Sleep Resources
Using the SnoreLab App to Track Your Child’s Sleep
SnoreLab® is a mobile app that can be used to monitor and record your child’s nighttime breathing and snoring patterns.
To use the app, place your phone face-down near your child’s bed and start a recording session for the length of time you wish to monitor. For the example referenced here, the recording was intentionally limited to a 30-minute session.
During this recording, the child was wearing a Breathe Right® nasal strip to help improve nasal airflow and support better nasal breathing during sleep.
Parent Observation vs. App Classification
From a parent’s perspective, the app’s classifications do not always reflect the true experience of sleeping next to the child.
In the recording reviewed:
-
Most sounds were categorized by the app as “quiet.”
-
However, these sounds were clearly audible and disruptive when heard directly in the room.
-
The recording was stopped after a particularly loud gasp, which the app classified only as “loud.” In reality, this sound was more accurately described as a gasp for breath.
This illustrates that while the app provides useful quantitative labels, the qualitative experience of the sounds can be more significant than the app suggests.
Why Parents Use Sleep Recording Apps
Why Parents Use Sleep Recording apps like SnoreLab can be helpful for capturing sleep sounds that parents may not hear if their child sleeps in a different room. Recordings can provide useful insight into breathing patterns and help identify potential concerns.
A Note on Teeth Grinding
It is unclear whether the app reliably captures bruxism (teeth grinding) during sleep. In this case, grinding was not present, so it could not be evaluated.
Dr. Karen refers to ENT specialists in regards to evaluation of turbinates, adenoids and/or tonsil tissues that are found in the nasopharynx/posterior oropharynx--in essence, breathing starting at:
nostrils ---> turbinates ---> adenoids ---> tonsils --->trachea
Orthodontic sutural expansion has shown benefits in optimizing nasal breathing. The ROOF of the mouth is the FLOOR of the nose.