Your Mandible Does All the Work

Your jaw has two parts. The upper jaw — called the maxilla — is fixed. It is fused to your skull through fibrous sutures and never moves. The lower jaw — the mandible — is the only part of your face that moves. It opens, closes, shifts side to side, and makes thousands of micro-adjustments every night while you sleep.

When Dr. Albadran designs your orthotic for the lower arch, he is working with the jaw that actually drives both the problem and the solution. An appliance placed on the upper arch sits on a bone that cannot move and cannot correct the jaw relationship causing your pain.

Your Mandible Keeps Your Airway Open While You Sleep — And Your Orthotic Should Never Restrict It

Research published in Frontiers in Sleep (Martinot & Pépin, 2023) found that the central nervous system uses the mandible as a fine-tuning lever during sleep — making tiny jaw movements, just a few tenths of a millimeter, to keep the throat airway open with every breath. These movements are controlled by the trigeminal nerve and perfectly timed with your breathing cycle.^[1]

When Dr. Albadran designs your orthotic, he uses a digital virtual articulator — a software simulation of your jaw’s complete range of motion in three dimensions. Every lateral shift, every protrusive path, every excursive movement is mapped and accounted for before fabrication begins. The result is a device that establishes your bite dynamically rather than freezing it in a single static position.

Your Nose Is the Switch for Deep Sleep

Researchers at the University of Lyon (Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group, 2021) discovered that airflow pressure through the nose directly activates receptor cells in the olfactory system — the part of the brain connected to smell — which then sends signals into deeper brain regions that control sleep depth.^[2]

This is how your body transitions into Non-REM slow-wave sleep (Non-Rapid Eye Movement sleep — the deepest, most restorative sleep stage, commonly abbreviated as NREM). The pattern and pressure of nasal airflow is not just about breathing. It is the physical trigger for your brain to shift into deep, restorative sleep.

Your Upper Face Cools Your Brain While You Sleep

Inside your cheekbones and behind your nose sit your paranasal sinuses — air-filled spaces lined with moist mucous membrane. Research published in Medical Hypotheses (2011) describes human paranasal sinuses as natural radiators of the brain: as air moves through these spaces during sleep, moisture evaporates from the sinus lining, cooling the blood in surrounding vessels.^[3]

That cooled blood transfers to the membranes surrounding the brain — the dura mater — quietly lowering brain temperature and supporting the transition into deep sleep. This mechanism is known as Selective Brain Cooling (SBC) — selective because it targets the brain specifically, not the whole body.

Research confirms that SBC is most active precisely during NREM deep sleep — the same window when you are wearing your orthotic.^[4] The upper jaw (maxilla) forms the floor of the nasal cavity and houses the largest of these sinuses — the maxillary sinuses — placing it at the center of this cooling architecture.

Designed Around the Science of Sleep

Understanding how the upper jaw, nasal cavity, and paranasal sinuses contribute to airway function, brain cooling, and deep NREM sleep informs how Dr. Albadran approaches every orthotic design. By positioning the device on the lower jaw only — the only jaw that moves — the upper arch and its surrounding anatomy remain completely undisturbed.

The nasal airflow pathway, the sinus ventilation system, and the brain’s natural cooling mechanism all continue to function as your body intended — throughout every hour of sleep.