Healthcare Practitioners

Information for Healthcare Professionals

Benefits of the SleepGuard biofeedback headband:

• Early diagnosis & treatment of pre-onset TMD, prevents patients from developing TMD
• Better outcomes with all your TMJ patients
• Drastically reduced nighttime clenching
• Quantitative measurement of nighttime clenching (number of clenches, and total damaging clenching time)
• Reduce or eliminate TMJ-related muscle spasms, trigger points, and referred pain
• Reduce or eliminate migraines
• Reduce or eliminate cracked teeth and need for root canals
• In silent mode, enables quantitative comparison of efficacy of other treatments
• Aid in recapture of displaced articular disc by reducing nightly displacement
• Reduce habitual clenching activity that blocks REM sleep
• Reduce damage to crowns and implants
• Reduce or eliminate ongoing nightly damage to the temporomandibular joint and the articular disc

Below we summarize key information for healthcare professionals regarding nighttime biofeedback and the SleepGuard biofeedback headband, including:

• Enables new profit center for practice by offering detection and elimination of pre-TMD conditions
• Key differences between nighttime biofeedback and daytime biofeedback (both the method and purpose are quite different)
• Circumstance-caused vs. habitual nighttime clenching
• Characteristics of habitual nighttime clenching
• Therapeutic benefits of nighttime biofeedback for patients who are able to be responsive in sleep, and how these benefits can benefit TMJ treatment outcomes
• Key factors that influence whether a patient will be responsive in sleep
• Benefits by efficacy quartile in a 92-person study
• How nighttime clenching enables migraines in migraine-sensitive brains, and how reducing clenching reduces or eliminates migraines in the majority of migraine sufferers who clench
• Key role healthcare practitioners can play to enable patients to receive the most benefit from nighttime biofeedback
• How to try EMG nighttime biofeedback risk-free
• Using a single SleepGuard biofeedback headband with multiple patients
• Wholesale purchases and affiliate program

New profit center for practice by offering detection and elimination of pre-TMD conditions

A typical 1800-patient dental practice can increase yearly revenues by $100k and increase yearly profit by $50k by screening patients with our proprietary questionnaire, subsequently engaging likely pre-TMD patients in a 3-day at-home in-sleep diagnostic, evaluating results with our proprietary software, and following up with appropriate recommended treatment.

Non-dental practices (for instance chiropractic, physical therapy, naturopathic, and acupuncture practices) can increase profits similarly, with bottom-line numbers scaling with the number of patients.

If equipment is leased from us, no capital investment is required to implement this additional service/profit center. Call us for details.

Key differences between nighttime biofeedback and daytime biofeedback

As a healthcare professional, you probably know that EMG biofeedback (usually done in office visits by a biofeedback professional) can help an individual reach a more calm state, with a lower resting level of muscle activity. This reduces the amount of mastication muscle activity that an individual has going on in the background during daily activities. Nighttime EMG biofeedback addresses something quite different.

The purpose of nighttime EMG biofeedback is to modify habitual clenching each time it starts to happen. The SleepGuard biofeedback headband is specifically designed to enable an individual to reduce or eliminate habitual nighttime teeth clenching.

Circumstance-driven nighttime teeth clenching vs. habitual clenching

Some nighttime clenching is circumstance-driven (such as a neurological response to a drug, or the body’s response to a recent or present physical or mental trauma, or a food allergy or sensitivity). However, if nighttime clenching has been present for months or years, it is likely to have become habitual.

Characteristics of habitual nighttime teeth clenching

• Can be thought of as an addiction to a sensation that part of the subconscious mind has learned to find soothing (similar to thumb-sucking, nail biting or pencil-biting)
• Continues regardless of whether the original cause is removed
• Clenches typically last 3 to 5 seconds each, with tissue damage accumulating after approximately the first two seconds of each clench
• TMJ disorder sufferers typically have between 20 seconds and 300 seconds of damaging habitual clenching (the part after the first two seconds per clench) each night

Therapeutic benefits of nighttime EMG biofeedback

Tissue damage reduction: reducing nighttime clenching through nighttime biofeedback enables reduction or elimination of nightly ongoing damage to tissue of the articular disc, retrodiscal tissue, cementin tissue, and tooth root tissue.

Myofascial relief: reducing nighttime clenching directly reduces stress and spasms in the masseter muscles, temporalis muscles, and the medial pterygoid muscles. Reducing nighttime clenching also often indirectly reduces spasms in the lateral pterygoid muscles and many neck and back muscles.

When habitual nighttime clenching is reduced or eliminated, outcomes from many therapies (splint therapy, physical therapy for posture & tongue, trigger point therapy for muscles, chiropractic therapies, etc.) are improved.

Key factors influencing responsiveness to nighttime EMG biofeedback

• Depth of sleep
  
  
  • Very light sleepers are likely to have their sleep disturbed and thus may not be good candidates for nighttime EMG biofeedback
  • Very deep sleepers may require an earphone (available as a custom modification) to provide a louder signal
• Level of mental alignment with the process
  
  
  • Relating to the biofeedback as teamwork and a loving reminder, increases responsiveness and efficacy
  • Relating to the biofeedback as aversive therapy, decreases responsiveness and efficacy
• Conditioning: wakeful practice to build an instinctive subconscious response increases responsiveness and efficacy.

Typical efficacy, grouped by efficacy quartiles (25% of patients per quartile)

How nighttime clenching enables migraines in migraine-sensitive brains

In 2007 in an MRI brain scan study at Massachusetts General Hospital, Alex DaSilva, DDS, and Nouchine Hadjikhani, MD compared brain scans of chronic migraine sufferers and a control group, and found that in the region of the somatosensory cortex responsible for processing sensory nerve signals from the face and teeth, chronic migraine sufferers had notably different brain structure.

It appears that a migraine-sensitive brain, signals streaming into this region of the brain at night from habitual nighttime clenching can set up a trigger condition that allows a migraine to be triggered any time in the following day or so. The clenching usually does not trigger the migraine, but rather enables the migraine wave to propagate through the brain later when a trigger condition (such as a rapid change in photon flux to the eyes) happens.

Reducing or eliminating nighttime clenching allows migraine-sensitive brains to regain more balance and stability during sleep, and thus to be less subject to migraines being triggered.

Key role healthcare practitioners play in enabling patients to benefit from EMG nighttime biofeedback

Individuals who have suffered from TMJ disorder and/or migraines from nighttime clenching for a long time have often become identified with their suffering, and may be jaded about trying new things that might help. Many people have already spent a great deal of money and had their hopes dashed numerous times. Many have come to believe they don't deserve to get better. Many don't imagine what life would be like without their pain.

These people need someone who cares, who will partner with them as they take simple steps that may drastically improve their lives, and one of the best possible partners is a well informed healthcare practitioner they already trust.

How to try EMG nighttime biofeedback risk-free

We are confident that you will find the SleepGuard biofeedback headband beneficial to your practice and to your patients, so we offer to let you try it risk-free. The risk-free offer for practitioners is the same as for TMJ disorder and migraine sufferers. You may use it as much as you want for 30 days, and if you are not completely satisfied, you can return it for a full refund of your purchase price (shipping excluded). That's plenty of time to discover how useful it can be in both quantitative measurement, and treatment.

Wholesale purchases and affiliate program

Once you have proven to yourself how valuable the SleepGuard biofeedback headband can be for your practice and for your patients, there are three ways you can make units available to your patients, and two of these ways directly financially benefit your practice.

• Patients may be sent to this website to try the SleepGuard biofeedback headband risk-free
• You can become an affiliate and earn a referral fee for each unit sold to a patient you refer
• You can purchase units wholesale and sell them through your practice

Using a single SleepGuard biofeedback headband with multiple patients

If you buy a few extra fabric headbands, it is easy to use the SleepGuard biofeedback headband with multiple patients. It takes less than one minute to swap the electronic module from one fabric headband to another, and alcohol-wipe the module and sensor pads.

Free Support

Becoming an expert at something new always brings a learning curve. We are here to support you at no charge. Please call (781)643-1242 if you have any questions.