A conductive silicone mouthpiece to stimulate the tongue muscle to address root cause of Sleep Apnoea

Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) is a sleep related respiratory condition, leading to repeated temporary cessations of breathing because of a narrowing or closure of the upper airway during sleep. Core symptoms of OSA include excessive daytime sleepiness and snoring. OSA can affect anyone, but is more common in some people, e.g. those who are male, middle aged, elderly, and over-weight. OSA is closely associated with serious health problems, including hypertension, diabetes, stroke and heart disease. It can shorten life expectancy and it also leads to road collisions caused by undiagnosed sleepy drivers. In short, OSA is currently a significant health care burden in the UK, for individuals, for the NHS, and for society as a whole. Current treatments require the use of the device whilst sleeping and are temporary splinting measures not cures so will be required for the rest of the person’s life. Despite the market size for anti-snoring devices, there remains no product that treats the condition and no actual cure except for surgery which has no guarantee of success. The SnooZeal product consists of a tongue sleeve-like device which is inserted in the mouth over the tongue for 2 sessions of 20 minutes a day for an initial treatment period of 6 weeks. This strengthens the muscle at the rear of the tongue through mild electric pulses to stop it collapsing backwards, and thereby stopping snoring. The device not only elevates the symptoms of snoring and mild OSA, and assists in the management of moderate and severe OSA as it reverses the physiological change with a possibility of a long-term cure with regular maintainance .