Breathing for Better Sleep
Tired of snoring? Frustrated by CPAP? Watching your child struggle with sleep, focus, or behavior? Breathing for Better Sleep is hosted by airway-focused sleep expert Dr. Fred Eck, unpacks the real root cause of sleep problems - and how to solve them naturally, without the mask or surgery.
Breathing for Better Sleep
How to Find the True Cause of Your Sleep Problems and Fix Them
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Welcome back to Breathing for Better Sleep. In this episode, host and sleep expert Dr. Fred Eck about one of the most common questions people have when their sleep feels “off”: how do you actually get evaluated for sleep apnea, and what happens during that process? Together, they break down the role of sleep tests, the differences between home and in-lab testing, and the critical numbers doctors look for when diagnosing sleep disorders.
Dr. Fred Eck explains why so many sleep issues go undiagnosed, how your sleep health connects deeply with conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes, and why understanding the root cause of your sleep issues, not just the symptoms is essential for real, lasting solutions. Expect practical advice on signs it’s time to get evaluated, why partners often notice problems first, and what happens during a sleep study. You’ll also hear about the limitations of certain tests, the importance of airway imaging, and the surprising range of treatment options beyond CPAP masks.
If you’re curious whether your tiredness, snoring, or restless nights deserve a closer look or if you simply want to demystify the world of sleep evaluations, this episode has you covered with down-to-earth answers and actionable next steps.
00:00 "Home Sleep Tests Preferred"
04:42 "Understanding Sleep Test Essentials"
06:53 Sleep Disorders and Medical Connections
12:41 "AHI Scale: Misused Measure"
13:34 "Respiratory Metrics and Disorders"
17:35 "CPAP: One-Option Treatment Issue"
19:53 "CPAP Challenges: Addressing Root Cause"
24:51 Allergy Relief Through Sinus Procedure
28:57 Free Telemedicine Consult Setup
29:31 "Understanding Sleep Apnea Evaluation"
Podcast Website - https://breathingforbettersleep.com/
Dr. Fred Eck - Website - https://sleeptreatmentdirect.com/dr-fred-eck/
Podcast Media Partner: TopHealth - https://www.tophealth.care/
“Disclaimer: Informational only. Not medical advice. Consult your doctor for guidance.”
How do you test for a sleep disorder? You do a sleep test. It's the only way for us to know what is going on. Sleep disorders affect half the population. The sleep test does not tell us the why. The doctors have to evaluate the patient to determine the why. And if you want to figure out a successful treatment, you have to know the why. That evaluation is critical and important.
SPEAKER_00Today we're tackling one of the most common questions people ask once they realize that their sleep might not be normal. Dr. Eck, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_01I am fantastic. How are you?
SPEAKER_00Good. Thank you. It's been a while since we last spoke. And I think during this time that we haven't spoken, I've heard so many people questioning how their sleep affects their health and what they can do about it or how they can get evaluated. So one of the most common questions I've heard is how do I get evaluated for sleep apnea?
SPEAKER_01How you get evaluated is two things. One is a sleep test, right, which is most of the time done at home. Very simple to do. It's the only way you get tested. So what I always tell people is how do you test for high blood pressure? You do a blood pressure test, right? How do you test for diabetes? You do a blood sugar test. How do you test for a sleep disorder? You do a sleep test. It's the only way for us to know what is going on. Now, the critical part is we can't just know what's going on, we have to know the why. And so we'll talk about that a little bit later on the why and why our imaging and our exam process has to get to the bottom of the why. Most people should have a sleep test. Sleep disorders affect half the population. Any other disease that affects that many people would be tested automatically during your physical, right? Think about this. Forty-seven percent of the population has high blood pressure. So what happens every time you get a physical? They test your blood pressure, right? We test every patient, every physical for these things, including diabetes, right? 15% of the population has diabetes. Take away those with the sleep disorder, and that goes way down. Sleep apnea increases your risk of diabetes by 500%. So sleep disorders are the leading cause of both high blood pressure and diabetes, but we never test for the root cause. We wait for you to get diabetes, we wait for you to get high blood pressure, and then we treat it and throw medications at it, but we don't ever get back to testing. Soon as you have high blood pressure, as soon as you have diabetes, your doctor should be testing you for a sleep test. Because it is the number one cause.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so much of that gets missed when we ignore one of the most important elements of health, which is sleep. And I must say, maybe even the most important, even more important than nutrition, I would argue. And we'll hear a lot of people speak about nutrition, but not enough about sleep. So can people do home tests?
SPEAKER_01Most tests today are done at home. Uh they used to be done in labs uh mostly, but we've we've come to learn that that's actually not the best for most people. Only a few conditions, medical conditions, really require an in-lab test. In fact, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine states that the first line of sleep testing should be at home in your normal sleeping environment. Think about it. You go into this lab and you can't sleep how you normally sleep. Well, if you sleep naked, you can't sleep naked in a sleep lab, right? If you're used to sleeping with your particular blanket, pillow, whatever, your TV on, whatever, you can't do that. It's not your normal night's sleep. So you're not getting your normal night's sleep. So it can in some ways be less accurate, right? So some doctors only want an in lab test. And unfortunately, this is for financial reasons, uh, because they simply get paid more to interpret, read tests, and do everything when they're done in lab. Uh, but that's not the real reason to do it. There are certain conditions where it's needed, but very 90 plus percent of sleep tests should be done at home.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that taking you out of your natural sleeping environment could alter the way you sleep that night. Right? It's like if they were gonna test you while you're traveling. And we know that if you're in a different room in different temperatures, we spoke about this in different episodes where all of that actually affect uh your night sleep. So and even if you sleep with a significant other in in an in-lab uh test, you wouldn't be doing that, right? You're not gonna take your your sleep partners. Correct. Speaking about how they measure sleep in a test, there I understand there's certain numbers that uh are looked at to determine whether you have a certain sleep condition or not, right? What are those numbers and what do those numbers mean?
SPEAKER_01So we're gonna have an upcoming episode where we talk about nothing but a sleep test, because it is uh an entire episode on its own, and there's a lot of misinformation and confusion about the sleep test, and there's a lot of information on a sleep test that people focus on when it's not even the most important part of a sleep test. But in short, the numbers on a sleep test that we evaluate uh are the number of apnea events means the definition of an apnea means you stop breathing 100%, no breath in, no breath out, for at least 10 seconds, and your oxygen drops by at least 4%. That's an apnea event. We test for hypopnea events, which the difference between hypopnea and apnea is hypopnea is still got to stop breathing for 10 seconds and have a 4% drop on your oxygen, but it's not a hundred percent cessation of breathing. It's a restriction by at least 30% in your breathing. Uh we check oxygen levels, stages of sleep, snoring, heart rate. Uh we'll talk about a little bit these things a little bit later, but these are the primary things that we test. And not all tests were created equal.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so from what I understand, apnea events are a hundred percent restriction, no air um whatsoever, and hypopnea is still a restriction in airway. Yes. But there's still some air.
SPEAKER_01A little bit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And and what can dentists and physicians see about the airway that sleep tests sometimes miss?
SPEAKER_01Well, the sleep test tells us what's going on. All these numbers we talked about. It does not give us a cause, it does not tell us the why. The doctors have to evaluate the patient to determine the why. And this is what's always missed on a sleep test is the why. It doesn't tell you why. And if you want to figure out a successful treatment, you have to know the why. So that evaluation is critical and important.
SPEAKER_00And Doctor, I a lot of people suspect something is wrong with their sleep, but delay getting tested. What are the most common signs that someone should seriously consider an evaluation?
SPEAKER_01I mean, there's lots of basic stuff that you can look at, uh snoring, tiredness, insomnia, difficulty staying asleep, mouth breathing, and a dry mouth. Let's also look at medical history. As we talked about before, so many medical conditions are related to a sleep disorder. And if you're getting those medical conditions, you should be evaluated for sleep. Rather than take pills for stuff, treat the offending problem. And you may not need to take pills, right? Diabetes, blood pressure, ADHD, depression, frequent urination at night, or bed wetting for kids, teeth grinding, headaches. There's so many things in a medical history you can look at that is caused by a sleep disorder. And if you have any of those things, you should be tested for a sleep disorder.
SPEAKER_00Now, some people say um just to snore, while others feel exhausted all the time. How do you distinguish normal sleep complaints from something that needs investigation?
SPEAKER_01It's like we talked about earlier with the blood pressure and the blood sugar. How do you know? A test. It's the only way. The only way is a sleep test. Snoring and our mouth breathing are first signs of an airway problem. If you snore, it's not if, but when you will have a sleep disorder. So if we want to know if we have it, we have to do a sleep test. That's the only way.
SPEAKER_00And I and I mean, maybe you're sick and you're not sleeping well for like three days, or your sleep is altered because you're traveling, and it it can kind of be like a little season, three days, four days, as a reaction of life changing or adjustment to something that you're going through. But if you're constantly feeling tired, if you're constantly questioning your sleep, then something's wrong, right? If you feel well, if you sleep well, you feel what you feel well, you wouldn't be wondering, oh, do I have this or not? Like if there's a question, then you need to get evaluated, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, if there's ever ever any question, history, uh signs, symptoms, anything, then you you should be tested. It's the only way to know. And it's and the earlier you treat sleep is a progressive disorder. So every year you do a sleep test and you have numbers. If I do your sleep test next year, your numbers are worse. The following year worse, etc., etc. If you don't stop it. So sleep only progresses, only gets harder to treat, only gets more expensive to treat. So the sooner you catch it, the easier it is.
SPEAKER_00And do partners or family members often notice sleep apnea symptoms before the patient does?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's very common. It happens all the time. I'd say a third of our appointments for consults are made by spouses because the spouse doesn't think they have a problem. Sleep apnea and airway resistance patients often feel like they sleep just fine because they're exhausted. They sleep all night. But it's the spouse that notices the snoring, the abnormal breathing, the restless leg, the kicking, the tossing. It's the spouse that notices it first, most of the time.
SPEAKER_00And most people have heard of sleep studies but don't know what actually happens during one during a sleep test. What kinds of things are doctors measuring while someone sleeps? You gave you gave us uh just a simple run through of the hypocrite numbers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's this it's the same numbers. It's no matter whether you do an in-lab or an at-home test, uh what we're measuring is always the same. Uh and as I mentioned, the sleep test gives us some data. Uh and it's important to understand the data and pull the data correctly and not ignore certain very key functions of that, which we'll get to in very much detail when we have our episode on sleep test. Uh, but it's definitely gives us the information we need between the oxygen levels, the stages of sleep, and it's important because not all tests are created equal. Uh, not all tests give us stages of sleep, not all tests give us all the same information, and these things are very, very important. We had episodes where we talked about REM sleep and deep sleep, and if you have a sleep test that's not giving you those stages of sleep, it's missing a lot of information.
SPEAKER_00And Dr. Eck, I know we talked about how doing a home test might be more accurate considering it's measuring your sleep and your regular sleep environment. But are there any other key differences between getting an in-lab sleep test rather than a home test?
SPEAKER_01So there are times when we do an at-home sleep test and we see certain things uh where we want to get an in-lab test to confirm certain things. Uh, because an in-lab test does allow us to do certain things like put uh tabs on to do like an EKG at the same time. Right? So if we have certain neurological problems or suspect other conditions such as heart disease, then you can get all those readings at the same time. Um EKG leads uh in the lab monitor that we don't have at home. Okay, we've got to make the home test as as simple as possible. But outside of those certain medical conditions, we really don't need to. Um many patients just simply, as we discussed, don't sleep well in lab. Uh and the other limitation with in lab is that they're only one night. So one of the advantages is at home is I can give you a test and you can do three nights in a row. So if there's any inconsistencies, or the first night because you got the stuff on you, you don't sleep well, then the second night you get it. So if I see a significant difference between night one and night two, well, night one's just because you got the stuff on you, right? And night two is your normal sleep, or back to your normal sleep. So sometimes you do an in lab and you can kind of get a false positive because you're like, you're not sleeping well, right? Because you're not at home.
SPEAKER_00About the AHI numbers. What does that number really mean and how should patients interpret it?
SPEAKER_01The AHI number, uh, and we're going to talk about this at nauseum at our episode on sleep test. Uh the AHI number is the number that most people pay attention to on a sleep test, and it's one of the least important numbers on a sleep test. Um the AHI essentially takes your apnea events we talked about, your hypotenuse events we talked about, it adds them up, gives us a number, divides it by the amount of time that you slept, and it gives us a number per hour of events, hypotony and apnea events, and that's the AHI scale. Uh that scale was never invented, never created for clinical purposes. It was invented for research purposes, okay, and statistics. But insurance companies caught hold of it and they use it, and that's why it's used to this day. Uh and we'll talk about the next time why it's not very accurate. Because you gotta get on that scale, you gotta stop breathing for at least 10 seconds. What happens when you stop breathing for seven seconds, eight seconds, nine seconds? So ten seconds matters and nine doesn't? So it's not a very good clinical number, and we'll discuss this a lot when we have that when we have that other episode. There is a there is a uh a number called an RDI, which is the respiratory disturbance index, that takes into account RERAs, which we'll talk about more later as well, which have to last a certain amount of time but don't have to alter oxygen by a certain amount. And that's for a lot of people is a more accurate number, especially for people with psychological psychological disorders, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and all that. You can have an AHI of almost zero. But you can have a very I just had this the other day. A person had an AHI of 1.9, which would be quote unquote normal. But the RDI, they had 99 of them or 15 times an hour. And it's what's causing their problems. So we'll go into this um in detail when we have that episode.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So if you just look at the AHI, you can actually be dismissing or not treating someone that actually needs it.
SPEAKER_01Correct, especially correct, especially in people with psychological disorders, behavioral disorders, uh, and in children.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. And from your perspective as a dentist specializing in airway-focused sleep care, are there important things sleep studies are missing?
SPEAKER_01Well, as I mentioned earlier, all those things we want to measure should be on there. There are three levels of sleep tests: level one, level two, level three. Level three is the highest, level three is this as a type of test you should be using. Uh and you should also be using a level three test that tests for everything I mentioned. It should be testing for snoring, it should be testing for stages of sleep. I receive a lot of sleep tests from other people, even though they're level three tests, they don't give me the stages of sleep. Stages of sleep are critical for health and and and symptoms. And if we don't know where we're at and where we're going with deep sleep and rim sleep, as we've talked about before in previous episodes, that's what we need to measure. And a lot of tests don't do that. Uh, so that's that's the things that are missing oftentimes. Here's the other thing that's missing on a lot of tests position. You want a test that says, okay, on my back, on my left side, on my right side, I'm worse on one side or the other. There are people who can literally get off their left side, and their AHI index goes to normal or off their back, etc. So you buy a$200 positional pillow, and your sick disorder is solved. So position's very, very important.
SPEAKER_00Well, it could be that easy and that ignored at the same time. Like that easy to solve, but also it's something that you can go with without knowing.
SPEAKER_01Wherever because people don't actually Yeah, and that's what I when I spoke earlier, it's not just about what's on the test, it's what we miss from the test. There's a lot of people who miss things like that, that it could be as simple as a positional thing.
SPEAKER_00Very interesting. And you often use imaging tools like 3D scans to evaluate the airway. What can those scans reveal that sleep tests alone cannot?
SPEAKER_01Well, it reveals the why. It tells us why we're seeing what we see on the sleep test. And once we know the why, then we know what treatment options will actually work to fix it. It gets to the root cause of the airway problem. It shows us the size of our oropharyngeal airway, our nasal airway, our sinuses, our hyoid bone position, the width of our hard palate, if we have underdeveloped jaws, if we have TMJ issues, uh neck and posture issues, all of these things contribute to sleep. And so it allows us to see what is the root cause of your sleep problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I guess it's also very personalized, right? Two people can have sleep apnea but not have the same root cost for it. Am I right?
SPEAKER_01That is correct. What treatment works for you may not work for somebody else. You know, what the treatment for this person may not be the right person treatment for that person. The problem is we have all these doctors doing CPAPs. And listen, we provide CPAPs when people want it, when it's necessary, uh, especially at the beginning. And we'll have a CPAP episode coming up where we talk about these and when to use them and when we don't like to use them. But if all you're doing is putting a mask on somebody, then the why doesn't matter, right? That's why none of these doctors providing masks worry about worry about the exam. They don't worry about the imaging. Because all they're going to do is give you one option, the mask. And if that's your only option, then the why doesn't matter. They're not taking care of the why. They're literally masking the problem. And a CPAT mask does not stop the progression of the sleep disorder. You wear a CPAT mask, okay, your sleep disorder is still progressing. So your sleep test next year gets worse, your next year gets worse, your next year gets worse. Okay? That's why every couple years you've got to turn the pressure on that mask up for it to keep working. I've got to give you a little spoiler alert for the future episode. Uh CPAS were never invented for long-term use. In fact, they were never invented for a person, they were invented for a bulldog. But they were never intended for long-term use. Because once that pressure on that mask gets above an eight, they can become dangerous for us. And nobody talks about this today.
SPEAKER_00That's so interesting. And like you mentioned, then you're sentencing people to just live with their sleep disorder and not actually get better. And a lot of people you think they are at a lower risk of heart attack or something like that just because they wear their their CPUP, but they're actually not having uh better sleep quality. So they just get used to their like resignated. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01In fact, if your pressure gets high enough, your CPAP actually puts you at higher risk of heart attack and stroke, not decrease your risk.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. So I'm looking forward to that episode because I know um it's gonna open a lot of eyes. Um and Dr. Egg, when you combine sleep data with airway imaging, going back to uh sleep tests, how does that help you understand the root cost of someone's sleep problem?
SPEAKER_01Well, a CPAP only works successfully in approximately a third of patients. Why is this? It's because root cause isn't being addressed. And at some point you gotta turn the pressure on the mask up so high for it to get past these contributing factors that it's intolerable to people. You know, this is 1980s and 90s. Okay, the analogy that I use is if I have a kink and a hose, and I have two options. One is to go and kink the hose, right? And that's what we focus on. Getting the airways opened up, get the hose opened up, right? The other option I have is to leave the kink in the hose and go to the faucet and just turn it up all the way. And just get as much water through the kink as possible. Well, that's what a CPAP mask does. It's not fixing anything. And if you don't fix it and all you do is treat the symptoms, what happens to the underlying problem? It just gets worse. Eventually the hose blows. So the imaging, to answer your question, the imaging lets us find those kinks. It lets us know where the kinks are. What if you got three kinks in the hose and you fix one? Still got a problem, right? So you got to find out all the kinks, all the contributing factors. And if you want to get away from a mask, you have to address the contributing factors. That's how you treat root cause and get away from the mask and just masking the problem.
SPEAKER_00So, how many treatments are there available for people, just so they get a rough idea of how many are. Options beyond the CPA they have.
SPEAKER_01Oh, there are many, many options. There are so many options. Just in appliances alone, there's over 200 of them. There's epigenetics where we use your body's stem cells and and uh to help uh grow bone and and develop the airways. There are laser treatments, there are surgical options, there are dental reconstruction options. Now we'll talk about this when we go over some of this in a future episode. But you know, when I was treated, I was a severe sleep apnea patient. I do not have sleep apnea anymore. I stopped breathing over 400 times. Okay um and I had over 400 apnea events. And my last my last test, I had 10 apnea events and divided by seven hours of sleep, okay, that's about a one an AHI of a 1.1 or something like that, right? Just normal. So but I did mine by doing some dental work to open my bite. I did epigenetics to widen my palate so that non-surgically, non-surgically widen the lower third of my nasal paths. Uh so there's there's lots of options out there. And when we see a patient, we go over all options with them that will work for them, not just the ones that we do. If you choose an option and you want this option, I refer you there. Uh so I I don't just talk about the options we do, I talk about all the options that I believe will work for you. And you either choose one we do or choose something somebody else does. I don't care so long as you get treated. You can't have tired people driving around. You cannot have tired people driving around. It's dangerous. People driving around tired uh and sleepy from sleep disorders, by the way, causes more injuries and accidents than DUIs and drugs combined.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's so dangerous. And nobody is really looking at that. No one's checking that. No one even thinks that it is dangerous, or it is a possibility that someone driving sleepy can actually cause an accident, not only risk their own life, but at the same time risk somebody else's on the road or you know, work at work handling machinery or anything. Um and Dr. Eck, just one question. Um can bad certain bad habits change your physiology? Like not just when you're young, but when you're older, like posture or that you were never a mouth breather, but you start to develop that, and then can your dental structure change in a way that causes you to snore later in life, even when that wasn't happening before?
SPEAKER_01It it can. Most of these epigenetic changes happen earlier in life, and what happens is they just get worse over time, you know, and over time they just they get worse, they get bad enough that they're now creating a problem that we adapted to for a long time. And um I'll give you an example. Uh I've had I had nasal and sinus surgery yesterday. And I've had a very narrow right nasal passage uh for my whole life. But over time, through allergies and everything else, those tissues get more swollen and it gets worse. And what happens is your sinus is drained through your nasal passage, so it's kind of a big snowball effect. One thing begets the other, right? And so now I got to the point I went through all this allergy treatment in the past. I haven't had to have allergy medications in over three years, and now all of a sudden I'm on massive allergy medications again. Well, it's got to the point that that I did uh nasal and sinus procedure yesterday for the purposes of widening the net so my so my allergens that cause fluid to build up into sinuses can now drain properly. Uh and they couldn't before because of the narrowing of the nasal passage. So I did it simply for improving nasal allergies and allergies, so I don't have to take allergy medications. Uh, but that is something that progressed over time, and it just got to the point I said, I'm gonna fix it. I don't want to take medications.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And I'm wondering because I've I felt the shift in my in my teeth. They were straight before, and now they're kind of like you know, changing. Like they're they're it's it's like there's less space and they're getting more crowded, and they're just one on top of the other almost. There's not a huge shift, but they're not straight anymore. And I feel like is that narrowing my palate? Like, you know, sometimes we hear, oh, they're moving because you're getting your wisdom teeth. And is that right? So people should take out their wisdom teeth to get more space. And I'm also hearing that I'm starting to snore. So I just wanted to know if there's a correlation there from your perspective.
SPEAKER_01So what happens is, as I mentioned, sleep is a progressive problem, airway is a progressive problem. And so if that airway problem continues, then you can develop what's called myofunctional problems. We're gonna have a whole episode on myofunctional coming up. And myofunctional is your tongue posture, tongue position, how you're breathing. Okay? Whereas humans, we are designed to breathe a certain way. And if you don't design us to breathe a certain way, and if your tongue does not posture properly, your tongue, we always tell mothers when we're treating kids, their tongue is the best orthodontist you can have. Your tongue helps to develop your jaws, and your tongue applies enough pressure that it can move your teeth. Okay, so you either get a shift like this from myofunction as an adult through myofunctional problems, tongue position and posture. You get this from TMJ problems, okay? And you also get this because of the fact that you've had previous orthodontics, and when your teeth are coming in, your body knows where to put them. It doesn't care about putting them in a cosmetic position, it's putting them in a position where you have adequate bone to hold the roots of those teeth, whether they're straight or not. So now, orthodontically, if you go in and do orthodontics, and this is important for kids, if you go in and do orthodontics, but you have a narrow palate, narrow lower jaw, and you have not dealt with a skeletal issue, and all you've done is straighten teeth, the statistics are 90% of orthodontics relapses over 10 to 15 years. I don't care if you wear your retainer. So that means that you started with a skeletal problem, they treated it with only a tooth solution, and it will relapse and your teeth will become crooked again.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and now uh are sleep problems hereditary?
SPEAKER_01Hereditary. Um, there are certain things that are hereditary that can affect sleep, but it is mostly an environment and habit related disorder.
SPEAKER_00We're about to close this episode, but I have one final question for you, Dr. Eck. For somebody listening who feels nervous about getting evaluated, what does the process actually look like from start to finish?
SPEAKER_01It is a very, very um simple, simple process. Uh, typically at, you know, in our offices, you come in, first appointment's 45 minutes. We do all the measurements we talked about. We do the cone beam, the 3D image, it allows us to see the airways and everything. We dispense uh sleep study. You take home and do it home. And then we usually have you come back about a week later and review all the data. Uh it's pretty simple. It's two appointments. Uh, anybody uh wanting some basic information can set up a free 15-minute telemession call. We always provide that to kind of break the ice and answer some questions for them uh and see if they can benefit from an evaluation. All they have to do is go to our website, seeptreatmentdirect.com, and on our website, there's a there's a button there. They can pick a calendar and pick a 15-minute time slot, and we set up a call that we call them, answer their questions, and and and uh hear their story and and go from there. And then we can, when we're on that call, if they want to make an actual consultation appointment, we can do that as well.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, Dr. Eck. Well, we've reached the end of our episode. Thank you for this valuable information, and I'm certainly looking forward to our next episode when we dive deeper into the different sleep tests, and then a later episode where we go more into CPAP and different treatments. So getting evaluated for sleep apnea doesn't have to be confusing or intimidating. The most important step is simply understanding what your body is telling you during sleep and making sure the right tools are used to uncover the real costs. If you've been wondering whether your sleep deserves a closer look, share this episode with someone who might be asking the same question. And to learn more about working with Dr. Eck, visit sleeptreatmentdirect.com. Better breathing, better sleep, better life.