Review of SNOREMATE as adjunct to xPAP for mouth sealing

OK, cool. You come across sometimes as getting worked up, but that is the problem with READING-- I can't HEAR you, ya know? I think that is why flame wars start on boards like this.

Life is hard enough when you can hear your mate's tone of voice--can you imagine only communicating with your spouse via typing--yikes!!!!!!! I'd be divorced, for sure!

So, no prob. I'm not worked up either, just wondering if I was interpreting right--and I wasn't, so I'm glad I asked.

Instead, you just shoot from the hip and don't self-edit worrying about what others might think. I gottcha. Ya make more sense to me now Snoredog! It is a refreshing approach, really. I don't care for tapdancing myself! Or walking on eggshells.

You do know you are one of my faves here, dontcha? I always do a little happy dance if I see you post a reply to something I want to know about--because I know I'm going to learn something new!

The world is a big place, lots to learn. Thanks for being a good teach.

Jen

If you used that cheap boil-n-bite you have to create a "T" out of it, you can use a hair dryer to warm it to manipulate it. You can also pound it flat like a piece of meat to make it thinner. I think Frequenseeker had step-by-step instructions for doing that very thing.

If you make it you want to make it very thin even using a dremel with a burr to make it thin, then you don't end up with all that bulk in your mouth.

Now these are details that I didn't know about when i did my first one! I am going to have to try this again! Much as I hate Wal-Mart, I might be giving them a visit tomorrow.

Hair dryer, check.
Meat mallet, check.
Dremmel tool, check

All I need is a few boil and bites and I'm going to give this another try.

Going off now to see if I can wade thru the posts and find this specific information that I somehow missed!

jen

Slightly relevant - I've had a bite splint for a fair time, well before starting on xPAP. I find that it does help me to maintain tongue position to minimize mouth leaking during the night. Found this out by sometimes falling asleep after forgetting to place the splint (or intentionally leaving it out for a nap.) Think it moves the slope of my upper palate further back in my mouth, which helps the tongue to seal.

OREO wrote:He's found the solution for compliance for him is side sleeping with the mask. He's doing the side sleep thing but has had recent back surgery and his hip hurts and keeps him awake so we're loking into memory foam & sleep number type mattresses, etc. etc. any suggestion side sleepers??

Side sleeping makes a difference for me with my AHI. I do have some hip pain due to arthritis and some back problems too. One thing I use is one of those very thick "mattress pillows" They are like the old fashioned featherbeds and cushion the mattress so my hips don't hurt. They go under the sheet and are readily available at stores like Bed, Bath, and Beyond They were hurting lots without them.

There are lots of things out there, perhaps one of them will work. I hope one of them will work for him.

OK, here are two more possibilities. One of them is for GERD, but looks very interesting for positional sleeping. The other is called a Snoogle. I haven't tried either since I found a way to stay on my side that works very well and was free (stuffed a pillow in an unused backpack and wear it at night).

http://www.acidrefluxpillow.com/PTPDesi ... works.html

http://tinyurl.com/32dncd


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CPAPopedia Keywords Contained In This Post (Click For Definition): AHI

snork1 wrote:<snip>

Whatever happened to all the development here and on the talkaboutsleep forum on the DIY tongue trainer device for stopping mouth breathing? I worked a lot on the development of that along with a couple of other "pioneers" and had mine working pretty darn well for a "$3+saturday afternoon fiddling" device. Seems like that approach was lost in the dim recesses of CPAP forum history? I went from massive mouth leaks with mummy wrapped head to little or no mouth leaks with at the most a tiny "reminder" chin strap using that device. How about some CONSTRUCTIVE advice being tossed in here?

<snip>

It seems that a large portion of what I do of late is re-post the suggested links to lists/postings compiled by Rested Gal! So, here is the one to which Snork 1 refers above. It is a part of the Lab Ratting Awards list gathered into one posting with links. Lab Rat Awards are given by Laura/rested gal for the BEST of ideas for adapting xPAP treatment as presented on the forum.



LINKS to Lab Rat Trophy awards.
viewtopic.php?t=15104

rested gal wrote:frequenseeker
making a cheap DIY mouthguard to stop mouth air leaks

[url=http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/message-b ... php?t=4750]Dec 01 2004 subject: mouth leak solution, cheap DIY oral appliance to frequenseeker for directions and pictures - how to make a "Do It Yourself" mouth guard to prevent mouth air leaks.

DIY Mouth Guard to Prevent Mouth Air Leaks

http://www.talkaboutsleep.com/message-b ... php?t=4750

Best wishes to all mouth breathers. I am one, and am working on parking my tongue. I may have trained myself to keep my lips closed by taping for about a year. We shall see.

The only part of the TAP Titanium that is Titanium is adjustment system, otherwise its acrylic with the softer coating for grip and compliance. Yours will be similar.

Since I haven't followed all the details of your journey. I will point out a trick about chin straps that you MIGHT have missed. (hopefully not).
Try this exercise right now.
Take your finger and push up under your chin.
Note that you can push hard as you want under your chin and still easily blow out through your lips.
Now take that finger and push up gently just under your lower lip. Notice how much harder it is to blow out with that light pressure in the right place!
Now apply that principle to a light duty chin strap.

If anyone wants to pay for my "followup" PSG sleep study, I will go for it.

No takers? Didn't think so.
Couple of issues.
One...my new insurance will stick me with paying a major portion of the sleep study out of pocket.

My sleep study place I have been using has no clue on how to deal with dental devices, which I think is a HUGE long term business error on their part.

Thirdly, they insist I MUST fall asleep and be studied lying on my back. This irritated the crap out of me with CPAP. I absolutely cannot fall asleep on my back. I trained out back sleeping long ago. So I spent most of the night just trying to get to sleep and it really invalidates the results of a dental device and seems only good for getting worst case settings for CPAP, and even that is questionable.

I have my own pulse ox, I track my dreaming, my wife tracks my lack or snoring and gasping and I can pretty much figure out if I am twitching from RLS. I can also see how rested I feel and notice that I GAINED WEIGHT WITH CPAP and have lost weight and feel MORE rested with the dental device.

I don't care to spend a fortune just to prove a point to the doubters. Don't need to. I just don't CARE. Everyone needs to make their own decision.

If people are happy with CPAP, STAY WITH IT!
Although I personally feel it seems like dental devices might be TRIED first and THEN the trickier and more lifestyle restricting CPAP should be the default to go to.
But thats just me.
And its certainly not the insurance companies....

socknitster wrote:

If you used that cheap boil-n-bite you have to create a "T" out of it, you can use a hair dryer to warm it to manipulate it. You can also pound it flat like a piece of meat to make it thinner. I think Frequenseeker had step-by-step instructions for doing that very thing.

If you make it you want to make it very thin even using a dremel with a burr to make it thin, then you don't end up with all that bulk in your mouth.

Now these are details that I didn't know about when i did my first one! I am going to have to try this again! Much as I hate Wal-Mart, I might be giving them a visit tomorrow.

Hair dryer, check.
Meat mallet, check.
Dremmel tool, check

All I need is a few boil and bites and I'm going to give this another try.

Going off now to see if I can wade thru the posts and find this specific information that I somehow missed!

jen

you might need some SuperGlue too, but frequen said she was able to "melt" the pieces together with a hot knife. Superglue is safe to use when it is dry, they use it medically to seal wounds.

Got an old snorkel? Just use the mouthpiece and plug the hole.

but I think if you mess around with it, you'll find your best seal is at the back of the throat with the soft palate against the base of the tongue, that is what happens when you use a nasal mask it pushes the soft palate down on the tongue and makes the seal, I can open my mouth and see it making that seal in a mirror. You have to practice keeping your tongue in your hard palate to maintain that seal.

It is when your mandible drops, the next thing that happens is the tongue comes out of the hard palate and once that seal from the palate to the tongue is broken out past the lips it goes.

If you cannot seal your soft palate to the base of the tongue, try something sticky like a sucker ( that is the concept behind those snore sprays). But if you don't have much of a soft palate or a vee'd tongue then you may have difficulty making that seal.

The ability to maintain that soft palate-to-tongue base seal can be critical. That is why post UPPP patients have to use a Full Face mask if surgery fails, their palate and Uvula have been removed and there is nothing left to maintain that seal. With the Uvula gone they cannot even eat a peanut butter sandwich without the peanut butter back washing up their nasal passage. Can you see laughing and spraying peanut butter all over your monitor?

Think about it, as CPAP pressure comes in the nasal passage it pushes against the soft palate and Uvula against the tongue, when the tongue is splinted out of the way it is free to go down your airway past the tracea.

How to become a snork CERTIFIED Sleep Dentist:
http://www.aadsm.org/PDFs/ABDSMGuidelines.pdf

Step 1:

Pay your $495 get your "how to" manual in the mail.

Step 2:

Attend the annual meeting on June 6 2008 in Maryland, watch a few presentations on how much money you can make, take the multiple guess Examination.

Hey that is my birthday!!! ~Happy Birthday to me! ~Happy Birthday to me! you snore like a dog and you look like one too~~

Step 3:

If you pass you are a bonified CERTIFIED Dental Sleep Specialist Diplomat.

If you fail, you can petition to get $400 of your money back.

But no sleep medicine training is required.

There is currently 120 Diplomats in the USA, should be easy to find one in your local neighborhood


Some sample questions:

- 11-- 11-
SAMPLE QUESTIONS
1. NREM sleep is comprised of four stages. Stage II sleep comprises
approximately 35% of sleep time.
A. True B. False
2. Stages 3 & 4 are the restorative sleep phases. It is distinguished
from other sleep stages by a high degree of immobility and
resistance to arousal.
A. True B. False
3. Which of the following is not a symptom of OSA?
A. Apneic episodes
B. Restless sleep
C. Nocturia
D. Excessive daytime sleepiness
E. None of the above
4. Snoring increases among women after menopause. This is
thought to be due to reduction in the amount of progesterone.
A. True B. False
5. Men have a smaller airway and greater upper airway resistance
than women.
A. True B. False
6. Approximately 30% of individuals with high blood pressure
have OSA and 50% of individuals with OSA have high blood
pressure.
A. True B. False

7. Which key factor is not present in Upper Airway Resistance
Syndrome?
A. Snoring
B. Sleep fragmentation
C. Oxygen desaturations are present
D. Daytime somnolence
E. Increase in respiratory effort


I bet RG has spent more than 10 hours in a sleep lab

just double checked my records.

Its been a year since I got OFF CPAP COMPLETELY in trade for a TAP dental device. (7/17/2006)

Healthier and more rested than ever.

I'm so GLAD for you!

What is your age, Snork? My doc says if you have good success with TAP and are young, you should really consider MMA/GA surgery. Sounds terribly radical. I may consider it one day if TAP works for me. I think I'd have to be pretty desperate to do that kind of intense surgery!

Jen

socknitster wrote:I'm so GLAD for you!

What is your age, Snork? My doc says if you have good success with TAP and are young, you should really consider MMA/GA surgery. Sounds terribly radical. I may consider it one day if TAP works for me. I think I'd have to be pretty desperate to do that kind of intense surgery!

Jen

I am 54.
IMHO, I would definitely "preview" the results of an MMA with a dental device.
Catch-22 with an MMA, even if I wanted to risk that major and painful surgery. The recovery time is so long that even if I had a job with med insurance to pay for it, I wouldn't have a job, due to be absent too long, by the time I was recovered.
i.e. I can't afford the time or money lost.

I have gotten considerable sinus and nose surgery as part of my overall "plan" to reduce apnea related issues.


Is a dental device approach perfect? NO!
Is CPAP approach perfect? NO!

I figure apnea treatment is still in the Dark Ages and I sure hope a real CURE comes along some day, maybe in my lifetime. Meanwhile MY plan is to stick with reversible approaches until something RELIABLE comes along.
Keep in mind I still haven't risked Lasik surgery for my eyes, to get an idea of my tolerance for irreversible risk.

I am hoping CPAP and Dental and whatever other temporary treatments come along, will keep me going until a cure does happen, OR until the breathing issues cease along with the heartbeat for whatever reason.

Hi,

I know this is a pretty old thread and I don't know if anyone is still reading it but I just stumbled upon it. I've been using the Snoremate for about 6 months now and I totally love it. It took a couple of days for me to get used to it but I didn't have any of the drool problems or anything like that. Several years ago I got pretty aggressive with trying to stop my snoring and had a sleep study done which resulted in my getting surgery to remove a large portion of the soft tissue at the back of my throat (including the little dangly vulva thing). I also had a deviated septum and so had that corrected surgically at the same time. The surgery helped for a while but in time my snoring came back.

I have no desire to have to hook myself up to some kind of CPAP positive pressure machine and have tubes coming from my face or having to lug around an electrical device if I'm not going to be sleeping at home. My dentist said he could make me a device for $2000 which is a little rich for my blood. I found the Snoremate online last summer and decided $30 was an acceptable risk. Am I glad I took it because, while it hasn't totally 100% removed all occurrence of snoring, it makes it light enough and infrequent enough that I can again share the same bed with my wife. It also allows me to sleep a whole lot better at night because I'm not constantly waking up with dry mouth and nasal passages and having to get a drink several times a night. Since I started using the Snoremate I can now usually sleep all the way through the night.

I guess it's not for everyone but for me it's awesome and I will definitely be continuing to use it, probably for the rest of my life, unless someone invents something even better.

Joel

Why don't you get an anti snoring mouthpiece from http://www.snoremate.net ? It worked really well for me and hopefully will do the same with you.

Joel,

That is all great, but did you have a follow up polysomnogram to make sure the surgery and snoremate are actually working? Feeling better is a pretty good gauge, but may not prevent the sequelae of medical problems that can ensue like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart problems. If you have high blood pressure, and it hasn't resolved since the surgery/snoremate you may be in for more health problems. You owe it to yourself to get another polysomnogram.

I understand your distaste of cpap. I'm 100% compliant but I don't LOVE it. I'm only 38 years old, so I'm looking for alternatives. The surgery you described is not for me. I've had several opinions from ENT's to oral surgeons to dentists to orthodontists and done TONS of research into what the scientific research shows. After getting all these opinons I came to the conclusion that my overbite is actually the problem (overbite is well-documented as a causal agent of OSA, though you sure don't hear it that much). Everyone seems to agree that I don't have any other underlying structural issues (I did have my tonsils removed 3 years ago which was my secondary problem). All everyone keeps telling me is that I have an unusually small mouth and an unusually large tongue. Actually I suspect that the tongue isn't unusually large, it just appears so in such a small mouth. My childhood dentist tried to convince my parents I needed braces, but they didn't "buy it" because my teeth looked fairly straight. Braces are about more than straight teeth and a pretty smile.

The overbite causes my mouth to be too small for my tongue, forcing it back in my throat. So, after exhaustive research I have come to the conclusion that braces will be the best long term solution for me--yes, even in adults this can be corrected with braces. I have read the scientific literature. My dentist and an oral surgeon I saw told me it wouldn't help me, BUT I doubt they are "up" on all the current research in this area. I found an orthodontist that specializes in NON-EXTRACTION ORTHODONTICS, a branch of orthodontia (relatively new) that does not extract teeth and then pull them in with braces, but lets you keep all your teeth and uses self-ligating braces to pull the teeth out into a bigger oval shape and a nice wide smile. He works with a lot of adults and he feels he can get my airway opened up a great deal by giving my tongue more room. At that time I would be able to decide if I want to go ahead with the MMA surgery (braces were a prerequisite) or if I have acheived enough without them. Personally I doubt I'll do the surgery, because I don't think it will take much movement to make a big difference. But time will tell.

The best surgery if you want to go that route is the MMA--its close to 100% effective--but it is BRUTAL. The reason the MMA works is because it corrects overbite and small jaws. I say, why not do that with braces? It may take 2 years to accomplish, but it won't be as brutal.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=53983&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p502559 Here is a thread where we talk about this issue in depth and there are lots of links to read.

Surgery, people, surgery.