Dentist Exposes Shocking Sleep Apnea Truth!

Welcome, Dr. Rod. So nice to have you here. Dr. Rod is.

The upper jaw is more forward, the tongue's closer to the back of the throat. So that can cause sleep apnea issues. If your jaw is too narrow, there's too much crowding of the teeth, not enough room for the teeth. If there's not enough room for the teeth, there's not enough room for your tongue. Right. So the tongue doesn't have a place to sit against the roof of the mouth. If the jaw is too narrow and it falls back, if it starts vibrating against the back of the throat, that causes snoring. And that suction of the tongue falling back because there's not enough room can cause sleep apnea. So really poor malocclus, poor dental, let's call it anatomy can affect that. Now, some of these kids that I see between the ages of 5 to 12, we put them in expanders right away. Grow, expand that arch, make that palate higher, give more room for the tongue to sit. As I always say when I talk to a parent about the kid, I say we're not just creating more room for the teeth to come in so we don't have to pull teeth, we're actually creating room so that the tongue can sit somewhere and correcting that overbite as much as possible so that we have a less chance that your son or your daughter snores or has sleep apnea. Because you mentioned weight. In a lot of patients, losing weight helps them. But I myself, when I had my car accident, I was 160 pounds and I'm 6ft tall, so. So don't judge a book by its cover. It's my anatomy of my jaw. I didn't have expansion when I was a kid, so I have a very narrow jaw. And so the tongue doesn't have a place to sit, it likes to fall back. So definitely your dental condition can affect your sleep if it's not corrected through some sort of orthodontics.

I've seen some people biting on some sponge like thing all the time, and they said it's been given to them by their dentist and so that they can improve this jawbone. I don't know what that is, but what is that?

So that's called mewing. Mewing's taken off just as much as you have taken off in TikTok. It's become super popular and unfortunately, I don't. I hope dentists are not giving it, but they have. I've heard some dentists have been recommending it. It's basically giving you Some sort of almost like a contraction of the muscles. You could do it with chewing lots of gum, for example, but they have these rubber things that you put in your mouth and you kind of clench on it and chew on it several hundred times a day if you can, to make your masseter, your cheek muscles stronger so you have a more defined jawline. But guess what? That does cause TMJ and jaw problems. Right? So we are already stressed. We're already. And if you clench and grind your teeth already and you're making these muscles that allow you to clench and grind your teeth even stronger, you're going to be breaking teeth and coming in for crowns and chipped teeth with fillings and whatnot and jaw pain. And I've seen jaw pain as early as, as young as 16, 17 years old because they're mewing, trying to get that jawline. And then all of a sudden, with stress and anxiety and all the other things, the jaw starts developing what we call TMD Temporomandibular disorder. So stay away from doing any sort of extra work on your job.

I'm gonna ask you a few questions and don't mind me being, like, vague about them. But what is the biggest myth about sleep hygiene that you.

So sleep hygiene is associated with. For example, don't drink coffee eight hours before bedtime.

That's what I do.

Taurine is even worse than caffeine for your heart. But try not to be on your phone or your electronics before you go to bed. I know we're all guilty of it. I'm there watching your TikTok videos until I go to bed. Or my own videos. Right. To see how they're doing. And so it's really tough to be able to get off our phone electronics, the blue light. If you can eliminate that, that improves sleep hygiene. Doct Huberman and some of these guys have done some research talking about how getting sunlight in your eyes in the morning, direct sunlight is obviously bad for your eyes, but in the morning it's a perfect angle. It helps increase your natural melatonin levels when it gets to nighttime so you can fall asleep naturally.

It's a part of yoga, and I've been doing that.

It's part of a great sleep hygiene program. And also going to bed at the right time consistently. It's a myth. Oh, I could go to bed at 12:30 and still get good sleep. No, you're still going to be up at 6am handling your kids, trying to get ready for work. So it's really a good idea to. It's a myth that you can fall asleep later and get still good enough sleep. Try to get to sleep at the proper consistent time. Most people get to sleep between 9 to 11 o'. Clock. That's a pretty good time to get your full seven to eight hours.

What is breathing and sleep? How are they connected? Give us a little bit easy to understand language for my listeners.

So breathing is the key to everything. When it comes to yoga and meditation. Concentrate and focus on your inhalation and exhalation. As you and I have spoken about, breathing is huge and lack of oxygen, meaning when you're not breathing enough air going in, whether you're a mouth breather or in general you have sleep apnea, meaning that there's some sort of obstruction. Oxygen or breathing increases your heart in a stressful environment to pump oxygen oxygenated blood to your brain. So there's a cardiovascular or overworking of your heart. That's why it's related to high blood pressure and heart attack and stroke. And you know, you get into this stressful environment which increases your stress hormones, which has a powerful impact on anxiety, on cancer risks going up and decreased life expectancy without breath, without the proper amount of breath. And these home sleep studies do measure that. By the way, they have a pulse oximeter to see what your oxygen saturation really is. Does it dip below 90%? Are you really suffocating? So really breath is so important. It's the number one thing that gets kind of analyzed or evaluated when someone is not sleeping well and yawning the next day, or is tired throughout the day or has all these medical issues already, like high blood pressure, heart arrhythmias, maybe a history of stroke or cancer. And so it's really important to be able to get the proper amount of oxygen in.

So like for example, me, I sleep on my stomach a lot of the times and I went to my chiropractor and he was like, don't sleep on the stomach. Sleep like as if you were in a dead body pose, like a corpse's pose. So what is the best position to sleep? What do you say?

So, you know, it's been evaluated by gastrointestinal doctors and proper function of your digestive system to sleep on your left side. That is kind of like the best side to sleep on. The worst to sleep on is on your back because of the gravity pulling the jaw back, tongue back, hitting against that back of the throat, which increases your risks of.

So the chiropractor is wrong.

Yeah, chiropractor is not accurate by saying sleep on your back.

He actually said if you keep sleeping on your back, you'll have. I'll have to put brace on your neck. So.

Yeah, yeah. So I would highly recommend, you know, maybe your spine could be all, you know, aligned if we're sleeping on our backs or what.

Morning or sleep disturbance. Like when you wear these dental devices, the one that you, you make. This can mess up your dental alignment.

Two questions there. The dental. Breathing. Well. And the breathing while grinding. Most of the time, the lower front teeth are the one that's wearing down. The back teeth are not as worn down as the front teeth because you're moving your jaw forward. Kind of like doing your own appliance. Right. Bringing your jaw forward so the tongue can get away from the back of the throat. Now, if I stress you out a lot because of taxes and electronics.

My mind was lost a little bit, but that really messed me up on enamel part. And I believe a lot of people probably should learn from at least my mistakes. And probably they made their own. But for sure. Swishing water. I add a pinch of salt and in water, lukewarm water. It's amazing. And I have exactly the same habit now. At least now. So thank you, doc, for your time today. Any shameless plugs you have or any final advice, you can. Please tell us the name of your dental clinic you're in. Thousand Oaks, which is about 45 minutes from LAX Airport, north of LAX Airport. What is the name of your dental office?

My office is in Thousand Oaks, California. It's 805-dentistry 805-dentistry.com. you can find me on social media, YouTube, TikTok, all that. Just type in Dr. Rad or Dr. Dar Rad Far. And you could DM me. I respond to the DMs myself through Instagram, through Facebook. I love to help. We could even set you up for a home sleep study without due through teledentistry or telemedicine. We don't have to necessarily come to the office then once you get the results. I know of sleep doctors and dentists all across the country that I can send you to so that you can get treated based on the severity of the sleep.

That's great.

Yeah. Sleep is super important for I have a passion for it. I almost died from the accident. And after seeing a few thousands of patients that I've treated and helped, I see the commonality and most people are just letting it go. It's so easy now to do the test at home. You don't have to go to a lab if it's not with me. Or find a sleep physician, Google it. Or your intern, your primary care doctor and they will guide you hopefully to be able to get a home sleep test.

Thank you doc. And how much is the home sleep test approximately?

The home sleep studies again are covered by medical insurance but if you have a really bad deductible, absolutely like no coverage. They typically charge $245 for a two night sleep study and that's interpreted and scored by a board certified sleep physician from this country. Meaning it's valid to be able to get approval for a CPAP machine or an oral appliance. Because now we have a sleep study on hand that has diagnosed you with a sleep physician saying that you have mild, moderate or severe sleep apnea.

Do you have a website that people can actually go to to look up for the sleep study to begin with and later on maybe you have a reference system in case somebody's living in Cincinnati or somewhere else. You can direct them to a particular dentist because it's obviously impossible for them to come to California.

With respect to that, going on my office website, 805dentistry.com and going in the chat section and sending me a message is the best way. Dentistry.com 8 yeah the number 805 dentistry.com 805dentistry.com Great. Yeah, we're in the 805 here. The area code. So my phone number is 805 dentist. When you type that in you reach my office. So you got lucky with that phone number. So if you can contact me through my office again through social media is probably also the other way. Just look up Dr. Rad or Dr. Dar Rad Far R A D F A R. You'll see me everywhere.

Thank you doc. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you so much.

Spend time with us and.

Sam.