We are created to spend one third of our precious lives sleeping.  If you try to sleep less hours a day, because you think it is a waste of time, you may end up with multiple illnesses, mental disabilities, or a shorter life expectancy before reaching your goal.  SLEEP IS ESSENTIAL FOR LIFE!

While there are self rising factors why we may not have a good night sleep, such as worries and depression, many people cannot have a peaceful sleep because their sleep is under attack by other forces, such as loud snoring and obstructive sleep apnea.  When we sleep, our body relaxes its legs, arms, face, neck, nerves, muscles, and also relaxes the soft tissues in the oral region such as the uvula, soft palate, tonsils, adenoid tissue and tongue.  If these muscles relax too much and the tongue falls back too far, it narrows the airway and causes various sleep-related breathing disorders.  

If you have such disorders you may experience  not only from loud snoring, choking and gasping while asleep, but also suffer from difficulty in breathing, shallow sleep, multiple arousals, which can contribute to un-refreshed feeling in the morming, daytime sleepiness, morning headache, chronic fatigue.  According to many clinical studies   and observations, un-treated sleep breathing disorders, specially obstructive sleep apnea, can cause serious health problems: cardiovascular complications, high blood pressure, worsening diabetes, gastro-esophageal-reflex-disease (GERD), stroke, and sudden death during sleep. 

Dental Sleep Medicine is one of the most exciting medical-dental connections and is an integral part of the "sleep team".  It is extremely gratifying to help an astonishing 50-70 million Americans who are experiencing sleep-related breathing disorders to breath better, sleep better, and to see their quality of life improve greatly by providing an effective and comfortable Oral Appliance.  Oral Appliances are for patients with primary snoring or mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea, and for patients who are not appropriate candidates for CPAP or who have tried CPAP and cannot tolerate it.

Dental Sleep Medicine is more than general dentistry and should be performed by qualified dentists who have extended education, knowledge, training and focuses on the management and treatment of sleep-related breathing disorders (SBD). 

American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (AADSM) is an international organization and have meetings around year for  dentists, physicians, and dental professionals who are seeking an in-depth introduction to dental sleep medicine and oral appliance therapy, which includes the continuum of snoring to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) with oral appliance therapy and upper airway surgery.  www.aadsm.org  

At TMJ, Head & Neck Pain Center, Dr. Kim is certified from American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine, all staff members are highly educated, trained, and certified to operate state of the art equipment and various  testings.  Dr. Kim welcomes referrals from all health care practitioners and individuals who want to be treated/managed loud snoring and obstructive sleep apnea with an oral appliance, have a second opinion, or who have problem with   CPAP or surgery.