Erin Elliott, D.D.S., is a dental, sleep, and breathing specialist and in this informative podcast, she shares some of her vast knowledge of the aforementioned, amassed over her extensive career. Dr. Elliott is an ASBA Board Certified Diplomate. The ASBA is the American Sleep and Breathing Academy, a professional academy that promotes excellence in many areas of her specialty such as the various upper airway, breathing, and sleep issues in sleep-related dental medicine. The doctor’s educational path to her current career included graduation from the noted dental school, Creighton University Dental School in Omaha, NE.

Dr. Elliott talks about her background, and how she became motivated to study and work in the field of dentistry and sleep-related dental medicine. After much personal research of her own, she came to the realization many years ago that dentists were actually well-equipped to help patients with their breathing and air flow issues. She became a champion of these breathing-related issues and set out to change the way we think about sleep and breathing conditions, such as sleep apnea. As she describes, her entire team at her dentistry practice is trained to identify signs and symptoms of potential breathing and airway issues.

The sleep and breathing expert talks about constriction of the space that the tongue has and other issues that impact breathing and flow. She talks about the connection between heart and oral health. She details some of the older treatments for snoring that did not actually treat the problem of apnea itself. And she discusses various current sleep/breathing aids such as the many varieties of CPAP machines. CPAP, which stands for ‘continuous positive airway pressure,’ is provided to patients who wear a face mask, while sleeping, which is connected to a pump (the CPAP machine) that forces air into the nasal passages and helps them overcome obstructions in the airway.

Dr. Elliott is a noted speaker and educator on sleep apnea and she has been published in countless dental journals. She is currently a member of the American Dental Association, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, as well as the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine.