Sleep Apnea and Financial Collapse

By Arthur M. Strauss, DDS

Arthur M. Strauss, DDS

. http://www.amstraussdds.com

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Sleep Apnea and Financial Collapse

I trust the title caught your attention. Many in the medical and dental community rely on a superficial explanation and understanding of the dental anatomical relation to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). This can result in a distorted picture of how the body functions as a whole.

We need a better understanding of how our body's second-to-second management of our survival leads to and helps perpetuate chronic illness and the effects of aging.

The most immediate need of the body is survival. And, the most immediate threat to survival is loss of air supply. Any survival threat signals the autonomic nervous system (ANS) to activate our fight or flight reaction, often referred to as our “adrenal” or “stress” response.

Since 2007, in numerous Your Health Magazine articles, I have described how an unstable jaw-tongue-throat anatomical relationship that facilitates OSA during sleep does not disappear while one is awake.

The dental profession can integrate knowledge of posture and position of the same tongue in denture construction assurance of ease of swallowing and speaking with the difficulty of breathing associated with OSA. Same tongue, same influences day or night. The type and degree of influence and reaction will obviously vary when awake from when asleep.

I have shown how this inter-relationship is the origin of all disease, with diet, nutrition and exercise, while important, playing supporting roles because they have a much less “immediate” impact upon the stress response. Thus they hold much less immediate influence and leverage. This jaw-tongue-throat relationship has a huge impact on health and well-being.

Studying and understanding it, how it impacts, and is impacted by the whole body, mind and spirit referred to as Oral Systemic Balance can lead to the knowledge to improve its stability and function. I believe that this can influence all the chronic conditions that appear to progress and increase in number, intensity and frequency as we age, because it addresses the origin.

Our current symptom management approach of “relieve,” “repair,” and “replace” (RRR) as conveniently as possible, ignores root causes, the symptoms of which can be multiple steps down a series of reactions.

While our current RRR approach will always be needed, the frequency of need for it is likely to be greatly diminished as origin focused health management is better understood, appreciated and implemented. It is our only means of reversing the landslide of exponential cost increases associated with our current concept of the human body and medical care.