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Loud, chronic snoring
Nightly snoring loud enough that a partner notices or sleeps in another room. Often the first clue.
Saturday morning run along the Barton Creek greenbelt. Eight miles, solid pace, back by 8am. Wrecked by noon. Your partner has been in the guest room for two years. The snoring started, she moved, and neither of you made it a big deal. The arrangement just became normal.
This is not just snoring. It is a measured medical condition, scored by how often your breathing stalls each hour, your AHI, and sorted into mild, moderate, or severe.
Sleep apnea is what happens when your airway collapses during sleep and your body keeps having to rescue it. The damage is not what happens overnight. It is what happens over years. Untreated, it raises the risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
The Garmin sleep score has been poor for months. HRV trending down. Resting heart rate higher than it was two years ago. It is easy to blame training stress, but cutting mileage did not move the numbers. Here is what is actually happening during those eight hours: the throat closes, breathing stops briefly, and the brain wakes you just enough to reopen the airway. You do not feel it and you do not remember it. Dozens of times a night, often above ten an hour. That is what explains the gap between the hours logged and how you feel.
We evaluate the airway, the jaw, and the bite together and coordinate with your physician, who confirms the diagnosis with a sleep study. If you do not have a recent one, we set up a home test you run in a single night. If you do, bring the report and we move straight to appliance planning. We are at 7415 Southwest Parkway Building 6 #200, in the Lantana Place development across from the AMD campus, with evening and weekend appointments available.
Sleep apnea symptoms rarely show up alone. An afternoon crash around two. Morning headaches that ease by mid-morning. Eight hours logged and waking up feeling like five. Blood pressure that was a little high at the last physical, a resting heart rate that does not match your fitness, and maybe a cardiologist who mentioned sleep apnea in passing. Taken together, those are the signals worth checking.
Nightly snoring loud enough that a partner notices or sleeps in another room. Often the first clue.
Sudden gasping, choking, or a feeling of being briefly unable to breathe. The body is rescuing the airway.
A dull, pressure-type headache already present at wake-up, from a night of low oxygen and disrupted sleep.
Exhaustion that does not improve with a full night in bed. Falling asleep in meetings, while reading, or at the wheel.
Trouble focusing, short-term memory slips, mood changes, irritability that landed without an obvious cause.
Waking with a sandpaper mouth or a raw throat, especially if you sleep on your back.
Several trips to the bathroom or restless waking, often blamed on hydration but driven by airway disruption.
Worn enamel, flat edges, or jaw soreness on waking. Bruxism and sleep apnea travel together more often than not.
Obstructive sleep apnea is rarely down to one thing. It is the stack: anatomy, weight, age, jaw position. Fitness does not make you immune. Plenty of people who run the greenbelt every weekend still have an airway that collapses at night, which is exactly why a poor sleep score that does not improve with less training is worth a closer look.
A narrow throat, large tonsils, or set-back jaw makes the airway easier to collapse.
Soft tissue around the neck and tongue adds load on the airway during sleep.
Throat muscles lose tone over time. Sleep apnea risk climbs with each decade.
Anything that relaxes the throat at bedtime makes obstruction more likely.
Lying flat lets the tongue drop straight back. Some patients are positional only.
Dentist-led, sleep-physician-coordinated, and focused on a treatment you will actually wear. We take most dental and medical insurance, and medical plans frequently cover oral appliance therapy because it is billed as a medical treatment. We verify your coverage before the consultation.
A walk-through of your sleep, snoring, energy, blood pressure, and what your partner has been hearing. A short screener (STOP-BANG) flags whether a sleep study is the next step.
Hands-on evaluation of your airway opening, tongue position, jaw posture, and bite. Digital scans capture the architecture an oral appliance will work with.
If a diagnosis is not yet on file, we coordinate a home sleep test or an in-lab study with a sleep physician. Diagnosis stays medical, treatment is delivered here.
You leave with the plan: which appliance fits your case, what insurance will cover, when the appliance will be ready, and the follow-up schedule to fine-tune fit.
For mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea, an oral appliance is enough for most patients. It is custom-fitted, worn during sleep, and holds the jaw slightly forward so the throat stays open. That is the whole mechanism. No machine, no mask, nothing to plug in. In the mild-to-moderate range the outcomes hold up against CPAP, mostly because far more people actually wear the appliance every night than wear the CPAP every night. Night-guard form factor, silent, no power, and it goes in the gym bag. It works in a hotel the same as it does at home.
Custom oral appliance therapy is clinically proven for mild to moderate OSA, and for patients who cannot tolerate CPAP. Quiet, portable, and easy to wear, which is the only treatment metric that actually matters: the one you keep using.
For positional or mild cases, the gains can be real before any device: side-sleeping training, avoiding alcohol close to bed, weight management, and treating nasal congestion. We screen for these so they are not skipped.
LifestyleA precision-fit mandibular advancement device that gently advances the lower jaw a few millimeters during sleep, holding the airway open. Quiet, portable, often medical-insurance-covered, and proven for mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnea (and for patients who cannot tolerate CPAP).
Most commonFor severe cases or partial responders, the appliance pairs with CPAP at a much lower pressure setting, or alternates by night. Often makes CPAP tolerable for patients who otherwise abandon it. Coordinated with your sleep physician.
Pairs with CPAPWhen appliance therapy is not enough, we refer you to a trusted ENT or sleep surgeon for advanced options such as Inspire, soft palate surgery, or maxillomandibular advancement. We coordinate the handoff and stay involved in your ongoing dental care.
Outside referralThe right tool is the one you will use every night. We will help you find it, not sell you one.
A lot of practices stamp the word “sleep” onto a generic guard and call it done. We do dental sleep medicine properly: the right appliance for your airway and bite, titrated over follow-ups, and checked against how you actually sleep. We are on Southwest Parkway across from AMD, in Lantana Place, with evening and Saturday appointments available.
We work alongside Austin sleep physicians on diagnosis, sleep studies, and titration. Treatment stays inside an evidence-based loop, not freelanced from a single chair.
A 3D digital iTero scan, an airway and bite analysis, and an appliance precision-fit to your jaw. No goop, no putty trays, no one-size shell. Titration dialed in over the first few weeks.
If CPAP is not working for you, you are not stuck. Oral appliance therapy is the leading non-CPAP option for mild to moderate OSA, and a key partner in combination therapy for severe cases.
Clenching, grinding, and worn teeth often travel with obstructive sleep apnea. If you are dealing with one, you are often dealing with the others, and we handle them under one roof.
Crowding and a narrow arch can crowd the airway. Invisalign can widen the arch and improve how well you breathe at night.
Explore Invisalign →Every visit includes a quick screening of the lips, tongue, throat, and neck. Two minutes, part of staying ahead of things.
Explore screening →Cleanings, exams, and airway screening on every visit, your dental home between appliance check-ins.
Explore preventative care →Related reading: How to treat sleep apnea naturally at home · Is sleep apnea genetic? What science says · Airway expansion for sleep apnea · Caring for your sleep apnea appliance
Serving Southwest Austin and the Southwest Parkway corridor
Lantana Place Studio
7415 Southwest Parkway Building 6 #200
Austin, TX 78735
Phone: (512) 648-6115
Getting here: In the Lantana Place development on Southwest Parkway, across from the AMD campus.
Areas served: Barton Creek, Circle C, Western Oaks, Travis Country, East Oak Hill, and Sendera. Primary ZIPs 78735 and 78749.
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The honest answers to what patients ask us most. Do not see your question? Call us. We would much rather chat than have you guess.
Call (512) 884-5656A 45-minute evaluation, sleep-study coordination if you need one, and a custom oral appliance built around how you actually sleep. In Lantana Place on Southwest Parkway across from AMD, convenient from Barton Creek, Circle C, and Travis Country, with evening and weekend appointments. Medical insurance often covers oral appliance therapy, we will verify before you commit.