#42 Surprising Science of How Your Breathing & Sleeping Patterns Affect Your Life, with Tom Ludlow, DDS

Gentlemen, welcome to the bee man podcast.

I'm your host.

Greg Denning.

I'm the Creator and coach of the become a master class in tribe today.

My guest is my good friend Tom Ludlow.

We as a family friends, we've gone and traveled and gone on vacation together for the Tahoe.

We actually tracked up to the base camp of Everest together as couples we went, and we chartered a private yacht, and sailed around the Galapagos together, Last year, just just awesome experiences with a good family and he's a great man.

And Tom is a is a very successful dentist in California, but that there was some elements in his career that led him to become a sleep expert.

And in this episode, we really dive into what's happening in the mouth and then how that's affecting sleep and then how the Cascade effect of sleep and how it's affecting our lives.

Just a geek out about this stuff and I love studying sleeping.

What's happening?

And we're going to as you're going to find out.

If you listen to this, your you'll be blown away by the specific examples and stories, he gives about how the quality of our sleep.

Well, what's happening in our mouths, right?

And how things are shifting and changing in an unhealthy way and our breathing, and then the way we breathe and the way we sleep is affecting every other part of life, especially Parts, you don't think would be related anything from ADHD and behavior to like it's symptoms and systems in the body is not operating like they should anything from menstrual strike cycle.

In our wives, your daughters to losing weight, exercising Fitness, brain function.

All of it is is all being affected by the quality of our breathing and are sleeping.

This stuff is amazing.

We dive into the science behind it in the effects and and how we can all sleep better.

And I'll throw, I'll just tease this one in here.

You can lose, you actually sleep, poor sleep, and sleep apnea will take more years off your life, then even say smoking, right?

Which just boggles my mind and there's, there's tons of research and science behind this great stuff.

So, dive in here, and let's learn how we can all be more optimized in our mouths, in our breathing, and in our sleeping enjoy.

Bye fellas.

So Thomas family were traveling back from South Africa last week and they had a layover in Atlanta so they came over to the house and we got into this conversation again and so I was like man we've got to get this recorded to share.

This is cool stuff because I like you have been just kind of geeking out about human performance and these little optimizations and we're going to dive into this about the ways.

Like you think these little things are unrelated but They're all related, everything's related.

So Tom, we are so excited to have you here, man.

Grateful grateful to have you on the show.

I'm happy to be here, Greg.

And it was great to spend time with your family, and you guys make the best crepes ever and your super nachos were fantastic.

So that's awesome.

Well, spend time with you guys.

It was awesome.

Yeah, it's not the best like getting together with friends and having good food and good Adventure.

So just background to for listeners, like our families have had adventures all over the place.

We've And some cool things and created some cool memories together and absolute this awesome.

Remember, the time we were hiking to Everest Base Camp and you have your son Parker on your back as we're hiking because he's fatigued.

And you're just, yeah.

It was, it was that was epic.

It was known.

That was a great one, man.

That was a great one.

All right, so give us, give us a little bit of background on how you got into because it well, it'll all related but it seems like, yeah, it's Interesting because I am a general dentist.

I went to UCSF dental school and graduated and I was really fascinated with helping people and so I found that there's a lot of sub group of people that had a hard time getting dental treatment on and they were these high fever patients.

And so, I end up going and doing some extensive training and IV sedation.

And so, very few of us dentists are And, and putting people to sleep via IV.

And while they were asleep, I would take care of their Dental needs.

And so where this comes along is, is that I would find people would put people to sleep, and without them, even knowing we'd find that they'd have different challenges with their breathing while they're sleeping.

So when they would wake up, I would say, you know what?

I noticed that you were having some events that you stopped breathing for a short period of time.

I really do think that you should go get some help on this.

And this was now mind you, this was a long time ago, and I found that when we, I share that with patients and they were talking to primary care doctors they'd run into all these blockages.

And so, I kind of got a little frustrated.

And, and, and so I decided, I'd open my own sleep lab.

So, an overnight sleep lab, where we would have certified people that would that would do, these overnight sleep studies to help people out, and then we would connect with, we would connect, you know, we have a great sleep doctor that would The diagnosis.

So they could they wouldn't run into these roadblocks.

I was just trying to make it easier and and and you know, fast forward now that was like, you know, 13 years ago, you know, I've since closed my sleep lab and I've learned a lot that I've been treating patients with sleep apnea, from a dental perspective, and we've had some new advances in the last five years that are, it's been phenomenal.

So what I did 13 years ago, is different than I'm doing now.

And ultimately we're actually now getting to the core element of treating the source of these problems not just ultimately treating the symptoms and that's what, super exciting.

Yes.

And what we'll get into here in a minute, it's how?

Well, not only sleep.

I think, I think it's becoming more and more kind of common knowledge of like looked at the quality of your sleep.

Is a huge determining factor for so much but what's interesting is that the dental route here and just how how what's On your mouth is having a huge effect on what's going on in your body and then sleep and breathing.

So it's all this combination of all these little the functions, right?

The systems in the body and how like when they start when one gets off a little that consists have this Cascade effect on all these other areas of life and so you're having symptoms in like one area of your life, maybe it's Focus or behavior frustration.

I mean you have some awesome examples.

I hope you'll share of like this is just Coming up and like, well let's let's trace this back and see if it comes back to even breathing and a lot of your sleep.

Greg you make such a great point and and I think so often we are Society.

Unfortunately is so targeted at treating symptoms and we're really quick to give medications for these different these different challenges.

And what I really like is getting to the core element of what's really causing it going upstream and really find out what the sources and then one sweet.

That we find that the ripple effect of the things that are Downstream also improved, you know?

So one element that we so with with the things that we do, one thing that I do is I work with a lot of children that are struggling at school a th you know, we hear this a lot.

Why are kids having more ADHD and a dip hard time, focusing and concentrating than we ever have.

Have.

And it's interesting is is that when we look back at, there have been some studies that have looked at skulls of humans and we look back at what the schools were like 400 years ago.

We noticed that Jaws were big and Broad and wide.

And consequently, the Jaws, the upper jaw and the lower jaw is, what forms the airway?

That's the collapsible part of the airway.

So as the jaw over time has been Narrower and smaller.

Our Airways are getting narrower and smaller and so it's much easier to get how those Airways blocked.

So and okay, this is where this is where I want to start geeking out here because you're like okay well yeah it's let's go small little tighter Airway, like it's still working.

Like I'm breathing.

I'm not dying.

Like what are you talking about?

And this is where just, the subtle, but significant difference even a slight difference in breathing quality.

Now, It's too.

I don't know.

I like the idea of it.

The Cascade effect into all these other areas including ADHD.

Yes, that's so true.

And and so what we find right is is the upper jaw forms the bones of that support the nose.

And so if the upper jaw is really narrow or, you know, are in Dental terms, we say a high vaulted palette, in other words, I really narrow mouth.

So, when we look, if we were to compare The jaw how it should be.

It should look like a big.

If you were to take the job and kind of look at it from a bird's-eye view, we want to see a big dome.

We want to see a big broad Arch but yet we're seeing in more modern Jaws more Gothic arches.

So so it's it rounds in the front but Narrows in the back and when that occurs, it changes so many different elements. 1 it changes our ability to breathe through our nose.

All of a sudden, our nose doesn't have the same same diameter of pipes if you will.

So we have a septum that runs down and supports our nose.

And we have these great filters on the sides of our nose, we call them turbine, it's but if that space could be comes to narrow.

It requires a lot of effort to breathe through our nose.

And our body is automatically wired, because we can only go without oxygen.

Say, three minutes for the average person.

It's wired to then go to plan B, which is the mouth and what we find is if we do more mouth-breathing, then that ultimately will change the position of the tongue.

It changes the, the facial development and the jaw development, such that we get this downward backward development and the face, and that makes it pipe even narrower.

So, so you just from an overall perspective.

Imagine breathing through a boba straw.

It's a lot easier to breathe Robo Bistro.

Now, if Switch to a coffee straw.

The resistance to try to get the same air flow, through that little coffee, straw is so hard that the bodies.

It looks for a plan B and it shifts to the mouth breathing.

Hey, okay, so, and I guess I want to emphasize, you're saying the mouth is Plan B like breathing here is Plan B that breathing design is primarily through the nose.

Yeah, so often the nose is like, we in our society, we view as a hood ornament on our right.

Slime.

Secondary of I'm chewing on something.

Exactly, right?

I mean, it's just like, I got to make sure my nose looks good.

And so, you know, people have different cosmetic procedures on their nose.

However, really?

The nose function is incredible, right?

So let's just talk about some of the basic things to notice does, right?

So, the nose helps to, as you breathe in, through your nose, it will warm the air.

It filters the air before it goes to the lungs and humidifies the air.

Now the turbinates inside the nose, cause the rather, the Air to go straight in, it kind of causes the circulate up and and kind of as it goes up higher in the top part of the nose, we have this or this, the sinus system up there called the paranasal sinuses, so that's a fancy term basically.

It's a different type of sinuses that were normally used to but in that sinus, we produce our own nitric oxide.

And nitric oxide is known as a natural blood pressure medication.

It's also a sterilizer so it helps to sterilize the the breathing is written through our nose, its antiviral, it's antifungal, its antibacterial.

So here is a scenario where not only are we filtering?

Our are, we're cleaning it and we're also helping that on nitric oxide, also helps it to better transmitted to our lungs.

We have better Exchange in our lungs.

So we can be much more efficient in our breathing.

Now if we take that away and we breathe through our mouths here, we have unfiltered.

Dirty are going straight to our lungs and how to our lungs, typically respond to that with inflammation.

And if you really exert yourself when you're exercising, you're breathing through your mouth and we get this, we hear this.

A lot of people have exercise-induced asthma.

It's because we're taking that dirty air or shoving it into our lungs.

We get a response.

Wow.

I love this stuff so much when I was young.

My brother punched me and kind of like, broke my nose.

And I had really small nasal Airway is, right?

The passageways.

And so I felt like anytime I try to breathe through my nose, I have the coffee strong effect, right?

And so, My whole life on this mouth-breathing because it was so small.

And then, after we're out at your house a while ago, you're telling me about man, you gotta, you gotta yeah.

Sleep with your mouth closed.

And I literally, I put some tape over my mouth to look to Tyree through enough.

And I'm like, I'm going to suffocate all the suffocated during the night here like because because it was so hard in my nasal, those passageways were so small, but I went for it anyways and, and they actually expanded.

Then I felt all kinds of improved effects, and breathing, and all that stuff.

But let's let's dive into like the response there.

Let's do sleep.

Let's do the change.

That's happened, physiologically and all the benefits.

Like, why does this even matter?

Yeah, so so first of all, in the nose, you have two structures, right?

You have card tissue, and you have soft tissue.

And so you know, when you had that trauma, the hard tissue, you the nose broke and that that made a To call constriction on your Airway and so, but you still have soft tissue that can respond.

And so, a big part of what can happen when you're doing the lip taping or even there's different exercises that can be done that, you can retrain the soft tissue.

There is a doctor in the Ukraine years ago, and he didn't have the benefit of Albuterol and these other medications that treat some of these patients that had asthma but he helped them.

He developed a series of exercises that help to use and really to kind of mimic this fight and flight response will be can have to retrain some of the soft tissue in the nose.

And so his name was view.

Take.

Oh and so if you take you here, these beaut Aiko breathing techniques and you know to your listeners that want to see if they what they can do to improve just without expanding the jaw and without addressing the hard tissues, let's see what you can maximize on the soft tissue.

It's a great technique that you can develop Patrick McEwen is an author and he's really kind of mastered this and and even teaches different training but I think even has a YouTube videos.

You can go on if you were to Google or look up YouTube videos on beaut Aiko breathing.

That's a that's another great element that you can kind of learn about how to dress on the soft tissue response, so we can breathe better through our nose.

It's awesome.

So so yeah, it as we as we as we are breathing through our mouth, unfortunately we breathe too much.

So we breathe off too much of our own carbon dioxide and that we need our carbon dioxide because that helps once again, for better exchange of oxygen in our lungs in ourselves.

And so we need to slow down our breathing.

We need to breathe better.

More through our nose.

We need have good effect.

Breathing.

And, and so, it's interesting, even physiologically we, if you breathe through your mouth, typically, your more chest breathing, you're using your chest muscles.

And, but if you breathe through your nose, you use your diaphragm to breathe in, and that typically gets a, you get more concentrated oxygen when you use your diaphragm and yes, more of the.

Yoga breathing is breathing through your nose.

Not your mouth breathing through mouth, actually triggers different restriction.

Responses and if you're having the chest.

So once again, we're kind of working against, we're this the perinatal parasympathetic nervous system, we really want to use that to our advantage and when we breathe our chest, we start triggering things that can trigger anxiety and and another challenges well other inflammatory responses.

Oh yeah.

Direct.

Yeah, it's the is the parasympathetic, right?

It's that system where it's is related to chest breathing, right?

Sympathetic?

The sympathetic sympathetic case, sympathetic.

And so you get this chest breathing.

And again there's that there's all this physiology physiological responses even in emergency medicine, right?

As I'm studying that, I worked on a mascara like you're watching for those things but just this chest breathing and mouth-breathing that's that's for kind of its Plan B.

We're supposed to be going through the nose.

Yeah, we need a filter and more efficiently.

Get that oxygen in.

So then our bodies can be more efficient.

What happens at night time is, you know, let's just, let's just step away from date.

You know, our net during the daytime, where we have control over, how we breathe at night time, all bets are off because we, yeah, we less.

We are physically taping our lips close.

We are our bodies going to go to what?

Where's the easiest ways to breathe?

And so, That's and that it's pretty critical because what happens when we sleep at night during certain phases of sleep are muscle tone relaxes during REM, sleep.

Our body is paralyzed and during that parallel process of being paralyzed.

So we don't act out our dreams.

We have a lot of muscles that are relaxing, especially in the throat and for injil area.

So the back of the tongue, the the the base of the tongue.

The throat, those two.

Shoes can collapse and that can stop breathing from the pipe from the nose and the mouth kind of come together and they go down to the lungs.

And that that tongue is what falls back and blocks the airway.

And so in that respect those responses our body, then we'll send off adrenaline and we'll have this sympathetic nervous system and what we'll find is we have this fight and flight response all night long.

How much inflammation?

And as a result is inflammation, we have so many ripples that affect other aspects of our health, right?

But the biggest thing is You know, we're not breathing effectively and it's kicking us out of our normal sleep cycle.

So we're not getting a restorative sleep.

We're not getting the REM sleep to let our bodies Rim.

Sleep is when our brain is more active during REM sleep, then it is when we're awake.

So we're doing problem solving, we're locking in short-term memories.

It's really a wonderful we dream during that phase deep sleep is when our body can heal itself, So our body has this amazing process of healing, but they can't heal if your if your heart is beating 120 beats you know a minute.

When you're sleeping, it should be scared.

Hey, it's slipping into like oh I gotta survive here.

It's kicking you out of healing.

Yes and there's a cleansing process.

It's kicking you out of will optimization and and learning and learning retention.

Let's dive a little bit deeper into that because you and I, we talked through examples and stories.

Like, what what's the cost of of in efficiencies of are exchanged and, you know, interrupted sleep.

Like what what's the effect?

How does that play out?

So for, it's interesting with adults, if we have fragmented sleep, whether it's in, let's go back.

And when, let's not even talk about breathing, But let's just talk about fragment asleep.

Think about, when you had your first baby that was born and, you know, you're getting up frequently all the time and and your sleep.

You're not getting into that sleep cycle and is interrupted and you're just fatigued, right?

So, so that's so just interrupting your sleep fatigues.

You and causes problems.

And what they did is, they did a study with these medical students and they interrupt their sleep for.

Like, I think it was like, two days and They started developing chronic pains after that, and then they let them sleep normally and The Chronic pains went away.

So it's interesting to see how healthy medical students that they then just fragmented their sleep, right?

So that's one aspect.

Where you see on the healing phase of sleep.

Now, what's interesting is now when you look at Interruption of your breathing along with the sleep, that's another aspect of it.

So, with kids kids, don't get tired.

If their sleep is getting interrupted, they get wired.

And when they did a study and they can they put in this room with kids that have ADHD and they put in this room, you know?

And, you know, HD is, is really a diagnosis based on observed Behavior, right?

There's not a blood test for it, there's not a cellular DNA evaluation.

It's purely observation driven.

So when they have these trained psychiatrists analyzing who was who in this room had ADHD and who had obstructive sleep apnea.

They couldn't tell the difference.

So, here's a scenario where and now we know that over 50% of people have been diagnosed with this, really, it's breathing related.

So we need is how and yes, and it's off giving medication, but let's start, let's start analyzing, and really assessing people's breathing before we start jumping into addressing things with medication.

So just to reinforce eyes this, it's possible.

That there's a direct connection between breathing in efficiencies, interrupted, sleep, and behavior.

Absolutely.

So and there's other cases of that as well.

So I'll share example of a friend of mine, he he's 47 years old, very active, he was are, you know, he's just, he's the guy that just entered Energizer Bunny, right?

He's always working on.

Projects, always doing these different things.

He's the, he was like, your scoutmaster Forever going on these crazy hikes and was interesting is Somebody's hikes.

We does he snore a little bit and but he started getting these these anxiety attacks and these anxiety attacks really like, would come out of the blue.

This is the guy that's totally relaxed.

You can have all these crazy Scouts running around with with knives and with hatchets and with fire and he's totally coffee's good guy but then he's getting these anxiety attacks that were happening.

And so we said well let's Let's just step back and let's do an assessment.

See what your breathing looks like.

As it turns out, he had a moderate sleep, apnea.

And so, we didn't started treating this, his sleep apnea.

And we started, we made a mouthpiece that could then hold his airway open, but also start stimulating and growing his job bigger, so that we can ultimately solve the problem.

Now, here we are a year later and he said that, you know, it probably is anxiety attack started going away within the Six weeks of sleeping better.

And he hasn't had a major anxiety attack since we started treating his breathing.

So this is, this is such an incredible thing because it's such an empowering situation.

He was, yeah, he's just a, he's back to his old self again, and and it's just, really mm.

So, we talked about how sleep and breathing affect behavior.

When you have anxiety that then is a If content plays a significant role and impact on the things that you choose to do and and how you act, absolutely it.

This makes so much sense.

That's that's why I love hearing you explain that the, the kind of the functioning biology and science behind it all because it makes sense like the brain operates on oxygen and, and good sleep.

And in the body functioning normally and you're saying these subtle things can send us into fight or flight.

It can Interrupt.

Well, there's in efficiencies there and just exchange of oxygen, right?

Just dropped oxygen levels in the body.

Again, that's another thing, I'm gonna study recently just drop those by a couple of points.

They're starting to be negative effects all over right away, and then you interrupt sleep on top of that.

Now, you know, mental mental stuff is going to come up psychological things, you can show up and, and physiological and behavior.

It's so true.

Let's just talk about what sleep apnea does to our lifespan, right?

The average, I mean, let's go.

A lot of times we compare that with smoking.

If somebody smokes cigarettes, a pack a day typically that takes about five and a half years off your life.

So if somebody, if somebody has has sleep apnea Studies have shown that takes somewhere between 5 to 15 years off your life.

So it's it's three times worse and smoke then smoking, but not breathing the world.

Yes.

So so we have to understand that this is this is not just a passive thing.

Like, oh, I didn't sleep so well, but this is taking years off of our life.

And, and the quality of life and cognitive function, and just overall physiological function in the meantime.

Well, and when you're here, you and I were talking about, like, a study, I'd come across where the inefficiency to lose weight.

Let's say, you're trying to lose weight and get in better shape.

If you're not getting into REM sleep, it's actually harder.

It's harder to lose weight.

There's all kinds of side effects that are just tightly connected here to quality of sleep.

Which is you're saying, is one of the think one of the things you Reserved is breathing Quarry.

Yes.

And, and back to your point, that our body doesn't sleep.

Well, we get this shallow level of sleep.

We might sleep, you know, eight hours at night, but we wake up, a totally exhausted.

We know that we're not getting the good quality of sleep.

And, and if we are getting that kind of sleep, our body is going to compensate to get through the day.

We do kind of people tend to describe their activities, like they have tunnel vision.

They're just trying to just get through the day.

They're not looking for things that will extra things.

That At that they can do to enhance their lives.

They're just trying to get from point A to point B, get through that will work day and go home and just sleep, and they'll crave, 22 percent, more calories to get through the day and typically using, you know, that being with simple carbohydrates.

So that then we then put more weight on that more weight on than causes more constriction of our Airway because art, our neck will then collapses where, as we're trying to breathe at night and just as - Spa All that continues and people tend to get diabetes and you know that inflammatory response are our own body's insulin can't work as efficiently so we are our own.

Our own pancreas isn't isn't producing enough insulin so then we need extra medication for that and we call that type 2 diabetes so and then the strains are heart and you know and then we start our body has to compensate have to Work harder to get oxygen to our body than we have elevated blood pressure.

So if we you know, there's a scenario a case that, you know, one of our patients, she's just a wonderful lady and she was just, you could just tell she was just struggling in so many different areas of her life and she had type 2 diabetes, she had elevated blood pressure, she had some challenges with her hormones.

She she has one son, As she calls it, her Miracle son because her hormone cycle her monthly menstrual cycle.

Only would occur once every three years because, you know, her her body was so off and and she was talking about how even, you know she was kind of angry and just just not her, not her normal self.

It didn't feel normal to her.

So we ended up remember helping her out and getting we started with a Make creating this mouthpiece, that is a special type of mouthpiece, it helps to stimulate and grow the job bigger as we retreating sleep apnea.

It's it's through a company called vivos and and full disclosure, I have to say that I am a clinical advocate for vivos.

I'm a doctor that helps other doctors and do some.

I do some training with them.

So, and so, I, this doesn't Present.

I can't represent vivos as a company, but I'm just sharing my experience, right?

But this, this we're helped us this wonderful lady and her son, but she we started November?

Right around Thanksgiving and we got her breathing better initially.

This mouthpiece helps to artificially open your Airway and we started helping her with that.

And and her doctor was noticing looks like your blood pressure starting to go a little.

Oh, let's Let's get you off of that blood pressure medication because, you know, it seems like, you know, that you're going to low here.

So she got off of her blood pressure medication, and then she started noticing, she was filling the light headed and started, testing her blood sugar and notice that, oh my goodness, her blood sugar was going a little too low.

So we got she her doctor and then got her off of her type 2 diabetic medications that foreman And and then was interesting is is that?

And then she started started sleeping better and healing.

And she started her hormone Cycles came back on monthly.

And she's like, oh gosh, unbelievable from from once every three years, once every three years for monthly and so where her body finally got into this restorative sleep, and it was finally starting to Heal itself, we were getting rid of all this inflammatory responses coming from the fight and flight response because she wasn't breathing well at night, then she was having significant sleep apnea.

And and as a result her body started healing and she no longer doctor, no longer no longer prescribes blood, pressure medication for her.

No longer prescribes, metformin for her, for her diabetes.

And and here she is.

Now what's really cool is?

She has more energy and she just she's not looking life isn't like isn't in tunnel vision anymore.

She now has broader view, she and her son.

Now play tennis.

It's a more enjoyable situation for her, you know, life is just better now as she totally done with things know but man, my life is so much better.

For her.

What's better?

And again it makes perfect sense, right?

You have more energy, more vitality and you feel good?

Is your is your body's functioning like it should.

But what's in, what's incredible to me is the body will compensate, right?

And so you and I both know people and maybe even some of the listeners you guys have experienced or you know, somebody it can be off and your body just compensates and you just learn to deal with it.

And and so you're just going along and you're just like, okay we're going to get through this going on and you and I both have No man.

It shouldn't feel like that.

Like that should not be the experience you're having because we both like you get it.

Like if you if you get to sleep interrupted or things aren't working, right?

Of course, we're going to be irritable, like, it's hard to be jovial, having high energy, and vitality and fully engaged like really present because you're just like, oh man.

I'm just trying to get through the day.

I'm just trying to get through the week and these little shifts can bring back the natural feeling of energy vitality.

That we all should be having.

Absolutely.

And it was interesting too.

Is she also said that her relationship with her husband improved as well.

So this is not something.

We promised our patients, hey, your, your marriage is going to be better.

This is what happens when you sleep and you can and you can actually think and function and you can heal, then all of a sudden you're able to just be happier.

And, and so, yeah, so she's seen improvements with her marriage.

You see any improvements with her?

Her.

Her health and her quality of life is drastically improved and it's all ultimately comes to one going high upstream and treating the blockage of her breathing that then was having these other side effects.

But you know, unfortunately that happens way too frequently that we don't ever.

Look at what the cause is, we just are treating the symptoms.

Yes.

And how man it just makes me think here, Tom sitting here thinking like how many of us Without even knowing it, there's living below like the potential Wellness we could be experiencing across the whole Spectrum.

I love her story because it's the whole thing.

It's anything from relationships to, to a menstrual cycle, like the whole Spectrum, like where where we've learned to compensate or think?

Well, this is just the way it is.

For me, this is my life experience.

Like, man, if you can, just adjust this little piece here, then, then you go web stream and then Back way back Downstream.

Now, all the benefits that come out so much better.

It's so huge.

And, and this, it's, it's interesting, right?

I mean, I wish in an ideal world where we should be looking to treat our the patients.

The very, very beginning is probably about our infants there two weeks old.

That's probably where we should be looking because what we but I didn't share with you.

Is, is that a lot of, this is a function of one, not nursing long enough and to sometimes we have nursing challenges and I want to share.

I feel so bad because I feel like there's a lot of mothers out there that have this guilt because they weren't able to nurse their children.

Like, they wanted to.

But there are physical things that could be interfering lip ties can interfere with a good latch and Tongue tie knot to the tip of the tongue but even a little bit further, back can affect the way that the tongues able to swallow.

So that leads to call a heinous and weight loss.

And and then, you know, you don't want to see your child in the in the 10 percentile.

And so all of a sudden you switch, it switch to bottle-feeding and that changed how you swallow and that swallowing, then creates this narrowing of the jaw that then contributes to what we're talking about in our teenage Majors and are adults.

So so much of this starts with nursing.

Yes.

And and, and the challenge is some there.

I have heard from some lactation Consultants that their hands are tied that they can't talk to the client about a tongue tie or a lip tie but they look at all these.

They try to work around it simply because maybe their medical system doesn't treat tongue ties and lip ties.

And so it's just really sad.

I feel like that's an area of Blindside that that we in the western developed countries were missing.

Whereas there's a lot of there's a, there's a lot of societies culturally that they realize the babies won't Thrive unless they do a tongue-tie release or a lip release.

You know, you look at these babies in Africa, Amazon and they have these big broad Jaws.

But They're midwives are really quick to see if they see that they they will initiate a release really really.

So it's interesting, right?

And it just plays out for decades.

Yes.

And sometimes development that job it goes under the radar, right?

Some people might be doing just fine but then four guys right around the age of 40 our muscles.

Our hormones are changing that affects our muscle tone and then all of a sudden, now, we get sleep apnea, where we've had our hormones were protecting our area, All these years and women right around 45, 50, 55 in the menopause area.

That's another time when we really need to be very, very mindful of what, what type of breathing are we are we doing, okay, and get evaluated.

This, this is so amazing, so amazing.

I wanted to go back to you, you've mentioned healing multiple times, especially during sleep, and most of us think we'll healing all who were there injuries, where they were there.

An accent, what's going on.

But but I think you're referring to a different type of healing that happens in good sleep.

Will you expound on that a little bit?

Your yeah.

So so restorative sleep is a scenario right?

Where our body just from the stresses of the day.

If you work out, if you if you if you're exerting yourself there certain muscles that get to get fatigued.

And so this is a situation.

If we are not getting this restorative sleep, We are not letting those muscles, those are heart heal.

So we have to let it give our heart a chance to take a break in order for our heart to work is it's the most efficient pump in the world, but if we run it 110%, 24 hours a day, we can run into problems.

And so what they found is they found there's a link between atrial fibrillation.

So heart arrhythmia just a rhythm being off.

And that then can cause other problems with the heart and obstructive sleep apnea.

So over fifty percent of people that have atrial fibrillation should have also have sleep apnea and so it's to your listeners out there that that might have a mother or father that's taking these medications.

One of the questions we should ask their their cardiologist is have you ordered a sleep study and evaluate to see is that also Into it.

Because what we do know is that there's a procedure when that's done is called cardioversion, when the heart rate is is off and they go in and they basically kind of try to re get the heart back into better Rhythm and they found that if they can treat the sleep apnea and they're breathing, it will stay in Rhythm if they don't it will go back out a rhythm again at a very high rate like 78 percent so it's super high.

Hi.

It's just one of those things that we really needed to start looking at what the core elements are, and still do those procedures of the cardioversion.

We need to harden, good Rhythm.

But let's also address these outliers that are causing these.

These arrhythmias and not just this treating The Source, I'm right just treating the symptom, not the source, right?

And this this is makes me like, think about, I don't know if it's possible to emphasize.

Sighs enough.

How all the systems in the body are?

So what inter interconnected?

Every system from from the heart to blood flow, to the nerves, to any level of inflammation.

And and, of course the brain.

It's that's all operating together.

And all you have to do is get a little inefficiency, and breathing a little Interruption and sleep, and then it starts trickling again, to these other systems.

It's so true.

And one of the systems that lot of times we totally ignore as well, is our urinary tract, right?

So a lot there is a a patient that came in a female and her 70s that was getting up seven times at night to go to the bathroom.

Wow.

And so and who would have thought that that's breathing related.

So when we addressed her, we tested her and we found out that she had obstructive sleep apnea, we then made a mouthpiece for her and now that seven times came down to one and sometimes none where she'll go, she'll sleep the whole night through.

And so, Once you start getting that complete sleep, you know, get that fragmented sleep.

That's when quality of life returns and you have energy, you have the ability to enjoy your grandkids and go on that.

Walk with your friends and go out to lunch and and and you get out of survival mode and you start enjoying life more.

And that's what's really so enjoyable about what I do is I get a chance to yeah, I'm a dentist.

So I help people with their teeth but I really love helping see people's lives and And families improve because, you know, if you help a child that is struggling with with school and attention, deficit syndrome at school and then they come in six months later saying, hey there they bring in the report card and say, hey, I just got a raise in my class.

I'm doing better and then Mom and Dad are doing better.

You have less disruption.

It just affects the whole family.

So it's really one of the most rewarding things I do in dentistry and it all Did right from, you know, from it's just a crazy situation where we were, we saw these different events occurring.

When people were sleeping, when I was doing their dental work, when they were sleeping on his head of a mouse is awesome.

It's awesome.

Okay, so let's dive into, then what you're doing, what, like, what do you recommend, how do you help people One?

How can we test it to like, what can we do to start breathing more through our nose and then I guess, three, or maybe more than Mouthpieces the, the harbor.

Like what can we do to all dramatically start?

And I think I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too.

I think everyone should do this.

It's not like, well, I don't have any problems, so I'm good to go like, no man.

Like what I keep saying, I was like, what, what, what other potentials do I have?

Because I'm healthy strong, energizing.

I'm like, man, I breathe through my mouth, a ton is back.

Well, I think let's let's talk about what the medical you know there are the traditional approach is the traditional.

Person that they're looking for with sleep.

Apnea is somebody.

That's overweight somebody that that has diabetes, that has heart condition and at that point then they're looking to see, do they have sleep apnea or not?

But what I have found is there's a lot of really skinny athletic patients that have sleep apnea and it's because they have narrow Jaws years ago.

There's there was a technique in the orthodontic world that would Extract teeth and then basically shrink the size of the mouth and that smaller square footage, inside the Mouth left, little room for the tongue and the tongue would fall back and block the airway.

And so what I also see is I see a high correlation between patients that had those for bicuspids removed for for a cosmetic procedure that thou leading to more health challenges.

So one of those things where we look so if you're listening There's are considering Orthodontics and they're talking about taking teeth out.

I would highly recommend that they don't and get a second opinion, you know.

If your if your listeners are are waking up fatigued and tired, I would highly recommend getting doing an evaluation doing a sleep study and their their sleep studies that you can do at your own home.

So you aren't going to a foreign place you are sleep in your own bed.

They're fairly Invasive.

And and it's really if we can sleep have do a sleep study for a few nights?

Not just one night.

We can do it for two or three nights so we can average and really see what's happening rather than just taking one night.

That could be a good night or it could be a bad night.

And and maybe we're really missing what's going on and true for kids to let's say, you've got a child who maybe this particular child just, he's just struggling or she's just struggling to do.

Some behavioral stuff.

Like is that seems like One of the first places to look.

Absolutely.

If you notice your child's mouth breathing when they're sleeping at night, if you notice they're not breathing through their nose.

If they're tossing and turning they have messy sheets, they're messy sleeper.

If they're having accidents at night, those are all signs of sleep, apnea and Airway blockage.

And so who would have thought bedwetting and inability to focus at school is related to breathing, but the reality is, is that it is and so we So we can, we can help with those different things as we help them breathing better, and they're sleeping better and they're able to work through those areas as we're growing the job bigger and help them develop them amazing.

Okay.

So how how do we do test?

How do we do?

Yeah, so so I have a part of it.

So I'm going to I'm going to, I'm going to make a recommendation to be a vivos provider.

You go through a lot of training and in so not Dentist is trained to do what, what I'm sharing, and so maybe one less than 1% of dentists are trained to do this in the United States and the world.

And so, I would recommend that you seek out one of those dentists.

And if your, if your dentist is a fantastic dentist and wants to learn, maybe recommend that they get trained and coming to the DeVos Institute and they can then become training because there's a lot, unfortunately, there's not enough of us that are trained to treat.

All the people out there.

So it's estimated that a third of all adults, have a third to fifty percent of adults, have either upper Airway resistance or obstructive sleep apnea.

So that is a high number of adult huge.

And as our population, as we are battling this obesity epidemic, that is only going to go up.

So we really need to treat the source of what's going on.

So I would Find a good.

I'm also a in dentistry, we don't have a specialty in sleep.

We don't have, you know, you have sleep specialists in the medical world in dentistry.

What we have, are diplomates that have done additional training in and sleep.

So I'm a diplomate in the American board with breathing and sleeping the academy.

So and there's also so that it's so you want to find Somebody that's been trained as let's pass these exams and know what they're doing so that you're going to help you get find solutions that you need.

So so you want to find somebody that's qualified.

And so that's the first step, you want to get a sleep study and we can do sleep studies on children.

We can do them on adults if when we get to.

Yeah.

And a lot of these, a lot of these can be done at your own home.

There's a new technology, that's utilizes.

The special sleep studies that that, that are very non-invasive and most vivos providers have access to those.

So it's just once again, it's a great resource or pulling all these great Technologies to help with that.

The second thing is that we have to start retraining the tongue.

If we are The tongue is a most powerful tool powerful muscle and it's amazing tool for shaping the jaw.

So, if we grow the job bigger and wider, but we don't address the tongue and how we swallow and how that reinforces and goes into the right spot, it can work against us.

So we really want to make sure that that and so we work with different myofunctional therapists.

These are like physical therapists that are trained to some of them are speech therapist.

I have additional training in the proper swallowing and breathing and so we work heavily with myofunctional therapists.

And and also in some of these are hygienist that have been trained in this myofunctional therapy.

So it's really a specialty Niche.

And it's, and they are fantastic to help us retraining the tongue and breathing.

This is incredible.

And then then the hardware, there we go.

That's on, this is fascinating, that's really right now.

The best way to do it is is through one of these vivos providers or people.

I've been trained in Dental, sleep medicine that I've been boarded and certified.

So that way they've that they are, they can really help identify what's going on.

And we work with great sleep doctors, you know, we have the diagnosis comes from our medical colleagues.

You know, I have worked with some phenomenal, sleep, doctors, as well, as I work with some phenomenal Physicians.

Can recognize this in their patients and they realize, hey, they try to CPAP are intolerant to it.

They can't use it.

Let's now treat the source and they refer them to us and we work with them.

So, yeah, we I'm really fortunate.

I've got a great network of doctors that I work with that that refer their patients and it's in and ultimately, the mouthpiece that is helping expand the jaw.

Right?

If I understand that, right?

That's the best way to do it.

Yeah, so so we have Two choices.

We can either do a passive mouthpiece and that just holds jaw open.

You can breathe better.

But what we found is that after Nia's even when you're treating the apnea, when you treat apnea with that and also with the CPAP, we understand that sleep apnea will get worse over time.

So so in unless we change the variable of increasing the pipe that we are breathing through a par sleep apnea over time or muscle our muscles, our tissues are going to be more Overtime in our app, you'll get worse and our risk for heart attack and stroke significantly go up.

So those are the things we really are trying to to battle and and so if we can actively helped to grow the job, bigger and wider.

As we are also artificially, open the airway open so you get immediate response, you can breathe better, then we find that over time, we start reading gauging nasal breathing.

Being so for me, I had, I personally have been treated with this.

So I, my whole life.

I was when I was really young, my mom said I nearly died in the hospital because I had a respiratory issue, and I was able to pull through, they weren't sure I was going to make it but I made made it through, but my whole life, I was congested.

I never could breathe effectively through my nose.

We always To allergies, and I took different allergy medication.

I was told I had exercise-induced asthma, a tweeze when I would, when I would exercise and I love sports, I played football, and basketball, and track.

And every sport imaginable.

Had a lot of energy and I'm sure I was like a lot of those kids that that, my mom felt like I needed.

I had so much energy, I wasn't sleeping.

Well, at night I had so much energy that I was bounced off the wall.

So let's focus on into sports and so That's kind of what I end up doing.

And so it was until a later on and I look back, I see all these different warning signs.

That, of course, the technology wasn't available back then, but I could have really benefited from this from this technology much earlier in life.

So, I started growing my jaw and, and this is in my mid to late 40s.

I'm doing this.

So, I'm growing my jaw wider and within three weeks.

One nostril.

That was always plug my whole life opens up.

I'm like, oh my gosh, this is The crazy.

Is this kind of a fluke?

And I said, okay, well I'll keep on wearing mouthpiece, and sleeping better, and feeling better.

And then, three months later, the other nostril opened up and they've stayed open ever since.

So that's where the hard tissue that we were talking about.

Help to open up the airway from his heart tissue standpoint.

Now, when I first started this, I didn't fully understand and appreciate the benefit of you take a breathing techniques.

And and and also Live taping.

So I probably could have had it open up.

Steven sooner with addressing the soft tissue.

So I think with now we work with our patients we're addressing it all at one time we're working on the soft tissue or working helping address the really re-engaging nasal breathing best.

We can man this is awesome.

I get so excited about this stuff and I tend to talk a lot about Exactly what I had you on brother because when you start explaining this stuff to me it just makes so much sense because I get to work with so many great clients in my own experience and working with others.

I'm like yes that this fits and and these are little puzzle pieces again because it's a huge picture.

That's the human body and life is very complex but there is so often it literally can come down to very simple Solutions.

There's so many things will struggle with sometimes for years or decades and you stop and say, say okay, is it something we're eating?

Is it sleep, is it breathing like that?

You look at these pieces first and sometimes that's it.

That's your thing.

You have a child or or you yourself are struggling with with this breathing thing?

That's actually asleep thing.

That then turns into major in efficiencies inside your body and so your fitness goals or your ability to focus at work or studies like, this is being wrecked because of a little thing and just there's the solutions, right.

And I love this stuff.

Yeah, it's amazing.

I mean I I have to agree with you.

I think we need to look at food as medicine.

And food, is, is really if we really need to focus on an anti-inflammatory diet because really everything I'm sharing with you were trying to decrease inflammation though.

As we are stopping these inflammatory responses, he's fight and flight response is when you have these Airway blockage has you know, we'll see some.

I saw this.

We did this one test in this one child, and we tested there.

Breathing and his heart rate got as high as 198.

While he was sleeping, we can get your heart rate that high is really hard, but how is that child?

If that's what is sleep, is like, how is he going to wake up and function normally, it's cool.

He's not, he's be wired.

And, and, and he is as all this inflammatory response, he has his own corticosteroids being built up, that creates more inflammation and And just things don't function as well with inflammation.

And so what we're finding is that people as we're helping them with their stairs, they're breathing, they're able to control their diabetes better, they're able to control their other autoimmune conditions better, it doesn't take away the autoimmune condition, you know, we have fibromyalgia is heavily connected with, you know, you look at a high percentage of people have fibromyalgia, they huge percentage of them have asleep interruptions and Have a different sleep cycle than normal, well, with autism.

A lot of these, these kids and adult have sleep challenges.

Now, if we dress, their sleep will help, get rid of the at autism.

Of course not.

I'm never going to say that, but we do find that they're able to manage their autism much better and improve their learning and their abilities to function better.

So, yes, it does make sense, though.

It's just these little Things like you're talking about eating well sleeping.

Well, exercising is we exercise.

We're able to oxygenate our brains, right?

So all these things it really have to that.

We really want to oxygen our brains breathing through our nose versus breathing through our mouth, right?

So it's really critical as we really narrow it down to these small little things.

It has a an amazing impact in so many different.

Areas from depression anxiety, heart attacks, prevention to stroke prevention you know, to ADHD to just Harmony in the home.

So it's really amazing just to kind of see all these impacts all come down to one root cause of not breathing well and and something that every one of us can do better.

Oh yeah just be cognizant of and then you know Obviously, when we're awake or alert practice that practice brings knows.

The more sleep, get something, man, I love this stuff.

Okay, do you want people to reach out to you?

If they're in California or they want to go to California, connect with you, or search Weehawken is, let's say somebody wanted to like look, I want to go.

I want to figure this all out.

I want to have my family tested.

I want to go through stuff.

Do they start searching?

Tell us how to get resources.

So, if you're in Northern California, if you're I live in Folsom.

California.

So in the Sacramento area.

I'm happy to help your clients and but this is one of those situations you want to be near a provider that because there's a there's a bit of follow-up and okay so it's ongoing treatment I'm going to even so it's not like a you a mouthpiece and you're done, there's a lot of follow-up and we want to make sure that everybody is doing well.

And so another great resource is going to vivos life.com.

So VI Vos life, L Ife.com.

And find a train provider in your area.

I think that would be fantastic as well.

And so but yeah.

Typically what happens is we like to do a very thorough analysis.

We want to understand what's going on and we analyze the airway in a process called echo through a head neck exam.

So we take photographs of your of your of yourself and your body.

What happens is, you know, we talked about the impact is if you're not breathing, well, your head is going to come forward, more And you'll have this more forward head posture to help you breathe better.

I think I have that man that throws off your shoulders and that throws off your back and your hips and your knees.

And so it's really interesting to start.

So we take pictures of the body and then we also look at your, your mouth and your teeth.

We take are a three-dimensional scans of your Airway.

We take a, it's called a cbct.

So it's a cone beam CT, scan of your of your upper jaw.

Your sinuses, your nose, your If your Airway so we can see what's impacting this and we really want to understand where those constriction points are.

So when we are designing a device, we can design it specifically for to address your needs and we put together a treatment plan, we can be very very specific to your needs and then helps us then put a plan together to then create a solution rather.

That's so cool.

Thank you, thank you for coming on.

Thanks for sharing all this.

Oh, I'm Happy to be here, you know, obviously we've been longtime friends and we have these conversations were hiking and practically.

We gonna share this, it's so cool.

But yeah, like it's I'm so happy to be here.

And I'm, I'm grateful that you were able to be flexible to your timing to squeeze me in because man, it's like sharing this stuff.

It feels like again you just every time we've had this conversation and then today again I'm just like man it These are simple things.

I love the Upstream to see.

Go Upstream look at simple, Upstream factors and watch.

Watch how they play out in.

So many areas Downstream really, it does seem unbelievable.

I use that word on purpose.

It seems unbelievable.

How many things are affected by Small Things Upstream.

The a single Stone related.

I totally agree with you.

And matter of fact, when I first heard this here II was A diplomat and dental sleep medicine.

I had my own sleep lab.

I treated, you know, a lot of patients with sleep apnea.

And then I started hearing these other claims of what this can do.

I, you know, I have to tell you and I talked to my colleagues and they all thought the same thing.

This is way too good to be true, right?

Exactly.

It's like the magic pill and it's incredible.

I mean, it really is and but it's I have to tell you I'm seeing this and as as you know, these are anecdotal things, I'm sharing with you.

But what I want to tell you is I'm seeing major changes taking place in people's lives as they are dedicated to making changes and it's really remarkable and it's beyond expectation.

It was interesting, I was working with another client and and she was having this.

She's just amazing mom.

Just incredible Mom very But extremely fatigued and tired.

And and so we started treating her sleep apnea and she started feeling better and and, and she was I shared with her, the story of the other patient that her menstrual cycle improved cycle.

It was interesting is, I had this hormone related acne on my skin like could do get rid of and she said, but after doing vivos and doing these mouthpieces and sleep, within breathing better, and sleeping better and healing.

It went away with him.

He's not doing anything.

So there's will find.

We never promised any of these things, right?

We net were our main focus is getting you breathing better and sleeping better.

But what's really fun is to see these other light comes out of it.

The other ripples that take place that our patients then report and we see that and we're taking pictures and we're documenting these things but It's really remarkable to see the changes that do take place and you seen have you seen any design, curious hair?

If you seen any improvements in like allergies or illnesses, things like that because what you were saying before about breathing, through the nose and the nitrogen nitric oxide, right?

And the filtering, I mean, yes.

Couldn't that prevent or help with illnesses and analogies?

Absolutely.

So I'll take me for an example.

I whole life I had Had severe allergies all our G medications and did everything I could to treat allergies from homeopathics to to every type of allegra and Claritin and all these other medications to help with allergies.

But once I grew my job, bigger and wider.

And I could breathe through my nose.

My, I noticed a remarkable decrease in my allergy.

So, in the back of my yard, we planted these plans for for privacy these big bushes.

And they give off this this pollen that.

Is it turns out, I'm highly allergic to huh?

Every time I go out there, I would have to take a shower, my eyes would run.

My nose is run.

I've just start, I start sneezing, I couldn't stop sneezing.

And it was, it was just really bad and it's but particularly during Springtime, well, it was interesting, is, is that after growing my job and breathing better, I went out and like, okay, I'm going to, you know, I went out and was working in the yard and breathing through my nose, sweeping up the stuff like I always do and I noticed a small little running in my nose.

Nothing compared to the histamine, release, as I was getting previously and I have not had these allergy attacks that I was having all.

That's every year, consistently the spring and fall and so, yeah.

So, for me, personally, I can say, I no longer take allergy medication at all.

I don't think anything preventively.

I'm just breathing better.

Nose is filtering and I and it's gone away.

So from a covid standpoint, you know, one of the best things we can do is breathe through our nose.

I know covid is changing and but we are coming into cold and flu season, and if we can breathe more through our nose that nitric oxide can kill the virus, it can kill the bacteria, it can kill the fungal infection, that's coming through the air.

So if we can keep it away from that perspective, and we wash Our hands and be careful of what we touch and put it touch to our mouth boy.

That's one of the greatest things we can do to help improve our immune system and and keep ourselves healthy and clean.

It doesn't necessarily require all these crazy respirators or or anything else we can just it's already built in like the creation felt like if we can get the body, doing what the body was created to do.

Yes, it's unbelievable.

The nose is no longer Hood.

Truly if functional organ, that really put it back to work.

Thank you, thank you so much, man.

This has been awesome.

Oh my pleasure.