About Dr Levi

11 years old

I had five siblings. I was the second youngest. I shared a room in Sydney, Australia with my brother. My Dad worked long hours. My Mum was busy raising all these children and did not drive. Not much money in the house either. So imagine the horror every morning. Mark has wet the bed again. Woken up drenched wet before school. My Mum was beside herself. She hoped it was just a passing phase. Yeh .. passing phase of bedwetting at age 11.

Almost every day she had to strip my bed and wash all the sheets and hang them out on the line to dry. No fancy clothes dryer in my house in those days. My Mum was getting really angry. Just frustrated, tired, and worn out. When will this damn phase pass?

My brother was a good sport. We shared a bedroom together. He would drink bucket loads of water before bed. Tons of water. So that when he woke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom he would also wake me. We would both go to the bathroom.

Did it help? No. Though I was warmed by the brotherly love to try and help.

Bedwetting really affected me emotionally for decades to come. I had a dark secret that bothered me. To this day at age 62 I still vividly remember those times.

18 years old

I suppose I was a normal kid at 18 years old. Chasing girls. Trying to fit in somewhere. Trying to find my tribe, I like to say. I was a bit (ok a lot) nerdy. But I so desperately wanted to be accepted and liked.

I ponder that if 62-year-old Dr. Mark Levi had looked into the mouth of 18-year-old Mark Levi, what would he say? He would say what a disaster your mouth, your teeth, your bite is. How do you function? How do you breathe? Your teeth and bone structure are all in the wrong place. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. (sorry, I am a boatie).

So I am 16 years old with teeth that are not where they are meant to be. Would braces have helped? Well, as I said my parents had no money for such things. I think today the braces or orthodontics would have probably made me a touch better or maybe a lot worse. That's right. Probably a lot worse. I did not need pretty teeth all in a neat row to smile at the girls. I needed my airway to improve so that I could breathe.

19 years old

Did I mention that I was overweight? Did I mention that my weight had crept up and my self esteem was going down? Did I mention that I was chasing girls and feeling pretty poorly about my presentation?

I could not work out why my weight was increasing. I felt self-conscious and experienced low self-esteem and negative body image. I later became interested in how sleep can relate to metabolism, but I cannot attribute my weight at that age to one cause.

No medical emergency here, but I could have done without that phase of my life thank you. I just wanted to fit in with the crowd and not be the overweight kid.

23 years old

So I am now 23 years old and here comes the next power punch to my health and self-esteem. My temporomandibular joint goes crazy on me!

The temporomandibular joint is the ball and socket joint right next to your ear. Open and close your mouth and you can feel the joint. It closely resembles the knee joint because it has a ball and socket too.

So I am a young man, probably just about to graduate dentistry at university. Studying madly. Dating heaps. Looking to start a career. I have a lot going on! Lots.

The good news is that I did not have anxiety or depression as symptoms from this time in my life, but sadly many do. When you think about it, I was wrecking my own teeth. With lots of negative mental, physical and social repercussions.

This problem is treated with a dental splint. My dental splint was on the upper teeth. It was made of hard plastic acrylic that covered my top teeth. I wore it every single night. It was ever so comfortable and stopped the breakdown of my teeth and joints. I was still grinding like crazy but all the symptoms quietened down. I had to have it regularly replaced at great cost because I kept chewing through it.

• Every time I opened and closed my mouth it made a loud click noise. It was causing deterioration to my joint every time it clicked.
• Every click would also hurt. Pain. Admittedly not always and not that much. I was lucky.
• I was making so much noise grinding my teeth at night in the bedroom that my then fiance almost didn't marry me.
• My teeth started wearing away because of all my grinding. My front teeth were looking shorter.

38 years old

Why, why, why didn't anybody understand airway and breathing back then? I remember my 38th birthday like yesterday. Snoring.

Yes, my snoring had kicked in. Not just any snoring. We are talking wake the neighbours type snoring.

My wife spoke in total frustration and despair: fix your snoring or get out. I did fix the snoring. Careful, this story is about to get worse, heaps worse!

A Respiratory Lung Specialist had me do an overnight sleep test at the hospital. Doctor: Mark, I have looked at the results of your test and sadly you have sleep apnea. Mark: Really, what's that? Doctor: Mark you stop breathing about every minute or so at night. Doctor: this is serious. Untreated you are heading toward a long list of symptoms, heart problems and diabetes to name a few. You need to wear a CPAP mask on your face at night to help you breathe, forever.

I walked out of that appointment, went down to my car and sat there for probably 15 minutes, numb. I had walked in confident and happy. My world just crashed around me.

45 years old

I wore that CPAP mask with that machine that pushed oxygen down my lungs like an air conditioner. Three or four years I wore that. Did I mention I hated it?

I had nil, zero, not even one symptom that bothered me except the snoring. Everyone else is tired and has lots of symptoms but not me. Just snoring. I could run 10km easily. Fit as a fiddle.

I hated that CPAP machine with a vengeance but persisted because I tended to do as I was told. Besides, I had a responsibility to my three children to provide and protect (not die).

50 years old

I can still run up a hill at warp speed, super fit but I still have that Sleep Apnea. I managed to get rid of that CPAP machine I so hated. Instead I now wear an upper and lower mouthguard called a mandibular advancement splint that holds my jaw forward so that air can get down to my lungs when I sleep. I don't snore either!

The bad news is that my marriage has ended. How much did my snoring and breathing problems contribute to that still have me wondering today? Don't know. Sure did not help me!

For the next eight years I increasingly went to the USA for sleep conferences. I wanted to be the best in Australia and I also wanted the best possible treatment for myself that you can find in the world.

60 years old

At 60 years of age my teeth and jaw played up so much that I had to go back to using the CPAP machine for about 4 months. The mandibular advancement splint just stopped working. Plus because I had worn this mouthguard for so many years my jaw, teeth and joints had all moved. I was a mess!

My joint was sorted out by the prosthodontist who specialised in temporomandibular joints. He said that after 15 odd years of wearing my dental snoring mouthguard device this was not surprising. Now I had a new mouthguard to quieten down my screaming jaw pain. I was miserable.

61 years old

After 20-odd years at conferences in the USA I had developed a great core of colleagues in North America. One day I received a call from my friend Lauri in California. She told me about a new sleep technology, maybe 10 years old, that was just starting to grow in the USA.

I met Professor Dave Singh on a whistle stop visit to Australia. Did I understand it at first? No! Did it make sense at first? No! Did it pique my curiosity? You bet it did!

At a small lecture in the USA I met dentists I knew in North America who had treated themselves first. The rest is history. I was sold in 60 minutes. I completed all the training, exhausted but wanting to get it done. Guess who my first patient was? You guessed it … ME! Let's fix me first!

Everyone I met in the USA was my age, 45-60-ish. They had long fruitful careers in sleep or joints or some other related area in dentistry and suddenly saw this VIVOS protocol and said: this makes sense to me, count me in!

62 years old

Thank you to Natalie in the USA who held my hand from day 1 when I was curious. Your belief in this system got me to where I am today.

Thank you to my first paediatric patient and family for trusting me. Their experience helped shape my interest in children's breathing and sleep. One family's experience does not predict another child's outcome.

Dr Mark Levi