One man, Avi Weisfogel, began questioning the artificial restrictions placed on dentists. Dr. Weisfogel reasoned that dentists have the same basic medical training as other medical professionals. So why shouldn’t they be able to treat a wider range of diseases, especially when they are among the only medical professionals that many people will see over the course of five to ten years? Eventually, Dr. Weisfogel began researching many different illnesses that had not seen significant improvement in mortality or morbidity over the previous decades. Eventually, he learned of an insidious illness called sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea has long been one of the most overlooked serious diseases in America. Those who suffer from it have vastly increased incidences of heart attack, stroke, diabetes and even workplace accidents. Dr. Weisfogel immediately began formulating a new treatment protocol that would allow dentists to treat this terrible illness, potentially catching it and its earliest stages, when it was most treatable.

In 2010, Dr. Weisfogel founded Dental Sleep Masters, the first full-time medical seminar program designed specifically to teach dentists ways to treat sleep apnea. The program immediately became a runaway success, with hundreds of dentists graduating each year. Dental Sleep Masters focuses on using a treatment model that is largely centered around the use of oral appliances, a treatment technique proven to dramatically reduce the incidence and severity of sleep apnea in patients with the early forms of the disease. Any of the students of Dental Sleep Masters have had such incredible success with the program that they have abandoned their traditional dental practices entirely, opting instead for a full-time sleep dentistry practice.