Mike Wiegenstein: You are watching Medical News Network, your trusted source for the latest in medical news and information. I am Mike Wiegenstein and thanks for joining us. We are very pleased to have in studio an internationally recognized lecturer, author and educator in the treatment and cure of sleep apnea and TMJ. So if you snore, toss and turn in night, you are fatigue or you are tired, have chronic neck or shoulder pain, have a child who is undersize that wets the bed, has difficulty focussing, or even been diagnosed with ADD that you don’t want to miss what our guest has to say, so stick around, we will be right back.
Female Speaker: Welcome to an educational and comprehensive discussion with today’s top medical experts, your trusted source for the latest in medical news and information. You are watching Medical News Network.
Mike Wiegenstein: Welcome back, our guest today is Dr. Brock Rondeau. Dr. Rondeau is a member of the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, a diplomat of the International Board of Orthodontics and a diplomat of the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain, the small and select group of dental professionals specializing in the treatment and cure of sleep apnea and TMJ. Dr. Rondeau’s practice in London Ontario is recognized by patients and peers like as the cutting edge facility in the care and cure of these disorders. Dr. Rondeau welcome to the show.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Thanks Mike, it’s nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
Mike Wiegenstein: Now I brought you on today to talk about sleep apnea and TMJ. But before we get into that give me a little about your background, your history, now you teach all over the world dental professionals how to care for these disorders. Tell me how you get into that?
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Well, I guess I am general dentist first of all, where general dentists for long time you can tell that from here and basically I started wanting to help children that I saw that had malocclusions. Now that means bad bites. Children with bad bites.
Mike Wiegenstein: Okay, overbites, underbites,
Dr. Brock Rondeau: overbites, underbites, receded jaws whatever and so I started treating these kids and getting very fulfilled because I was significantly improved the profiles and later on the program I will show you some before and afters I have done, that are really really impressive I think which how we can change the face of profiles, these on kids.
Mike Wiegenstein: Are they? Is that easier to treat at a early age, I mean can you catch it early?
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Oh, much easier.
Mike Wiegenstein: Alright, so you started to help the children and what happen from there?
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Well, 90% of the children’s face is developed by age 12. So, if you want to guide the growth of your under patients you have to do in early. Now
Mike Wiegenstein: Do you think just I don’t want to interrrup but do you think most parents realize that if they get involved if they catch this at an early age they can have such a tremendous outwear affect on their child’s life as an adult.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: No, I think the dental profession hasn’t done a very good job of letting patients know that and there has been no TV programs, there has been no radio programs on this and really that’s one of the reason I was gladly dropping on today to try enlighten parents as to what kind of treatment they could get for their kids so they can prevent problems later on.
Mike Wiegenstein: Okay, so you started by treating the kids and what you think about that and then how did you transition over into helping the adults.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: I started using functional appliances on these children and the little functional appliances when move the jaw forward and make their profile look better and I would also open up their air way when I brought their jaw forward because they would breathe better and they would do better in school and everything else and then what happened I had a number of parents say to me I have headaches and my little girl’s headaches, could you do the same for me? And the number one cause, the number symptom of TMD is headaches.
Mike Wiegenstein: Sleep apnea the same thing I mean to what basically what is sleep apnea. Lets just start with that right now, what is sleep apnea.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Sleep apnea is when a patient stops breathing for 10 seconds or more now what happens is they start breathing for 10 seconds or more may be several hundred times at night and that blocks the air way and that reduces the amount of oxygen the patient gets and then they have arouse and they wake up and they wake up several times at night and that really makes them very fatigue the next day when you wake up all night long you are not getting a very good sleep.
Mike Wiegenstein: So, you are tired, you are restless but you said in children you notice the exact opposite.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: That’s right. Whats really funny is that is that the children yet they don’t get fatigued, they get hyper and they get a condition called attention deficit disorder which is ADD and then they are hard to handle because they are aggressive and they are excitable and they are hard to handle in school. So, they tell the teachers and the teachers tell the parents what we are going to do with these children I cant control them so they the medical doctors then put them on medication, which is a stimulant, you really think a stimulant would calm people down but it calms the children down.
Mike Wiegenstein: Because its doing the exact opposite of what or not have any options while doing it. Now I don’t mean to putting on the spot but I had some discussions with you when you I know that you have taken children that have ADD that are on -- that you put in the appliances that you worked with them, you have actually the most times are able to come off the medicine.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Absolutely. I mean you have given him a new drug, it’s called Oxygen.
Mike Wiegenstein: Now tell me about that because I am going to show video clip you brought of what sleep apnea is and I talked to you about my kids tend to breathe heavy, my kids are good size but they tend to breathe heavy and every now and then they snore and you said that that’s not something
Dr. Brock Rondeau: No, snoring is bad. Snoring means there is restriction in the airway. If you have an obstruction in the air way then you are getting less oxygen than you are supposed to get and then get all kinds of other symptoms. So, the main problem with the children that snore they have large adenoids and tonsils. So, they need to go to a dentist that has a potential to take an X-ray of the side of the head and check to see whether or not their tonsils or adenoids are large. If they are large
Mike Wiegenstein: When I was a child, almost everybody got their tonsils out. If you got the flu your tonsils swell up, they chop them out. Today it doesn’t seem like anybody wants to take them out. So, they sit in the back of the throat and you are saying that they swell up and then the kids can’t breathe.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: That’s right.
Mike Wiegenstein: And then the adenoids you cant really see. They are behind but they swell up okay. So, opening up the air way allows you oxygen giving and then not having that oxygen in the child causes them to become hyperactive you said, not be able to focus, now you said still wet the bed.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: They still wet the bed.
Mike Wiegenstein: Why will not breathing causes the --
Dr. Brock Rondeau: The lack of oxygen causes that problem.
Mike Wiegenstein: Alright, well let’s take a quick look at the video clip so everybody can understand really what sleep apnea is? So let’s roll the clip and tell me what’s going on here. So, here is the lady that is just sleepy, snoring, alright -- everybody snores a little bit but then she feels stop and locked up. So, what happens in the throat?
Dr. Brock Rondeau: What happens is the when they are lying their back particularly tongue falls back and you will see there there is the tongue fell back with this little space so snoring and when the tongue completely blocks the airway its apnea.
Mike Wiegenstein: Okay, now when you have apnea when the tongue completely blocks the air way do you say they wake up but they don’t remember it.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: That’s right. Anytime your oxygen level goes down below 90% then you have a problem because then the body says we are not getting enough oxygen and so the brain gives a message to the lungs to start breathing again and that wakes the patient up
Mike Wiegenstein: Because otherwise it will suffocate
Dr. Brock Rondeau: Its called an arousal.
Mike Wiegenstein: Okay, how does that the I mean they still sleep on that. I mean they are bed in eight hours or ten hours how does that translate into or they don’t feeling tired or fatigue the next morning but they still were in bed for 8 hours sleeping right
Dr. Brock Rondeau: They have the partial wakeups called arousals may be 50 times an hour and then they are exhausted when they wake up and I always ask my patients do you feel refreshed when you wake up, or you tired during the day, that’s the number one symptom of sleep apnea.
Mike Wiegenstein: Fall asleep at the movies or just riding the car or
Dr. Brock Rondeau: That’s the severe case
Mike Wiegenstein: Falling sleep in front of the TV, just tired restless, now you told me that because they don’t ever get into what is we have heard called rem sleep.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: That’s correct
Mike Wiegenstein: And what happens in your body during rem sleep but so important
Dr. Brock Rondeau: You dream, and you get and your body totally relaxes so the patient is not dreaming that’s a very good sign that they may have sleep apnea but also your -- really got to tell okay have it because you stop breathing and they are concerned that you have stopped breathing and they think you are going to die and you will die unless the brain wakes you up and you have this arousal start breathing it.
Mike Wiegenstein: I want to know we are going to get into why you think people don’t pursue treatment more, I know why I think, we have to take a quick break and when we come back we are going to talk little about sleep ap and we are going to talk about oral appliances that can cure this and little bit more about what people really need to know to understand how big a problem is -- TMJ and sleep apnea in north America.
Dr. Brock Rondeau: In North America, 90 million suffer from --
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