Tongue Retention Devices and What They Do

One of the main side effects of snoring is sleep loss. Affecting you, the snorer, and your partner, too many nights of interrupted sleep can have detrimental side effects that do more than just make you sleepy all day. When you have a good night’s sleep, your body has time to rest and repair itself from the daily effects of living and from more serious conditions like an illness. Missing out on that quality sleep can affect your health, motor control, and memory. It can magnify emotions like stress, anxiety, anger, or depression. It can also increase your chance of getting into a car accident since you’ll be less alert. With so many potential side effects to not getting a good night’s sleep, it’s important to rid your bedroom of any nighttime distractions, including snoring. The right stop-snoring device can help you kick snoring out of bed, allowing you to get the quality sleep your body needs to properly function from day-to-day.

A tongue retention device (TRD) is a small piece of plastic that resembles a pacifier. This stop-snoring device holds your tongue forward which helps minimize snoring by keeping your airway clear while you sleep. The device creates suction to hold your tongue safely and comfortably in place. Not only just for snoring, but some TRDs can also help treat mild-to-moderate sleep apnea as well. It’s can also be a good device for people with larger tongues, since that condition can increase your potential for snoring. User-friendly and comfortable to wear, these devices require very little preparation, but it's recommended that they initially are fitted professionally to ensure proper use. Either a doctor or a dentist can assist you. While suited for most people, TRDs can only be used by individuals able to extend their tongue past their teeth. Lacking this ability can prevent you from securing the mouthpiece into place.

After establishing the proper fit, a good rule of thumb is to run your TRD under hot water before using it each night. Doing this softens the plastic of the device, making it more flexible as you put it into place. This also improves the suction and enables a more secure fit throughout the night. Each morning, proper cleaning should be done to prevent infection and minimize device odor. Rinsing with warm water and scrubbing with mild soap can do the trick for daily cleaning, but once a month, a deep cleaning anti-bacterial solution like ZQuiet Clean will keep your TRD free of harmful germs and bacteria. Stay away from using mouthwash on your device, however. The alcohol contained in most mouthwashes can damage the materials of the TRD.

While this anti-snoring device is popular among snorers, there are still a few potential issues a user may experience.

• Fit - if this device simply turns out to not be the right one for you due to a poor fit, you’ll know it because the TRD won’t stay on all night.
• Tongue irritation - some users report a disagreeable sensation on their tongue when using the TRD, most likely because of the pressure around the tongue as it’s held in place. This is a unique issue to this specific mouthpiece.
• Increased salivation - while not necessarily a deal breaker to use a TRD, some people experience an increase in saliva while the device is in, leading to elevated amounts of drool, which can affect sleep as well.
• Swallowing - because of the special design of a TRD, some users experience trouble swallowing comfortably while using this device, leading to an inability to sleep peacefully.

Should you experience these issues, or find that the TRD no longer feels like the right mouthpiece for you to use to stop snoring, there are other options. To learn more about what’s available and check out other types of anti-snoring device, click here.