Understanding Sleep Apnea: Causes, Risks, and Solutions

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (0:05 – 0:47)

Welcome back to Save Your Money, Save Your Teeth, the go-to podcast where curiosity meets dentistry straight from the experts. I’m Eon and I’m joined again by Dr Clifford Yudelman from OptiSmile and he is going to help us dive into the world of dental care from a consumer’s perspective. So if you’re looking to brighten your smile or you want to protect your wallet or even both, we’ve got you covered with practical advice and the latest insights.

So do stick around, and let’s uncover the secrets to maintaining your dental health and finances. This week, we have a brand new topic. Isn’t that so, Dr. Yudelman?

Welcome back.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (0:47 – 1:33)

Yes, thanks for having me back. And the topic this week is snoring versus sleep apnea. What’s keeping you and others awake?

And this is number one in a series of three podcasts. If you don’t snore or you don’t have a partner that snores, well then, I’m sorry, tune in in a month’s time when we’re done with the snoring ones. But I think everybody knows somebody who snores.

But when you ask people, do you snore? They always deny it. They say, oh, my wife complains about it or vice versa.

But I don’t snore, but my wife does complain. That’s the usual answer.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (1:33 – 1:45)

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s so embarrassing for people to just own up and say, yes, I snore.

Usually they deny it. I don’t know why. I actually do the same.

Why do we do that?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (1:45 – 2:03)

Why are we ashamed of snoring? I only snore when I drink. And then I say, well, how often do you drink?

And they say, every night. That’s the best one. Well, I only snore when I drink red wine.

And I say, well, what’s your favourite drink? Do you drink whisky or white wine? They say, no, I drink red wine.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (2:04 – 2:20)

Yeah. Yeah, so it’s a general thing. You know, a lot of people snore, not just the guys, the ladies.

Some ladies can really, you know, as they say in Afrikaans, ja, saagbalken. But what do you…

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (2:22 – 3:12)

I know that snoring in Afrikaans is snork. And also a snore is a moustache. So I think we should pay homage to Movember, which is around the corner and prostate cancer, you’re growing a moustache.

I once tried to grow a moustache to get off the subject. We’re still talking about a snore, which is Afrikaans, as I said, for a moustache. And I grew this moustache.

And I said to somebody, do you like my moustache? They said, oh, that’s an Apache moustache. I was living in America at the time.

And I said, what do you mean an Apache moustache? Thinking it was some kind of special, you know, Indian, cowboy and Indian, that I was an Apache. And they said, yeah, you got Apache here and Apache there.

So I’ve never grown a moustache.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (3:12 – 3:25)

Oh, my word, Apache here and Apache there, that’s funny. So just for those who don’t know, I’m sure they do. What exactly is snoring and how common is it?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (3:25 – 4:26)

So snoring is a sound that’s produced by the vibrations of tissues in your throat during sleep. And it’s almost always caused by a partial airway obstruction. We’ll get into that in a lot of detail in today and the next few podcasts.

But basically, like if you watering the garden with the hose and you kink the hose, you know, the water doesn’t come out as much, but it’s still coming out. That’s a partial obstruction. And it’s very, very common.

About 45% of adults snore occasionally and 25% are habitual snorers. And it’s usually harmless, but it can be a sign of more serious issue. And the issue we’re talking about here is sleep apnea.

So I’m really looking forward to discussing this in more detail.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (4:27 – 4:32)

So what is sleep apnea and how is it different from snoring, doctor?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (4:33 – 5:08)

So sleep apnea is a condition where breathing stops intermittently during sleep. And this can lead to very serious health risks. The key difference is unlike snoring, sleep apnea involves like repeated pauses in breathing and people with sleep apnea may gasp for air or choke during their sleep.

There are three types of sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnea, central sleep apnea and complex sleep apnea, which is a combination.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (5:09 – 5:16)

What are the different types of sleep apnea, doctor? What do you get? You got obstructive, central, complex?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (5:17 – 7:05)

Yeah. So obstructive sleep apnea is the most common and it occurs when your throat muscles relax and your tongue falls into the back of your throat and your airway gets blocked. And then when you try and breathe in, it’s like when a vacuum patches onto a curtain and then it sucks it in, the whole vacuum hose might collapse.

Or if you’re watering the garden and there’s water coming out and then you’ve got a twist or a knot in the hose and it just cuts off completely. Once it kinks, it goes to zero. That means there’s zero oxygen coming in when your tongue is in the back of your throat and you’re breathing against this obstruction.

That’s the most common type and that’s the main one that we’re going to be talking about. The other one is central sleep apnea. That’s when the brain fails to send proper signal to muscle that control breathing.

And then complex is a combination of both obstructive sleep apnea which is known as OSA and complex or central sleep apnea, which is CSA. A lot of times when patients have had obstructive sleep apnea for many, many years, the body just gets used to and the brain gets used to the fact that the body’s not getting oxygen and the oxygen is going all the way down to 80% sometimes for two minutes or three minutes. And it doesn’t even bother to send a signal to breathe and that’s when it starts getting very dangerous.

The best time to sort it out is if you’ve got a mixture of like snoring and you’re starting to get into this obstructive sleep apnea. I mean snoring may sound funny and people joke about it, but it can actually be a very sign of a much more serious problem.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (7:06 – 7:22)

I’ve heard some interesting snores before, you know, where there’s a very long pause and then all of a sudden you hear and then it’s like and then they gasp for air like that and that is extremely scary. I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed that before.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (7:23 – 7:27)

That’s actually sleep apnea what you’re talking about.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (7:27 – 7:28)

Very scary.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (7:28 – 8:49)

People stop breathing. So what happens is normally you’ve got snoring, snoring, snoring. I won’t imitate it.

I do it for my patients. And then you get more like a choking and a little bit of a coughing and then a deep gasp. So if somebody’s snoring fairly quietly and then they just like you don’t hear anything and then there’s a little snort and then they take a deep breath, that could be a central apnea.

So while we’re on that actually, I recommend an app called SnoreLab, . You’ll know you’re on the right one on your App Store or your Apple Store. It’s a blue logo with a chemistry looking like a beaker, like a little triangular shaped glass vessel that’s used in a lab.

It’s called SnoreLab and I would recommend the paid version. You can either use it to record your wife or your husband or yourself and I think it’s a very good way to see if you have those periods where you stop breathing. The reason why I say you should get the paid one is you can listen to clips from throughout the night.

When you get the free one, I think it only lets you play certain amounts and you can’t actually go back and listen when you were making a noise or if for some reason you were very quiet, maybe you were actually not breathing. So that’s even scarier.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (8:50 – 9:07)

Wow, that’s so scary. And what’s really scary is you can’t control it. I mean, we all have to sleep, but we can’t control when we stop breathing like that.

There’s no way of actually avoiding that. But I mean, what is the cause behind all of this, Doctor?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (9:07 – 10:49)

So we actually will be talking about how you can avoid it. Sleeping on your side is one thing, losing weight, not drinking, those types of things. We’ll be getting into that, I think in episode number three.

So you say what causes snoring and sleep apnea? So snoring can be caused by a variety of factors like your age. So the older you are generally, the more chance there is of snoring.

Your weight is very important. If you’re BMI, basically if you’re overweight or you’re fat, your tongue puts on a lot of weight. Just losing even five or 10 kgs makes your tongue go much smaller and less likely to get caught in the back of your throat.

Nasal congestion can cause temporary snoring. If you’ve got continuous nasal congestion, you should listen to a book called The Breathing Cure or Oxygen Advantage. I’m listening to it for the second time.

There’s ways to decongest your nose just by breath holds and doing certain things without medication. But sleeping on your side can really help. Most people snore much less when they’re on their side as opposed to on their back.

And drinking is a big one. Drinking definitely causes many or most people to snore. Other things is people who have just a naturally large neck diameter, I think over size 42.

And people with a short neck, like a lot of rugby players, I’d hate to be in a go camping with a whole lot of rugby players. I think most of them must snore.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (10:49 – 10:54)

Yeah, those big necks, big short necks.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (10:55 – 11:21)

Yeah. And sleep apnea is caused pretty much – I consider sleep apnea and snoring pretty much the same thing. The person who has sleep apnea is just more of a pro.

Yes. What a way to put it, yeah. It’s like professional snoring, yeah.

It’s a professional snoring, yeah. When you get really good, yeah, they perfected it, yeah.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (11:21 – 11:30)

But obviously, doctor, this affects your overall health because you stop breathing. I mean, is it bad? Let’s say, example, is it bad for your heart?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (11:31 – 13:07)

Oh, yeah. The heart is the worst one. You’ve got a very high, much higher risk of heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

Without getting too into it, if somebody is concerned, if you just Google sleep apnea, which is spelt A-P-N-E-A, and then you put in heart disease, stroke, blood pressure, diabetes, these things, you’ll see very, very, very strong and decisive links. Hundreds and hundreds of medical journals have shown without a doubt that these things are very, very dangerous, and they’re directly caused by sleep apnea. Another way that sleep apnea can be dangerous or affect your overall health is you get excessive daytime sleepiness.

There is something called an Epworth sleepiness scale. It’s a whole lot of questions that you can fill in, and you can give yourself a score. You can see if you think you’re generally a tired person, and that’s spelt E-P-W-O-R-T-H, Epworth.

It’s online. You can just ask questions like, do you fall asleep if you’re a passenger in a car? Or have you ever fallen asleep while driving when you’re sitting at a traffic light, which is quite a few attitudes and a person jumps up.

I’m not talking about someone texting on their phone. So, I mean, that’s very dangerous. People fall asleep at the wheel.

Pilots, airline pilots have to have a sleep study, I think, every year to make sure that they don’t have sleep apnea.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (13:07 – 13:09)

Flip, I would hope not.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (13:10 – 13:18)

Yeah, yeah, and truck drivers as well, because, you know, a truck driver falling asleep at the wheel can injure a lot of people.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (13:18 – 13:37)

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so massive effect on your health, definitely. What signs should people look out for to identify sleep apnea at home?

Maybe they suspect that their husband or wife or partner is suffering from this without knowing.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (13:38 – 15:27)

Yeah, so I think the app, the SnoreLab app is really good, because then in the morning, you can play that back to your partner and show them, yeah, over here, this is when you were choking and coughing, and then this is when you were gasping for air. And when they hear, it’s not sounding like a chainsaw or an aeroplane. You can have minimal apnea and very loud snoring, like a vuvuzela, you know, and be perfectly healthy.

And we’ll talk about something when you get a sleep study, how we actually rank those as mild, moderate or severe. But yeah, loud snoring, if you snore very loud, there’s a good chance you have sleep apnea, as opposed to just purring, you know, there’s a little bit of vibration in your throat when the air is going in and out. Gasping for air during sleep, like you mentioned.

Morning headaches, if you wake up with a headache every morning, that’s a good sign that you’ve got sleep apnea. If you have a dry mouth, so generally snoring is caused by mouth breathing. So that’s the interesting thing in the books that I’ve been listening to, is there’s something called mouth taping.

I don’t want to get into it too much here, because I think it needs to be done with supervision. There’s something called myotape, where you still can open your mouth, but it fits around your lips. And that then forces you to breathe through your nose.

But if you do need to have a sip of water or speak or breathe through your mouth, you can still open your mouth. But yeah, if your partner observes pauses in your breathing during your sleep, then that’s a very strong indicator that you have sleep apnea.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (15:28 – 15:36)

And if it’s untreated, it will definitely impact your daily life and also your long-term health. I mean, that’s a given, isn’t it, doctor?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (15:37 – 18:13)

Yeah. So I would say the number one reason why we see people come to see us is usually the partner, the sleeping partner has put their foot down because it disturbs relationships. And the person, either the husband or the wife, we do see quite a lot of females as well as males.

And a lot of the time it’s like whoever the offender is has to sleep on the couch. So sometimes it might be the wife, something I’ve become more aware of recently is that actually there’s a big increase in snoring and apnea when women reach menopause, when there’s a change in the hormones. And I haven’t really looked into the exact causes.

A lot of time people put on weight when their hormones change. And I’m not one to give you none of the advice that I give here. Everyone should always check with their doctor, but there’s a real reticence in South Africa for doctors to prescribe hormone replacement therapy because of a flawed study back in the 80s.

And if a woman’s going into menopause, they really should get a number of opinions and find out more about hormone replacement because not only can it prevent you from getting sleep apnea and putting on weight, but it can also up your bone density. So rather than having to go on bone density treatment, which is quite radical, I know that’s a little bit off subject, but I think it is important. So basically disturbed relationships, back to the subject, sleeping on the couch, you can get quite lonely, sleep deprivation, especially for the partner, but also the snoring.

So if you’re snoring or have apnea, you’re really not getting sleep. In males, it messes up your testosterone. You make testosterone when you get into deep sleep.

And if you’re snoring, not snoring, if you have sleep apnea, then you’re not making enough for any testosterone. And it just causes this metabolic syndrome, which is where you get that tyre around your belly and you start getting pre-diabetic and your blood pressure goes up. That’s all caused by a lack of testosterone.

And untreated sleep apnea can lead to serious complications, like I mentioned, like heart issues, memory problems, chronic fatigue, and all of this impacts your work performance and your personal safety, especially if you’re flying an aeroplane.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (18:14 – 18:22)

Definitely. So doctor, how is sleep apnea actually diagnosed? And also, can you tell us a bit more about a sleep study?

What exactly is it?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (18:23 – 21:54)

So sleep study, the full medical term is polysomnography. So somnography, polysomno, it means sleep. And graphy, I guess, is to measure like they call a lie detector, but it sounds similar to polysomnography.

Polygraph. But poly means a polygraph. Yeah, yeah.

So poly means many. So basically, breathing patterns, oxygen levels are monitored. So there’s two main types of sleep studies.

But unless somebody has some other type of sleep disorder, if the main thing is snoring, then a home sleep study should be sufficient. This is where you have a sleep technologist give you a special device that you take home and you put a pulse oximeter on your finger to measure. I think after COVID, people are familiar with that.

It measures your blood oxygen, and there’s a little tube that measures if you’re snoring, if there’s airflow, and it’s just the size of a little iPhone 4, and it straps on your chest over, got like a little elastic. It’s like a heart rate monitor, and you just wear it at night. And then in the morning, you turn it off and you put it back in the bag and you drop it off.

The home sleep studies are very common and inexpensive. Unfortunately, medical aid, they used to pay for it. They don’t anymore.

And they’re about two and a half thousand rand. I would be careful who I get a home sleep study with. I would recommend that you have it done through a proper certified sleep clinic.

And all around the world, the sleep clinic or sleep, it needs a doctor that specialises in sleep medicine and then a sleep technologist, and a person that sells a CPAP machine, which is a machine to treat snoring and sleep apnea, or a dentist that supplies a mandibular advancement device, which is what we’ll be talking about, would not be the one doing the sleep study. It needs to be a separate person, which keeps it legit and honest. And the interpretation is done without any kind of financial benefit or interest, but it’s not a sales job.

So the home sleep study doesn’t measure as many things. If you’ve got things like a restless leg syndrome, or you have trouble falling asleep, insomnia, or you’ve got severe heart disease or other medical issues, you might have to go into a hospital and they stick electrodes on your scalp and all over you. If you’ve ever had an ECG, that’s about four or five wires.

If you Google polysomnography or hospital sleep study, there must be about 30 or 40 wires all over on your jaw, on your eyes, everywhere. And you get a harness that everything attaches to, literally hundreds and hundreds of wires. Well, not hundreds, but dozens.

I’m not exaggerating. I’ve had several sleep studies when I was in Australia, hospital sleep studies, and I suffer from sleep apnea myself, which is why I got interested in this. So I personally sleep with a CPAP machine, but my sleep apnea is moderate.

So I could use a mandibular advancement splint or device, which we’ll talk about. But I think we’ll just keep podcasts to our usual length and wait for number two and three to speak about that.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (21:54 – 22:01)

Okay. And then wearables like, let’s say the Apple Watch, can they also help us in tracking sleep disorders like sleep apnea?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (22:02 – 25:25)

Yeah. So interestingly, I’m not an Apple person. I’m a Samsung person.

Me too. I’ve got a Samsung watch and I love my Samsung watch. And I have used my Samsung watch to monitor my heart rate and my blood oxygen and so on.

And just recently, I’ve been taking a deep dive on something called heart rate variability, which I hadn’t really known much about. But now that I’m on this thing about breathing, it’s all connected. And I bought myself a very fancy Polo heart rate chest strap.

And I was walking on the promenade. My heart rate said I was walking in zone two. My heart rate was 110 and I felt amazing.

And I’ve been doing that for about a year based on my watch. And I put this chest strap on and my heart rate was actually only 85. And I tried, I hate running.

I started running after some joggers for a hundred metres. And on the chest strap, my heart rate went up to 110. And within a few minutes, a minute or so, it was back down at 85.

And the Samsung one didn’t budge. And I’m really suspicious now. The apples are supposed to be better.

I’m sorry to say, I’m not a fan, but I’m sure a lot of people listening are apple. They love the apples, but it’s not a diagnostic tool and it doesn’t stand in place of being a sleep specialist and getting a proper diagnosis. You really do need to get it looked after properly.

And yeah, in Cape Town, all over South Africa, we use an organisation called Faree and Associates, spelled F-O-U-R-I-E, for people that don’t know the Afrikaans name, Faree. And they have a place in Milneton. I think they’ve got a couple in Cape Town.

They also do hospital sleep studies for people with heart problems and so on. And they’re up in Joburg. They’re all over and I highly recommend them.

There are other places. I’m just a bit dubious. There are throat surgeons and people that will happily operate on you.

And just like I call BS on dentists. I hope none of the surgeons get upset with me, but snoring and sleep apnea, your last resort, if ever, is any kind of surgery. If you don’t listen to any of my further podcasts, that should be a take home from today is don’t go and get, while there might be some benefit for your septum straightened or getting nasal polyps removed so you can breathe through your nose.

You do not want to go and get your uvula cut or your palate operated on. And so if you go to a surgeon and they do the sleep study themselves, that could ring a long bell. I would be a bit worried.

I just wanted to put that out there. It’s an international protocol that a proper sleep clinic and a sleep doctor could do the sleep study, not the person recommending surgery or medication.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (25:26 – 25:37)

And then just finally, doctor, why should people seek medical advice if they suspect sleep apnea rather than just self-treating or using devices?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (25:37 – 27:23)

So I think just if you think about the things that we’ve already answered today, I think self-treatment with over-the-counter devices, they may reduce snoring, but they won’t address the underlying issue of sleep apnea as present. And like we said, untreated sleep apnea and I can say outright will definitely lead to serious health risks. It doesn’t get better on its own unless you’re very overweight and you go and you lose 20 kgs.

I actually did that a couple of years ago. I’ve unfortunately put it back on again. Actually, when I did lose the weight, I went from 90 kg down to 74 kg.

I didn’t need to use my CPAP. I didn’t snore and so on. My cholesterol went perfect.

Everything, my BP went perfect. But it’s very hard as anyone who’s lost weight. It’s very hard to keep that up.

And unfortunately, I lost the weight too quickly. I lost probably a lot of muscle mass. So I don’t recommend that for anybody.

Banting is great. I did banting and fasting, but since then, I’ve listened to a lot of books and podcasts. That was about two and a half years ago.

We always get interested in things that affect us. It’s only when you get prostate cancer or a friend has some kind of issue that you start learning or reading up about it. And sleep apnea is a killer.

I think a lot of strokes and heart attacks that happen at night, these are all caused by sleep apnea or at least it’s a big, big contributor.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (27:24 – 27:33)

So those stories where you hear somebody just passed away in their sleep, that could most probably be because of sleep apnea. They just won’t mention it.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (27:34 – 28:06)

Yeah, because people don’t even put the two together. And I see so many people that are seeing heart specialists here in Cape Town and getting all kinds of fancy, I’ve had them myself, calcium scores and x-rays of your heart and they do treadmill tests. And then I say to them, does your wife complain of snoring?

And they say, yeah, I even stopped breathing in my sleep and I grind my teeth. And I say, did you tell the cardiologist? And they say, oh no, the cardiologist didn’t ask me.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (28:06 – 28:29)

Oh my word. That’s very- I’m raising my voice. I’m very upset.

Yeah, no, that’s hectic. But that’s such an important thing to mention to your cardiologist. But yeah, it really sheds light also on this matter of people just passing on in their sleep and you always wonder why?

Why in their sleep?

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (28:31 – 30:27)

There’s a name. It’s called, there’s a name. Yeah, I’m sorry to interrupt.

It’s called nocturnal sudden death. That’s what it’s called. And there’s other things that people don’t, like you think when you get older as a male and you have to keep going to the bathroom, people think, oh, it’s an enlarged prostate.

But actually when your blood oxygen starts dropping, your balance in your blood, your uric acid goes up and you make more uric acid. And then you get what’s called nocturia, which means you got to get up two or three times at night to go and have a pee. And that’s because of the snoring and the apnea.

It’s got nothing to do with your prostate or anything else. There’s many other sort of those are more like annoyances, but that affects your sleep as well. I think if you ask a lot of 60, I mean, I’m 64 years old.

If you ask a lot of 60 or 70 year olds, when’s the last time you went to bed at 10 o’clock and woke up at six o’clock? When’s the last time you had eight hours sleep? I think getting up once in the middle of the night for a pee might be normal at any age, but I watched a podcast.

I mean, I listened to a podcast a few months ago about that, how to sleep through the night without having to get up to go to the bathroom. I know we’re a little bit off subject here, but it was a very, very interesting podcast. I listened to a guy called Peter Akia and I think that’s why I got stimulated to do the Save Your Money, Save Your Teeth podcast because of him.

And his podcasts are called The Drive, like I think you’re supposed to listen to it to or from work if you’ve got a long commute. And he’s done a book called Outlive. And I think the bottom line of that other one was, don’t drink so much water around dinner time and after dinner, and you won’t have to get up and go and pee so many times.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (30:27 – 30:28)

Yeah.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (30:30 – 30:56)

Yeah. And especially then you wake up, say it’s your partner that’s snoring and you wake up because you need to go to the bathroom. Once you sleep, you don’t mind the person making noise, but once you’ve woken up, it’s very hard to get back to sleep when the other person’s snoring.

And then when I ask people, do you snore? And they say, well, I don’t know, I’m asleep. And I say, well, do you wake up with bruised ribs and getting an elbow?

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (30:56 – 31:12)

Yeah, exactly. Then you’ll know you’re a snorer. But yeah, thank you so much, Doc.

This has been very, very insightful. Definitely one of my favourite podcasts that we’ve done. And we thank you once again for sharing everything with us.

[Dr Clifford Yudelman – OptiSmile] (31:12 – 31:49)

Yeah, thank you so much. And in case I got your interest today, podcast number two in this series is, so next week we’re going to do dental solutions for snoring and sleep apnea, more than just a good night’s sleep. And we’ll discuss all about why is a dentist talking about this subject?

And then podcast number three will be living with sleep apnea, long-term management and the path to better sleep, or if you’re American, the path to better sleep.

[Eon Engelbrecht E-Radio] (31:49 – 32:27)

The path, yeah. Thanks, Doc. Looking forward to it.

And yeah, we’ll catch you again next week. Also to our listeners, remember, we strive to provide valuable insights with the podcast, but always consult with your own professionals for advice tailored to your health, your personal health. And then don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for more enlightening discussions.

And do join us again next week. Some more awesome topics coming up as we continue to explore the fascinating intersection of dental health and financial savvy. Until then, keep smiling and taking great care of your teeth.

[Speaker 3] (32:47 – 33:32)

Discover the world of dental excellence with OptiSmile. Join us for a weekly podcast featuring Dr Clifford Yudelman, a seasoned expert with 40 years of dental experience across four continents. Game unique insights and expert dental advice by visiting OptiSmile.co.za for articles that illuminate the path to optimal oral health. If you’re seeking unparalleled dental care in Cape Town, get in touch with OptiSmile or book directly online on OptiSmile.co.za. OptiSmile, where global expertise meets local care.