Eight Months Vivos mRNA Appliance Update

I’ve been wearing my Vivos mRNA Appliance for eight months now. The CPAP pressure trend continued to decline very gradually this month, suggesting that expansion is slowly improving my airway. I feel less sleepy during the day, particularly in the afternoons, but this is still probably mostly due to adapting to CPAP therapy at this point.

I have expanded the upper appliance a total of 8.8 mm sideways and 7.8 mm forwards, and the lower appliance 7.5 mm sideways. The reason for the difference is that I’ve had to stop in the past due to impingements, but I haven’t had any problems with that this month. I stopped dancing the lower appliance at 6.5 mm when I felt my jaw muscles getting tense.

My health continues to improve gradually but this is a glacially slow process. I still don’t do any cardio exercise but I rarely find myself hampered by daytime sleepiness now and I have only mild flu-like symptoms and a slight tension headache. I’m still not sleeping with the facemask but wear it during the day whenever I can.

My compliance continues to be excellent, averaging 16.4 hours/day in approximately 1-2 hour cycles, thanks to my usage tracking spreadsheet. When I don’t have the appliance in my mouth, I’m always either talking, singing, eating, doing Myofunctional therapy exercises or chewing mastic gum.

The CPAP pressure trend continues to show a very slight and gradual overall downward trend this month, suggesting that the expansion is improving my airway so the CPAP machine has to work less hard to stent it open:

It’s going to take a while to get over the hump though since the pressure was increasing each month for the first six months of mRNA Appliance treatment, presumably before the airway impact of expansion started to kick in:

There was a slight increase in central events this month, but not as big as last month’s reduction. My AHI has been below 5 pretty consistently, particularly in the last 2 weeks, mostly due to a reduction in Central events over the previous 7 months:

Overall, my AHI using the combination of CPAP and mRNA Appliance has reduced significantly over the last 8 months, largely due to the reduction in central events which I attribute to reduced emotional stress and acclimation to CPAP therapy:

I get the impression from posts in the Adult Non-surgical Palate Expansion Facebook group and Vivos Therapeutics Support Facebook group that most patients using a Vivos DNA Appliance have only mild or moderate sleep apnea and see improvements more rapidly, although I’ve also heard of cases where they started getting results around 12 months into the process. My suggestion to anyone else considering using an mRNA Appliance is to make appliance usage a top priority, but balance this with other compelling activities that make life worthwhile in the meantime, so you can stick with it in the long haul.