In this first‑person testimonial, the speaker recounts a journey that began with chronic snoring, daytime exhaustion, and TMJ‑related jaw clicking. After a sleep‑apnea test, a dentist prescribed a bulky nighttime oral appliance and a daytime acrylic device to address TMJ, which provided immediate relief but left the molars non‑contacting and made eating difficult. Unwilling to wear the night appliance indefinitely, the patient researched her past bicuspid extractions and discovered that restoring those teeth could also expand the airway. She pursued an airway‑focused orthodontic treatment that moved her teeth forward, ultimately replacing the appliances. The treatment resulted in dramatically better sleep, increased daytime energy, weight loss, reduced neck and back pain, and a noticeable improvement in facial structure—her face stopped “caving in” and appeared wider. The cosmetic improvement of a fuller smile is described as a bonus, while the primary benefit is the enhanced quality of life from better breathing and sleep.
Chapters
My husband was complaining about my snoring, and I really, I knew I wasn't sleeping well. I was very groggy in the morning, and then I was just getting this crush of exhaustion in the late afternoon. Right. I didn't have a lot of the factors that people who have sleep apnea due to weight or something like some sort of illness or whatever. They said I'd probably qualify for one of those appliances that you wear at night, which to me sounded a lot better than putting a mask over my face. So they gave me a dentist's name. They said that he could probably do a pretty decent job of getting it covered by insurance and everything. So I go to see him. And I walk through the door and I introduce myself. And he had only looked at my case and there were no x-rays or anything like that in there. It was just a reading from the sleep apnea test. And he said, I bet you have TMJ, and I bet when you were young, you had some of your teeth removed and pulled back and straightened out by an orthodontist. I said, yes, that's true. He said, yeah, I can tell from the look of your face. He was like, that you've had braces before and you're probably a bicuspid extraction. And we went on about our business. And one of the things was to make an appliance for nighttime. And then he also said, because my TMJ was bad, like as we talked, I was just used to it, but I would have a click. You know, while I would talk, anytime I chewed, anytime I yawned, sometimes when I would drink, I would have that clicking. And he's like, I'd like to also put an appliance in during the day to help with the TMJ. So he did that. And it, it was this little buildup of acrylic between the molars. And it was great. Like it fixed the TMJ like almost immediately as my jaw started to move and lower down into place. But by the time I was done with that treatment, my molars did not touch anymore. So it was kind of challenging to eat, uh, because when your teeth, when your teeth don't touch, it's hard to chew. So, um, I had that going on. And then every night I'd put the appliance in. And when I tell you this thing was a monstrosity, um, I just couldn't imagine myself 10, 15, 20 years from now doing this every single night of my life. Um, even though I was sleeping for the first time and it felt really great. Just the idea of putting this thing in every night was just like depressing me. So I went back in to see him. You know, I would go for my checkups and everything to see how I was doing. And when I was at an appointment with him, I said, oh, it'd just be great if I could just have those teeth back. And he's like, yeah, it would be. And like a light bulb went off in my head that, well, if they took them out, why couldn't they just put them right back in? You know? So So I went home and started, you know, Googling everything, you know, about, you know, removing bicuspids. And I start watching video after video of people my age that had the same thing. And, you know, the before and afters, and then listening to, you know, what their life was like. And I'm like, I have that, I have TMJ. I can't sleep. I have back pain. I have neck pain. I don't want to wear this appliance for the rest of my life when I go to sleep. I just want to fix this. I want the teeth back that I lost, you know? And I could tell cosmetically my face was starting to cave in, you know, like every year it was just like I was just losing like the structure of my face. I would look at pictures from when I was in high school and college and my face was wide. And my face just kept getting longer and longer and longer. I flew out here in November of 2016, and he started to move my teeth forward. And it wasn't very long after that that I noticed that I was just sleeping so much better. And by the time I got out of the appliances that, you know, move the teeth into position so they can then be aligned, it was just night and day. It was night and day. And every trip out here, it would just be You know, I just feel better. You know, I was losing weight not doing anything different than I'd ever really done, but I did have a lot more energy, you know, so I wasn't feeling horrible 3 or 4 o'clock in the daytime, and I still had energy, you know, when I came home from work. And that was, you know, just such a huge quality of life improvement that goes beyond having, you know, a pretty smile, you know. your day-to-day is the thing. It's just this routine, going to work, coming home, you know. It's the same thing over and over again. It makes it almost intolerable when you are tired and just feel crummy every day, you know. So having like this new outlook on life, you know, being able to breathe better, swallow better, you know, it just made a huge difference. And, you know, this, like having a pretty smile, is just— It's a bonus. I mean, it's just the icing on the cake, you know.
