Sleep Education Consortium
$400 Early-Bird Discount
Registration Now Open!

February 3 – 5, 2022
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Houston - Greenway Plaza
 
  

We’ve all heard the expression,”Fake it 'til you make it" The idea is that if you pretend to exude confidence and charm, eventually you will begin to believe your own act. Somehow, just putting on a certain face and temperament will make it more real.

The same thing happens when you smile. Even if you are in a foul mood and dogged by anxiety and frustration, showing a smile to the world can actually give your brain a happy boost. Smiling activates neuropeptides which are known to fight off stress. Smiling also gives you a burst of dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin, all feel-good brain chemicals that can wipe away that bad mood or help you put a stressful situation into a better perspective.

Dentists, every day we meet patients who are afraid to smile or who are embarrassed to flash a smile filled with misaligned, cracked, or missing teeth. You can give your patients a reason to smile     

The QCB™ System includes the items you need to treat a single patient with Quick Cosmetic Braces.

The cuspid-to-cuspid retention splint (available in upper and lower) consists of a multi-stranded, lingual wire -- carefully contoured to the lingual of the six anterior teeth and bonded to each tooth. As part of our QCB™ Quick Cosmetic Braces service, SML can provide expertly made, custom indirect bonding trays. Many doctors love these trays -- the perfect way to streamline initial bracketing appointments and a quick, easy way to get those tooth-colored brackets placed in the ideal positions.  

Full-Breath Solution – A Breath of Fresh Air for Patients with Sleep Apnea

According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep apnea affects an estimated 18 million Americans. Sleep apnea steals sleep, causing chronic exhaustion and a long list of other ailments, including heart disease, migraines, weight gain, and more. While Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machines are often the primary recommended solution, customized oral appliances are also used successfully to combat sleep apnea – particularly for those who cannot tolerate CPAP.

At SML (Space Maintainers Laboratories), one of the most exciting appliances that our labs make is the Full-Breath Solution™. This tongue-controlling oral appliance is designed to keep the airway open during sleep, allowing for the free flow of breath.

The current COVID-19 crisis has impacted the economic scenario of the global medical and dental market widely and negatively for some. These are unprecedented times. Dentistry is going to recover, although there may be one to two slow years of repair ahead.

Dentistry, as compared to medical procedures, will not be considered as vital in the public mind for the next several years. However, one benefit that dentistry may share with medicine is a renewed faith in expert opinion by the general public. The data suggests that treatment of temporomandibular joint pain and sleep related disorders will keep dentists busy and competitive.
  

Estimated to affect up to 22 million Americans, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, is known to increase an individual’s risk of fatigue, diabetes, blood pressure, and stroke. Now a new study published in the Journal of Neuroimaging reveals that sleep apnea can also break down the blood-brain barrier and cause brain damage.

The blood-brain barrier is one of the brain’s most important defense mechanisms, helping to shield it from bacteria, infections, and chemicals. According to Rajesh Kumar, an associate professor at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine and author of the study, “We found that the blood-brain barrier becomes more permeable in obstructive sleep apnea, a breakdown that could contribute to brain injury.”

We all develop habits to help release tension or deal with anxiety. Some of these habits, like finger tapping or knuckle popping, are harmless, while others can be problematic over time. Certain children and even adults develop a habit of chewing on their upper and/or lower lip. In times of stress, all this chewing can lead to wounds that are never given the chance to heal.

It can be difficult to break an ingrained habit like lip chewing, but the Lip Biting Inhibitor can help. This simple device secures a lip guard over the front teeth, pushing the lips outward and making it impossible for the patient to pull their lip between their teeth to start chewing. This labial shield can also be incorporated into a removable appliance, thus enabling patients to eat or sleep without interference.

Sleep apnea is often consider a male issue, but while over 42 million Americans suffer from sleep apnea, a good portion of those troubled sleepers are women. Some studies show that one of out every four people suffering from sleep apnea is female. In fact, a 2008 study found that roughly 9% of middle-aged women suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (compared to 25% of middle-aged men).

Sleep apnea symptoms are often subtle in women, showing up as headaches and fatigue. This leads to a underdiagnosing of the condition in women. Those who suffer from sleep apnea are at an increased risk of being involved in a traffic accident, stroke, heart attack, high blood pressure, diabetes, and even some forms of cancer, including breast cancer.  

Your digital patient records are invaluable. Archived files can help you understand and chart a patient’s long-term progress. They can help you determine if past interventions have been successful and move forward with a more comprehensive health plan for each individual patient --and if your patient relocates, it’s best for your business to have records ready for facilitating smooth transitions.

Are your digital patient files safe? If you are keeping them all on a single server, they could be incredibly vulnerable. What happens if that server goes down, if you experience fire or a natural disaster, or if some nasty hacker blocks the files and tries to blackmail you to get them back?