BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – As a mom of two little kids, Trina Webster was already struggling for rest when her husband’s lifelong snoring worsened in middle age, shattering the peace of the marital bed.
Dan underwent painful and expensive throat surgery, but his snoring soon returned. Then he started reading clinical papers and discovered that dentists were treating snoring and mild sleep apnea with a mouth guard that moves the jaw slightly forward in a way that opens a sleeper’s airway. The mouthguard wasn’t available over the counter in the U.S., but Dan ordered one online from Canada. Overnight, he said, the problem disappeared.
In 2008, Dan started working with a California dentist who helped create a mouth guard and a designer who could make the device out of plastic. The group came up with ZQuiet, a mouthguard that’s available without having to go to the dentist. The mouthguard went on the market in 2009 and was quickly a hit.
Darren Perron spoke with Seven Days’ Anne Wallace Allen, who wrote the story for this week’s annual Love and Marriage issue.