses the results with you directly.
- We sit down together with those results. If there is nothing there, you have your answer and can stop wondering. If there is something there, you have a physician’s reading of it and a set of options.
One night. Your own bed. No lab, no wires, no waiting room.
Oral Appliance Therapy
What it is like to use
If treatment is indicated, one option is a custom oral appliance — a device worn at night that holds your lower jaw and tongue slightly forward so the airway stays open while the muscles relax.
It fits in a pocket. There is no mask, no hose, no power outlet, nothing to pack in a separate bag when you travel. Most people find the first week or two strange and then stop noticing it.
We adjust it gradually over several weeks rather than handing it over and hoping. Then a follow-up sleep test confirms it is actually working, because an appliance that has not been verified is a guess rather than a treatment.
Who it suits
- Appropriately selected patients with mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea
- People with more severe disease who will not use PAP therapy at all — where the honest comparison is not appliance versus CPAP, but appliance versus nothing
- Frequent travelers, and anyone for whom the machine itself is the obstacle
Who it does not suit
It is not right for every case, and it is not a replacement for CPAP where your physician has determined CPAP is what you need. Certain dental conditions, insufficient healthy teeth to anchor a device, and some jaw joint problems rule it out. An evaluation is how we find out, and we would rather tell you no than fit something that will not help.
What a Dentist Can — and Cannot — Do
This distinction matters, and we do not blur it.
Dentists screen. Physicians diagnose. Dr. Wolfe can identify the signs, arrange an at-home screening and provide appliance therapy — but sleep apnea is a medical diagnosis, made by a board-certified sleep physician who reads your data. We work alongside that physician rather than around them. Our sleep and airway health page covers the wider picture, including how airway problems show up in the mouth.
What that means practically: nothing here replaces your doctor, and if your screening points to something outside our scope we will tell you and help you get to the right place.
If you have a CPAP you are not using
You are not unusual and you are not doing anything wrong. Plenty of prescribed machines end up unused — not because they do not work, but because people cannot tolerate the mask, the pressure, the noise, or traveling with it.
The problem is that your chart says you are being treated while in reality you are not. That is worth a conversation rather than another year of guilt. Bring the machine and the sleep study if you still have them, and bring your physician into it — the goal is treatment you will actually use, decided with them.
What we look for in your mouth
Some of this is visible at a routine examination, which is why we ask about sleep even when you came in for a cleaning:
- Flattened, worn back teeth from grinding
- A narrow upper arch — less width means less room for the tongue
- Scalloped edges along the sides of the tongue, from pressing against the teeth all night
- Redness at the back of the throat and a dry mouth on waking, the signature of breathing through your mouth for eight hours
- A jaw set back, or a small chin
None of that is a diagnosis. All of it is a reason to ask a different question.
FAQ
Book an At-Home Sleep Screening
If you wake up tired no matter what time you went to bed, that is the conversation. One night, in your own bed, and you will finally have data instead of a theory. On the money side, we set out what your dental plan does and does not cover before any treatment is scheduled.
(818) 788-1231 · 16311 Ventura Blvd, #1296, Encino, CA 91436