Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #292 Fixing your health from the top down w/ Dr Kevin Winters, DDS

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

What an illuminating episode yall. Dr Winters was introduced to me by our brother Aubrey Marcus. I get into all of the specifics that have changed in my health and wellness just since starting with his practice. Dr Winters has taken a similar path as Dr Nathan Riley OBGYN in that he jumped through all the hoops laid out by the 20th century model of healthcare, then got tired of there not being a “cause” to all the “effects” he was seeing in his practices. People’s teeth don’t just decide to go wonky and their jaws don’t just skew for no reason. He, with the training of other Dental Maestros, is on the path of truly helping people deal with all kinds of structural and TMJ issues. He has improved my quality of life and I hope your eyes are opened as well. Love yall!   ORGANIFI GIVEAWAY Keep those reviews coming in! Please drop a dope review and include your IG/Twitter handle and we’ll get together for some Organifi even faster moving forward.   Connect with Doc: Website: The Hills Dental Spa  Instagram: @thehillsdentalspa   Show Notes: Permaculture 101 w/ Gardeners of Eden  JRE #1873 Brigham Buhler  Dr Zaghi Tongue Tie Testimonial  Permaculture 101 w/ Gardeners of Eden Sponsors: Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Check out their latest and greatest “PEAK POWER”. Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Desnuda Organic Tequila Sometimes being fully optimized entails cutting loose with some close homies. We have just the sponsor for that occasion. Head over to www.desnudatequila.com for the tippy toppest shelf tequila in the game. Use Code “KKP” for 15% off all purchases!!  Bioptimizers To get the ’Magnesium Breakthrough‘ deal exclusively for fans of the podcast, click the link below and use code word “KINGSBU10” for an additional 10% off. magbreakthrough.com/kingsbu  PaleoValley Some of the best and highest quality goodies I personally get into are available at paleovalley.com, punch in code “KYLE” at checkout and get 15% off everything!   To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service Academy  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Zion Node: https://getzion.com/ > Enter PubKey  >PubKey: YXykqSCaSTZNMy2pZI2o6RNIN0YDtHgvarhy18dFOU25_asVcBSiu691v4zM6bkLDHtzQB2PJC4AJA7BF19HVWUi7fmQ   Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Welcome back, everybody. Today we have a guest who was arguably a long time coming. I've wanted to have a dentist on this podcast for several years. And because as you dive into health and wellness and you start to understand how all of these things interlock holistically, dental becomes pretty damn important. My journey through dentistry, through the work with dentists, was comical, really. There was a time where I stopped seeing dentists for 15 fucking years and kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater as I became aware

of fluoride and mercury amalgam fillings and all these kind of things. I just thought, I don't know that there are good dentists out there. And then as I started to dive into holistic dentistry and biological dentistry and all the different things, was turned on to this guy, Dr. Kevin Winters by my brother, Aubrey Marcus, and really saw a difference almost immediately in his practice versus others. And through our many conversations for the many times that I've seen him over the years have really come to understand dentistry differently. I've come to understand his education and how it varied so vastly from many people in dentistry and how really what he's done is effectively the equivalent of someone who gets, you know, like Dr. Nathan Reilly, you get your medical license and then you go get your real education after that shit ends. That's what Dr. Nathan Reilly, you get your medical license and then you go get your real education after that shit ends. That's what Dr. Winters has done. He comes from a very cool lineage of thinkers out

of Las Vegas and has worked on incredible athletes and people like Michael Jordan and myself, God damn it. Incredible athlete. I'll throw myself in the hat with Jordan. Maybe never. Yeah, definitely not Jordan. But he's worked on many who's who people. More importantly, he just knows what the fuck he's doing. And when he does what he's doing, it makes a big difference in your life. I can sleep on my back now.

I think I mentioned this podcast for the first time in my entire life, 40 years. Why does that matter? Well, it matters for my neck. It matters for my spine. It matters for my jaw tensity. It matters with how I breathe, how I think, how much energy I have during the day. All of these things are interrelated. And we really break this down on the podcast in walking

through Kevin's history, where he learned what he learned, and when he started teaching and all the cool things that he's into, and really where the technology has come over the years. They can do a 3D scan that analyzes airway. If there's anything obstructing, he's got a whole team. He's kind of a concierge, if you will, a team of great people from gum specialists, ENTs, and he's doing really cool shit. And I told him right from the jump, I'm like, dude, I want to get you on the podcast because the world needs to know about you. And I'm thoroughly impressed with his background. So give it up for my man, Dr. Kevin Winters on this podcast. Visit him at the Hills Dental Spa. And then of course, at the end there, he lists the

phone number and all that jazz. We'll link to that in the show notes for you. Definitely worth the trip. If you're coming to Austin to hang, just get checked out. See what these guys, see what they offer you, see what they recommend and take it from there. There are many ways that you can support the show. First and foremost, leave us a five-star rating. Our homies at Organifi.com slash KKP are still giving you guys a favorite product from Organifi. And I'm going to switch it up. Organifi, if you're listening, I got a brand new one for you, Peak Power. We're going to talk about that today as we get into the sponsors. But leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways the show has helped you out in life, and Organifi is going to send you a free product.

It's going to be their new one in partnership with my dudes at Mind Pump Media. So that's all you got to do. Leave one or two ways the show has helped you out in life. At the end of the month, we select one winner. Clue to the selection process, if you leave a really good review, that's probably going to fucking make you the people we pick. It's not random. It is 100% based on what you write.

So leave us a good rating. We'll send you out some free product from Organifi. Thank you, Organifi.com slash KKP for doing that for us. You guys are awesome. One of our longest show sponsors. Great people at Organifi. Share this podcast with a friend. If you got people that are going to your regular ass dentist and they're still getting silver in their mouth, that's a problem. There are better options available to you today. And you don't want to spend a whole lot of money having all that shit removed. That's what I had to do. You don't want to go back after the fact and get all that taken out and replaced with something that could have been cleaner in the first place. Dental care. How do you widen the

mouth? We dive into all these topics here. But if you know somebody's interested in this, if your partner fucking snores, you can fix that. This shit is really easy to fix these days. So coming from a guy who used to snore, who used to have to sleep on his sides every night, who used to have a whole host of fucking issues, if it applies to them, send them this podcast. Word of mouth is one of the best ways. Leave us a five-star rating. That's another great way. And then support these sponsors. They make this show absolutely fiscally possible, and I couldn't do it without them. Today, as I mentioned, we're brought to you by Organifi.com slash KKP. And they got a brand new product in partnership with my boys at Mind Pump Media,

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to do it better, check out Organifi's Peak Power over at Organifi.com slash KKP. Do not forget to use the code KKP for 20% off everything in the store. We're also brought to you today by DesnudaTequila.com. Remember to use KKP for 15% off all purchases. Desnuda Organic Tequila is the cleanest, best-tasting premium tequila on the market. Launched in January of 2022, Indianapolis-based co-founders Nick Bloom and Brian Eddings selfishly wanted a tequila that didn't leave them feeling terrible after a night of drinking in a spirit that fit into their health and wellness lifestyle. Out of necessity, they created Desnuda, which means naked. Their blue Weber Agave plants have been organically grown in Jalisco's Amatian region for seven years. Desnuda is certified USDA organic and

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Welcome to the farm. Welcome on the podcast, brother. What a place. Really impressive. Enjoyed the whole tour and seeing all the plans you've got. Man, this is going to be just an incredible place for you. Yeah, I love it. Anytime I get a chance to show people in the infancy, it's cool because it's changing rapidly, and we can picture

where things are going to go and there's a whatchamacallit like a some type of plant some type of director that's handling like all ideas that are going

and he has this master map where everything is yeah computer rendered this is where this place is going to be this is where this place is going to be

so it's pretty cool to look into that but then to see like the blank canvas and watch it come up been pretty damn cool too so yeah just the evolution of it just from nothing to what it ends up being i mean it's got to be just fun along to be a part of the process yeah yeah it's rad and as i mentioned to you it's it's kind of like being a dad and that you know you you give to something, not that dads can give birth, but you're part of the birthing process

and you got to keep it alive. You got to protect it. And then it requires so much in its infancy. And then over time, it's kind of like, fuck off, dad, we don't need you anymore. And hopefully that's the case and everyone's cool and it's self-sustained. But yeah, it's been really rad.

As we talked before the podcast, I really love getting background, you know, like talk about your life growing up. And it's interesting because it's not, we're going to talk about the procedure that I had, the why, all that good stuff. Yeah. How I got to know you and, and all that good stuff. But really when I think of dentistry, I don't think of that as something where like as a kid, you know, firefighter, actor, whatever the things that I wanted to do when I was young, it wasn't putting my hands in people's mouths

or even as though I loved my dentist, he was a fucking great guy. What drew you into this field and what drew you on the path that led you, you know, in your own, able to carve out your own space within it? Yeah. Well, the whole growing up process for me was, in retrospect now, I guess kind of interesting, moved around a bunch and my mom was in and out of different relationships and marriages. And so, you know, I was just, we were moving all the time.

And some of the time I had the direction and guidance of my grandparents because they'd be in the same town with us and kind of had that to fall back on. But it was different because you'd be in one school for a while. Next thing you know, you're moving to another school. Next thing you know, you're, you know, it was hard because the relationships that you have are affected. You know, you're always a new guy coming in and you try to finally get some friends and you've got to leave them. And so for me, I kind of had two things that I fell back upon with that. And one was sports.

I was always good in different sports. And so that was one advantage that I had in moving in that whatever time of year it was or whatever's going on sports-wise, I would fit in. I was successful and good at it. And so I had a group of friends just based off of that. It made it a lot easier to make those transitions. But then also academically, I was able to stay pretty good and make good grades and stuff like that. So, as things went on, I ended up going to Kansas State and played football at Kansas State. But I went in as kind of a pre-med, pre-health

kind of major. I knew I wanted to do something healthcare-wise, but wasn't really sure. And so for me, my sophomore year is when I really decided the direction I wanted to go. And I chose dentistry based upon a couple things that I thought were going to be important to me at the time. And one would be that I could be my own boss, set my own schedule. I can work whenever I want to work, which would then give me more freedom to have flexibility with my family and be able to do things with them. So I knew in medicine that pretty much is non-existent. You know, you're 24-7 on call. You're with the hospital.

You're doing all7 on call. You're with the hospital. You're doing all these different things. And unless you're a plastic surgeon or something like that, you're not your own boss. You're directed by someone saying you do it this way and that's just how it is. And I didn't want that. I love the idea of having my own independence in that. And so it wasn't that I wanted to have my hands in people's mouths all the time, but I wanted the result of doing that, I guess. So went down that road and got in dental school,

did that whole thing in Kansas City, did an extra year of residency, getting some specialized training in a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. And then after that, the goal was, and at this point I was married and had two small kids. And so I wanted to come back Midwest, which is where I was comfortable. Because growing up, it was Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas,

kind of right in that area. And so I wanted to come back to Midwest, find a nice little practice in a smaller town to raise the family, but close to a larger town to be able to do things. And so I found a practice in Claremore, Oklahoma, which is just outside of Tulsa. Okay. So Claremore is about 16,000 people. It's not bad. It's kind of like Lockhart. Yeah.

And it was prototypical, small town atmosphere. Everybody knows everybody. Education at the time was pretty solid, or the school system, I mean. And so I found this practice and started there and got into the realization that, you know, we've learned all this stuff about teeth and oral health and all these different things from dental school, but really nothing about running a business. And so what I focused on intently for the first years of my career

was learning business skills, learning practice management stuff, learning how to be an entrepreneur, learning how to not just do teeth, but to build what my vision was of having a practice that would support me in a way, my family in a way that would give me, you know, flexibility in life. You know, because I think that plays such a role in everything is if you're just tied into one thing so intently that you can't have freedom, then that's exactly what I didn't want. So yeah, I just kind of started down this road to create that and was in Claremore for a long time, sold that practice and started a new one in Tulsa and was in Tulsa for quite a few years. And then sold that practice and ended up in Austin now.

So in a nutshell, that's kind of how that all got me to where I'm at now. Yeah. Talk a bit about some of the, not detours necessarily, but there are doctors that you go see at a general practitioner's office and they might be able to see you for seven, eight minutes, whatever the runtime is now. And they're basically learning whatever new medications are out, that kind of stuff. They're also strapped for time. They're doing the best they can. Then there's other doctors that want to get a specialized in functional medicine, or they want to take a deep dive into homeopathy or any of these other things where they say like,

maybe this could be a way to differentiate myself, but also add to the continuing ongoing education of what it means to be a doctor. Talk about some of the additional things that you went through in dentistry to really see things differently the most? Well, you know, so I'm getting started in my practice, early 90s, mid 90s, along in there. And still at that time, you know, as far as doing a filling on a tooth or something like that, it was the traditional old silver mercury fillings, and that's what you did. Tooth colored materials were introduced. They still were far less than 50% of the restorations that were being placed. Much of that dealt with the older mentality of this ability to bond to tooth structure couldn't work or didn't work.

And so you just had to keep using the mercury fillings. I don't know about you, but the idea of having mercury in your system didn't make a lot of sense to me. But that's, you know, that's what's jammed down your throat. That's what the educational process made you believe that this was okay. Unless you had enough to you to use your own common sense to say, wait a minute, there's still mercury here. And so from the very beginning, I had a problem with that. And in looking for ways to get away from that, I ran across a guy who then became, you know, one of my most influential mentors throughout my career, a guy from Las Vegas named Bill Dickerson.

And at the time, he was using a tooth colored material instead of placing mercury fillings and was showing great success with it. And so I thought, you know, I need to go check this guy out. And so he happened to be doing a weekend in, I think it was Vail or somewhere. So get on the slopes a little bit, do a little bit of learning and combine that. But it's kind of crazy because you talk about pivotal moments in your career. There's still a slide that he showed that I can see right now in my mind that showed a before and after of a tooth that had this normal mercury filling in it, and then one that had this tooth color material in it. And just the difference of, it's like, wow, one looks like a tooth. One looks like it's never

had anything done to it. And then one looks like just this mercury filling. And I thought both from an obvious aesthetic standpoint, from a functional standpoint of the strength of the tooth, from a health standpoint of not having mercury, I said, I've got to do this. This is something that just makes sense. And so I started learning more and more about that kind of thing. That then led to some additional courses that he was doing based on aesthetics, doing veneers on teeth to help smiles and stuff. And so he and a doctor in New York were doing a combined course at Baylor Dental School in Dallas. And so after I had done this initial stuff,

as far as the tooth colored fillings and all that kind of restoration, I took these courses, and for me, when I first took them, it was combined with this picture I still had in my head. It's like the light bulb just went off. It was like, okay, I found what I'm here to do. And so learning as much as I could about aesthetics and size and dimensions and proportionality and different things like that. I went to every course across America I could to learn this stuff. And did hands-on courses and live patient courses. And when I got through pretty much everything that was there was about the time that Bill was starting programs in his office in Las Vegas, which then led to him building a facility that has turned into what we call LVI.

It's Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dentistry. And it started off as a way to teach dentists how to do cosmetic stuff, how to do veneers and things like that. And now has evolved into a full range of courses from, you know, filling, tooth colored filling materials and the science with that and different bonding materials, all the way to completely restoring a person's mouth that has incredible TMJ issues and how you get to that point. There's also courses for dental hygienists. There's courses for sleep apnea and sleep breathing disorders. There's courses about practice management. I mean, it's turned into a full-scale thing where now, since the late 90s when this started, I think the last numbers that I saw, we've had over 10,000 doctors from 52 different countries across the world come in to learn this stuff. And I've been in part of these courses from the very beginning as an instructor.

That now has evolved into Bill kind of semi-retiring, especially from the lecture part of it. Myself and a couple other doctors have taken over all the lectures for these courses. So I'm at a position right now where in my practice, I'm pretty much just doing cosmetic and TMJ type of dentistry. And then kind of running the lecture portion of a lot of the courses at LVI. And all of those things are things that I never would have dreamed when I started my practice in 16,000 population, Claremore, Oklahoma, I would have ever been doing. Cause I just wanted to be, you know, have a good little general practice and raise the family. So it, uh, it's

been interesting to see how this whole thing has evolved over time. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. Some of the things, you know, I had Aubrey and I run Fit for Service. You're, I think, I don't think, what is that called? HIPAA? I think I can say it. Aubrey's a client of yours. Yeah. Alongside me.

That's how I found out about you guys through Alvin Bai. And one of our members in Fit for Service was looking at my jaw. And it was before we started working together. And this is the first thing she said. She's like, I can see where you're biting. I can see how it's not landing. And I had to explain that I had the broken jaw, you know, back on my 18th birthday. And how I couldn't wear my retainer since then. And that shifted a whole lot of things.

And downstream led to some injuries and a whole bunch of other shit. I think she was in Oklahoma oroma or something like that but anyway she had done she basically gone to school with and i didn't know this until later i was like i'm seeing a guy that's actually saying the same things and he actually trained with the guy that can't be more than one dude in vegas that knows all this shit and she's like i know kevin we were we uh we we train together we teach together so that was really cool it's a nice little head nod because you always want a second opinion you know but like it that was really cool. It was a nice little head nod. Cause you always want a second opinion, you know, but like, it was like really cool because there was no, it was such an honest thing of like, Hey, you don't have to go through me, but this is

something you need to look into. And these are the people that I trained under. And then, Oh, you're with Kevin. Awesome. You know? So it was really like, all right, cool. We're in a good spot. Talk about some of the educational pieces. You know, when we were growing up, it was like, you got fucked up teeth, go see the orthodontist. There was no real understanding of why it happens. A lot of people would paint, you know, it seems to me in large part that if you can't figure out what the root cause is, you just say it's genetic. You know, like if we can't, if we don't have it figured out, it's just a genetic thing. You know, it's runs in your DNA. It's in your genes. It's in your family. That's where you got fucked up teeth. Looking into the work of Weston A. Price and even studies like Pottinger's cats,

different things like that, we can see that food and other things actually play a much more pivotal role in mouth development. There's the book Breathe by James Nestor, the book Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McCown. We'll talk airway in a bit, but just in your understanding from what you were taught in school to where you're at now, talk about some of the differences in how people get fucked up teeth to begin with. And what are some of the major issues that come with that?

You've opened up the true rabbit hole here because this can get pretty deep. You know, honestly, there's not probably anything I can think of that I do in dentistry now that I was taught in dental school. It's all come from postgraduate different realms of education, whether I'm learning it on my own, whether I'm taking classes, whatever. But, you know, and it's probably the same in medicine as well, but, you know, the dental school has a job

and that is to graduate the people who are in dental school because if they graduate their people, then they get more funding from the state, from, you know from different grants or whatever to run the schools. When they don't graduate people, then that funding is affected. So the graduation rate needs to be high.

In order to keep the graduation rate high, they need to teach a very specific set of educational things that they can predictably have people pass. Now, what you know afterwards is that all the stuff that you just learned basically was just, I mean, it was enough to get you a diploma. Now go out and learn how to be a dentist. Now, some people do and some people don't. Most continue to do the same old stuff that they were learned or taught, I mean. So the idea of what I learned versus what I'm doing now is completely different. And when we talk about this idea of genetics or what, you know, why things are happening, it just doesn't happen for any reason.

There's always a cause. And whether it be medicine, dentistry, whatever, it's more of a, you know, it's a patch-it kind of thing. You got a problem, here's how to fix the problem. Not, why do you have the problem? You know, so as my practice has evolved, it's gone into more of a focus on why are these things happening? So, why are people's teeth crooked and why do jaw issues occur? Like most things, it all goes back to when you were a kid. And from just coming out of the womb, there's already issues that you can identify. Primarily one being issues with lip and tongue ties and how that affects nursing.

I've got two small grandchildren right now, and both within the first couple weeks of their life had lip and tongue ties released. And the goal there is to—the immediate goal is to obviously improve the ability to nurse. But what it does long-term in their growth is allows the tongue to do what it's supposed to do. And that is sit in the roof of the mouth and act as a stimulus for growth of the upper jaw to be broad and wide and develop the face. And when, in particular, the tongue is tied, and so the little connection underneath your tongue, if you raise your tongue up, you see that little stringy thing there. That's the tie we're talking about.

If that's tight and limits the ability of the tongue to do what it's supposed to do, then the formation of the upper jaw isn't what it should be. So then you end up having adults that, instead of having this broad U-shaped upper jaw, have these skinny vaulted upper jaws, longer faces, because the tongue is sitting down and not up where it should be. That then leads to all kinds of breathing issues. Typically, the jaw will be set back as well. So, that creates a very ripe, if you want to say, opportunity for TMJ issues to come in.

And it's just one thing after another, after another. And it's all connected, although the average person is not going to see that connection off the top there. But something as simple as just having your tongue in the right place from an early age creates the, it's the impetus for everything to follow as an adult. You know, one of the immediate problems as kids run into from tongue issues and breathing issues, I feel is probably one of the main contributing factors that's left undiagnosed in these kids, that the increase of ADHD diagnosis in children, I think can, in many cases, go back to the fact that the kids just aren't sleeping.

Why aren't they sleeping? Because they can't breathe. Why can't they breathe? Well, you bring in food allergies. You bring in environmental allergies. You bring in to tongue issues, you know, anatomical issues. With allergies, then, the nasal turbinates increase. And so that cuts down airflow through the nose. And so if you can't breathe through your nose, you breathe through

your mouth. If you breathe through your mouth and the tongue isn't in the roof of your mouth, it should be to form the growth. And it just, it never stops. So early recognition of these problems with allergies. And you see a kid that goes around and the mouth, the lips aren't together. They're kind of just sitting there. A lot of times you'll see what we call black shiners underneath the eye. You've got kind of a red end of the nose from nasal drainage and rubbing their nose. Many times the tip of the nose will kind of be turned up in an effort for the body to try to get more air into it. But all these are signs that are sitting right in front of the pediatrician,

the dentist who might have some training in this, but it just doesn't get addressed. Instead, it's, you know, take this pill or – Flonase, whatever the thing is. Flonase and things like that. But that's what I was saying. This is a whole rabbit hole thing because there's so much involved with the problems that we're dealing with for adults. And then looking back to why are we dealing with these problems? So it takes a little outside of the box thinking for the practitioner to stop worrying about what's this insurance

company going to pay me for my time and doing what you're supposed to be doing, which is treating and helping and diagnosing your patients with this problem that they have and providing the kind of treatment and service that you would want for yourself or your family, not what is the insurance company going to pay for something or not pay for something. So I'm not even going to do it. Yeah, that's a big one. I mean, it could be a whole podcast in and of itself, and it actually already is. My buddy, Brigham Bueller, who started Ways to Well, they're a telemedicine company here based in Texas. He went on Rogan's recently.

I'll link to it in the show notes. And for whatever reason, Rogan just sat back and let him talk for three hours. And he's worked in every facet of medicine, in insurance. He's been on both sides of the coin then, right? And yeah, he really details that. And it is a major issue in terms of what, what type of services are being provided based on

what is financially available or what, what, what, what is, you know, what is the most likely to be reimbursed or what's going to be the biggest hassle on the backend? Like that is. Yeah. You know, people have this idea that in health insurance, dental insurance, whatever, that my insurance is there to help me. Insurance is not there to help you. The insurance is to not pay claims so they can have bigger buildings and pay their CEOs that much more and their stockholders that much more. They are a for-profit business. And the way you make profits is to not pay for claims. So there's this whole game of trying to work the system in different ways just to get some reimbursement on the doctor's end to pay for procedures, pay for time. And it's always a battle. And it's one that ultimately the patients end up

losing because of the limitations that the health companies or health insurance companies set in store. And, you know, no matter how obvious a situation may be, if it doesn't set somewhere in the guidelines that the insurance company has set for that procedure to fix it, they're not going to pay for it, no matter what. You could have a tooth that's broken in half, and if there's some little clause somewhere that says, hey, we're not going to pay for this, we're going to pay for a mercury filling instead, we're not going to pay at all. The same thing in healthcare. If it's, you know, your blood pressure is going crazy and here's a reason, but we don't pay for that reason, they're not going to pay for it. You know, so their bottom line, you know, is better for the stockholders. They make more money. But some of that too is that I think patients in general,

my, you know, I'm a patient, I have health care insurance. But we just have been taught that our health insurance is going to take care of us. And instead, it should be, I think, should be thought of as more of it's there to help us in, you know, more catastrophic situations. You know, you've got huge, you know, you're in a car wreck or something and your body gets jacked and you've got all these things. You've got cancer. You've got things like that. Not that you've got a runny nose and, you know, you need something to pay for your runny nose. So, it should be more of a thing to help with bigger things, not to take care of every little thing. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And Dr. Bruce Lipton really talks about that from an early age when we're most impressionable. Anytime we get sick, most moms, unless you have multi-generational homes where there's still some local family medicine practices through plant medicine or otherwise where they're like, oh, this is how we remedy these normal childhood illnesses. When that's lost, anytime you get sick, mom brings you to the dude in the

white lab coat. And it happens from the first person that pulls you out of the womb at every time you get sick. And so naturally at a certain point in time, when you're off college or after, and it's like, oh, I'm feeling run down. I better go see the one person that can fix me. There's no thought of A, how did this happen? B, what was I doing that maybe created the correct environment for this to take place? C, why does it keep happening? Because it's usually not something that's a one-off. I mean, I always, having a lot of these issues that you're talking about, airway issues, I always would sinus infections. And the remedy for that was more antibiotics. There's never a look at tongue. There was never a look at, am I a mouth

breather? Probably was. Lots of things, snored for a very long time. So those are all super important boxes to check that not a lot of people know. And I'm excited to have you on the second we started working together because this is something that I've learned about maybe five or 10 years ago, but not to the degree and since I've been working with you, but just the importance of that. Early know, early on with mercury, I forget the, the, what was it called? Uh, smoking, smoking glass or smoking, smoking teeth, something like that. There's that documentary where it showed, you know, they could show like what the mercury just leaching from a, from a cup of coffee, touching it, you know, like just vapor going into your mouth, right into your brain.

Yeah. Um, so I saw those things early on, you know, I was getting into the health and wellness game. And that alone is pivotal, right? That's like the big, that's a big deal. But really getting to the root cause of things has been something that's been so fascinating for me, especially having kids and not wanting them to go through

the same shit that I did. You know, like, all right, give them all organic food, give them some different things, get them to bed on time. What else, you know, what else are we missing here? And, you know, really it's been in the Oxygen Advantage and Breed, some of these other books where they talk about this picture of tongue to the roof of the

mouth, helping with formation, taping your mouth, even if you need to. And right when you said like, hey man, I don't know if you'd be interested in this or not, I'm like, fuck yeah, dude, I've tried this before. It's great. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Talk about some of these, some of these remedies and, and, um, you know, if there's any other stone that we haven't really uncovered in, in this whole health picture, right? Because what you're doing applies, it's very much, it needs to be a part of the conversation in health and wellness as a whole, right? Otherwise it's just, you know, more mask it, more change it, more Flonase, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's just more mask it, more change it, more flow nays. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's start it this way.

I mean, the whole impetus for us to exist is we've got to breathe. One way or another, you're going to breathe. Now, we were built to breathe through our noses, and there's huge advantages to nasal breathing. The primary one would be the formation of what's called nitric oxide. Okay, I know you're familiar with that. But nitric oxide is a tremendously powerful and effective component within our bodies that if you don't have, has very negative effects. But if you do have, has extremely positive effects. And nasal breathing,

there's receptors inside your nose that trigger the formation and release of nitric oxide. Now, you can breathe through your mouth, you get no response from that. So, huge difference right there. Another has to do with one of the hormones that regulates weight loss. If you're breathing through your mouth, again, this hormone is not triggered the way it is. And so one of the things that we typically see in patients that have sleep breathing disorders would be that there is some amount of overweight involved with it. Larger necks where we store a lot of fat in our necks. And the inability really to kind of create a more healthy system is affected just from that. So if we can't breathe through your nose, why can't we breathe through our nose?

Well, there's the thing in the middle of your nose called the septum. And many times the septum is crooked. In my office, we have a head and neck CAT scan that we are able to three-dimensionally go inside the head and look at everything from the shoulders up. And so now there's no more guesswork just trying to look from the outside. We can see structurally what's going on inside. I mean, see so many deviated septums. On the side of the septums are areas called turbinates. Turbinates are natural

components within your nose that can be affected primarily by allergies. And when they are, they enlarge. So if you've got a crooked septum, you've got enlarged turbinates, what you've essentially done is dramatically reduced the ability for air to flow through your nose. It just cuts down that volume tremendously. So if I can't breathe through my nose, then I've got to breathe through my mouth. And that's kind of where a lot of this gets thrown off. So I'm going to work with an ENT here in town that does a lot of procedures. And it's typically just in the office. It's not much recovery to it at all of correcting deviated septums and doing what's called a turbinate

reduction. So essentially we're increasing that airflow ability to go through your nose so you can have the proper oral posture of lips together, teeth apart, tongue on the roof of your mouth, breathe through your nose. When that happens, and again, we go back to, is there a tongue tie? Because your tongue has to be in the roof of your mouth. So that's part of that overall diagnosis as well. But if you can get into the proper oral posture, that's kind of like the groundwork for everything else to be built upon. Now, if you can't breathe through your nose and you can do some of the other things, or you can't get your tongue in the roof of your mouth, but you can do some of the other things, until all of those parameters are met, there's going to be compromises somewhere.

So maybe in a process of helping someone feel better with their TMJ type issues, then maybe you only get 50% better or 60% better or something like that because there's still things that haven't been addressed. And one thing I talk about with my patients all the time is, hey, I can do certain things, but this isn't just about me. I've got a team of people that have different pieces of the pie that all of them have to be addressed if you want to get to this position out here somewhere where you think you're going to feel better. So if you do part of it, you'll get partly better. If you do all of it, there's a good chance that we can address all of these issues that you've brought to me here, but I need your input.

I need your homework to do the things that we're talking about. So, you know, when we talk or I mentioned the ear, nose, and throat doctor I work with, there's certain physical therapists that we work with that do certain things. There's what's called a myofunctional therapist, which is a tongue specialist. I mean, who knew that even existed, right? And this lady is awesome. She's like the tongue goddess. She's so enthusiastic about tongues. It's pretty funny. She's really good. But I mean, no one ever thinks about your tongue, but this lady goes through a process of teaching you what your tongue should do, what it shouldn't be doing, and how that affects, you know, or the benefits that you get from it. Make you better in the bedroom, probably.

It does possibly to and to, especially getting the tongue released, I guess. But, you know, it's not just a one-of solution. There's just all these different things. But it all goes back to you can't diagnose the problem if you don't know what the problems can be you know if i can't see these different things if my education doesn't isn't broad enough to understand that you know the ringing in and ear congestion ringing in in the ears could be related to your jaw now how did how does that even work well there's a whole process where that's a very common problem with TMJ type of symptoms. And the connection there is once you know it, it's very obvious, but you would never think of it unless you had that kind of training.

What does the position of my head in relationship to the rest of my body have to do with my jaw? You know, how can my bite be off, but there's a reflection of that in my hips? You know, how does, it just sounds crazy until you start to put all these pieces together and learn the connection with them. And that's sometimes hard for patients. Initially, they may be a little skeptical about how that all works, but as they kind of go through our process and learn more and more about it, it begins to be very obvious, especially when they start seeing improvements after going through the treatment. You know, neck issues and jaw issues. I mean, anyone who has a TMJ issue, I guarantee

you have neck issues as well. You know, another common one is headaches. You know, headaches are so profound and, you know, migraines, regular headaches, whatever those are. And the result is here, take Imatrix, take these different medications where I can tell you if you can support your jaw in a relaxed muscular position and have your neck and head position aligned where it should be,

I can pretty much guarantee you the majority, if not all of your headaches will go away. No pills involved. You know, it's the complete antithesis of what the modern approach is. Take this pill, you'll be better. Well, instead of that, why don't we step back and look at things from a structural standpoint and understand why this is happening. I mean, it's not genetic.

It's not just because it just is. There's always a reason for it. So, you know, my job in this is to try to figure out what those causes are and then affect or have effects upon the structural issues that then allow fixing the jaw part of it or fixing the teeth, if there's things involved there, really becomes pretty simple at that point. But I can do that without the other. I can fix, you know, try to fix jaw position and the bite and how that all works. But unless I address these other structural issues, the result's never going to be the same. So it's very involved and it has so much not to do with just teeth.

I mean, for me, the teeth are the easy part. It's addressing all this other stuff that really makes a difference. I'm sure once you've done the scan and you start looking in there, and it's kind of like you get to see the puzzle pieces all start to fit in the order that they start to fit. And I imagine teeth for you is just such a gimme at that point, once we've addressed all these other things and looked at them in the way they need to be looked at.

Yeah, you know, with the tooth stuff, at this point, I can pretty much close my eyes and work on the teeth. That's the easy part. But, you know, where those teeth fit together and where the jaw position is and how is the nasal breathing and how is the head position on top of the spine

and those type of things, that's the part that really takes coordination and thinking and figuring out how this plan goes together. And that's the part too that really only comes from additional training outside of dental school, outside of traditional dentistry, because it's not there. You know, it has to be through, well, like through the education courses at LVI and outside sources like that. That's the only place dentistry can advance. It's not through organized dentistry, organized education.

That's probably the same with a lot of things. The forward thinkers, the people that are always out on the cutting edge aren't necessarily in the schools teaching the students this kind of stuff. They're out, you know, trying to help their patients, trying to help other dentists understand these advances that are going on. And become maybe somewhat humble of your past to have that desire to keep learning and keep growing and not just depending upon the same old thing, the same old way. And I think that's one thing that I've always done is just have this open mind upon, you know, I know some things. I don't know everything, but I want to get there. I want to have the ability to help my patients

get through some of these things. Early in my career, I swore I would never, ever work on people that had TMJ problems because they're all crazy. It's true. I've got some family members with TMJ. I will, yeah because they're all crazy. It's true. I've got some family members with TMJ. I will, yeah.

They're all freaking nuts. They've got all these complaints, and I can't fix them. Well, why can't I fix them? Well, number one, dental school, I didn't learn anything about TMJ. I mean, just very basic, rudimentary stuff, which is the case with the majority of dentists. They just don't know anything about it. But because of that, you look at it like, well, it's not me. It's them. The patients are crazy. They're just nuts. Send them to the shrink and

let those guys handle it. But then when you start to learn this stuff, you realize that if you walk around for days and weeks and months and years in pain, you're going to be freaking crazy. You're going to be living in a world that, you know, it just wears you down. I've got two patients right now in my practice that, and this isn't uncommon. You know, how far these two went was unfortunately more than the normal. But many times, TMJ kind of patients will come in and they've been to this guy and that guy and another one and another one, and no one can help them.

And they've got different appliances that have been made. They've got different medications they've been on. Nothing works. Or it works a little bit, and then it doesn't work. You know, there's just no relief. And so, they just start to kind of slowly spiral a little bit, and then it doesn't work. You know, there's just no relief. And so they just start to kind of slowly spiral down and down, and they get to a point where they're getting kind of crazy, and they're getting a little desperate. But these two patients right now in particular that I'm talking of, I find out a little bit in the treatment,

and after we're starting to get some symptom relief and pain relief, and they're feeling better, and they're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, they both had discussions with me that if this didn't work this time, then they were going to commit suicide. And, I mean, that's powerful. And the ability, because, you know, if you're in certain aspects of medicine, you're dealing with life and death maybe more frequently. And I don't want to overstate this, but I think to be in that world, you have to kind of compartmentalize things. And otherwise, it's going to have such a draining effect upon you.

But, you know, to think as a dentist, you're dealing with life and death. That's not on the playing field anywhere. You don't do that until you get into this kind of stuff. But to realize that some things I'm doing to help these people may have actually saved their life, that gives you a whole different perspective on what you're doing and the importance of me continuing to learn more about this TMJ world that I'm so involved in now

that I used to think I'd never be a part of. But, I mean, that's huge to think that the, how this, how these appointments went. You know, if I didn't do something right and they didn't get better, there's a good chance that these people are dead now. I mean, one of them told, who happens to be a nurse, she said, I'd already planned it out. I knew where the drugs were. I knew where the people were going to be at a certain time on my shift. I had my plans. I mean, that's, yeah, I mean, it was that close.

So I can't remember why I got started off on that tangent, but it's just dealing with pain takes people to places you'd never think possible unless you've been there. Yeah, I've had a significant amount of injuries in my career and different things like that. It's the chronic shit that weighs on you the most because it's like a five-pound vest that you have on every single day. And then one day it's a 10-pound vest. One day it's a 10-pound vest. One day it's a 20-pound vest. And even working with my buddy Alex Rubchinski, he was a Czech professional, but on the podcast,

he's come through your spot a couple of times. He was, when we first started really talking about this, because to do everything that I did with you, it's a fucking big chunk of change. It's a lot. And I was basically breaking this down. Hey, if I do it a certain route, if I go a different route, there's lesser things we can do and see how that works. And he's like, listen, until you fix your bite, you're going to run up against these neck issues. I can massage you every fucking week, can massage you every day, but you're going to need that the

rest of your life until you fix this. And Paulech, one of our mentors, always talked about that. If you had a leg that was an inch shorter than another leg, you multiply that by 10,000 steps a day. Now you decide to go for a run, and you're getting 30,000 steps in that day, or you decide to squat with weight on it. You're changing these dynamics, which is increasing this imbalance that you have that's coming from the ground up.

And when we're talking about teeth, that's the same nervous system, but it's from the top down. So it has that big of an influence. And you get into talking a lot about holistic care here. When I broke my jaw, they put a steel plate in, and my right tricep stopped being able to flex. It actually went down. I had to get acupuncture to bring it back online just because it was covering a nerve. And, um, you know, so as you're explaining this, you know, based on where my jaw set after having it wired shut for

six weeks, that changed the shape of my fucking head. You know, like if he told you that right when I got with you, I was like, look at my fucking forehead, man. One side's larger than the other because this whole right side of my face is chewing twice as hard, three times as hard. Who knows? It's doing all the work for 21 years, right? So that 10,000 steps a day from chewing for 21 years, it's going to have consequences.

And I think that's what for me made it a no-brainer was just the understanding that there is a way where we can actually get to the root cause and make it better. But if we don't go that route, it's just going to be, you know, trying to make up and mask, you know, and different things where even if I'm not masking, it's massaged to open it up chronically. Yeah, no, there's going to be compromises. There's going to be compromises. You know, an analogy I use a lot with my patients is, you know, you take your head and say it's a bowling ball.

It's 10, 12 pounds. It's a bowling ball. You take a bowling ball and you hold it in your hand close to your body, 10, 12-pound bowling ball. You can hold it pretty good. As you begin to take the bowling ball away from your body and stick your arm out a little bit, it gets a little bit heavier. And so you have to brace your body differently to hold it there. Now let's take it out a little bit more. Now it's not, it's still 10 pounds, but it's exponentially increasing in weight because of the action of the lever distance between the body and where the weight is. So now your body has to

really adjust to hold that further. So you take the same comparison in the position of your head and how it's aligned on your spine. If you have forward head posture, what has to happen to keep your head from just falling forward? Well, the muscles in the back of your neck and your traps and all this have to contract to keep your head from falling completely forward. When that happens and you have these muscles that are constantly working and never get a chance to relax and rejuvenate themselves, you know, you've got muscles under chronic tension, there's going to be results of that. Pain, tightness, stiffness, lack of mobility. And when that occurs,

then you also have cascading down from that different changes in spinal alignment, hip alignment, all this kind of stuff. So the thing that becomes so apparent in this is that different pieces or different areas of the body are not separate from each other. This whole everything's connected idea

is really, really true. I just thought of something that is really pretty cool, and people can Google this. It's all over YouTube, but there's a guy in California, his last name's Zoggy, who is a big tongue guy. He's an ENT that works a lot on breathing and tongue position, all this kind of stuff. But he does a lot with tongue tie releases. And the thing that is crazy about all this is that the muscle connection under the tongue is part of what's called fascia. Okay, so fascia goes down throughout your body. You can think of it kind of like it's a spider web that kind of fits around all your muscles

and everything inside your body and holds things together. So this fascia has an effect in your body connected to your tongue in this manner. So he's got videos of his patients that are live commentary coming from the patient as he's doing this tongue release. And the common thing that we see is that immediately after the procedure's done, all of a sudden the patients say, oh, it feels like my shoulders have just loosened up and my chest is opening up. You know, there's things are happening down in my torso here that I've never felt that before. It's like

things aren't so tight and constricted anymore. There's one guy that as he's laying in the chair there, his foot has a natural tendency to kind of lean out. And that's just how it is. He can't keep his foot straight. It just, it doesn't go there. It just leans out. As soon as this procedure is over, he looks down and his foot's straight up. So how does doing something underneath your tongue affect your foot? I mean, it's crazy when you think about it, but also a great illustration of the interconnectivity of different areas of your body this way. And so when you take that and think, well, tongue and head posture and neck and jaw and teeth and all this kind of stuff,

if you think about it, it's easy to see now how that's interconnected. You're talking about your tricep not working because of the impingement of a nerve around your jaw. Well, one of the questions that we always ask is, does the patient have any numbness or tingling in their hands and fingers? Okay, well, what does that have to do with my teeth and my jaw? Well, in your neck, there's an area here that the scalene muscles go around called the pterygoid plexus. Pterygoid plexus is a nerve center, and nerves that run through that go down your arm to your hands and fingers. Well, if you've got these muscles that are in constant constriction around this nerve center,

it affects the ability for that nerve to transmit, right? Next thing you know, numbness and tingling in your hands and fingers. You correct head posture, you correct jaw position, the muscles relax. Next thing you know, numbness and tingling is gone.

There's just some crazy stuff like that that makes this kind of fun to deal with, especially when you see the light kind of go on with the patients. And like, okay, this guy sounds a little nuts, but let's try it. And then it's actually working. It's like, oh, okay, I get it now. I can see how this is all fitting together. But it, yeah, you know, it beats doing fillings in people's teeth, that's for sure. No doubt.

Well, I love the fact that not only do I get to work with you, but I get to continue my education learning from people like you. And it's really something that I feel blessed with via the podcast and knowing really cool fucking people that help introduce me to other really cool fucking people. And that's always been such a blessing that I count. I really appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate the work that you've done for me. My neck pain is gone. I had my neck broken in 2012 in a scooter accident.

I've been kicked in the head, punched in the head many, many times. A couple of times, right? It's a serious chronic neck stuff. And I remember just working with the nighttime appliance, bringing my jaw down and forward, going back to see you. And I was like, oh, it was the first time I was ever in my whole life that I could sleep on my back without being a side sleeper.

My whole fucking life, you know, 40 years. And how crazy is that, that, you know, you just put this little thing in your mouth and then you see that kind of almost immediate response. I mean, for you, it had to be like, wow, this is pretty cool stuff. I mean, to fight that problem all your life, like you said, and then next thing you know, it's like, it's gone. It's better.

It's fixed. It's kind of eye-opening, I think for, for a lot of people to go through that themselves. Yeah. The thing that I love about it is, is it is visceral, right? Like there's certain things, um, you know, I remember talking with you about gum loss is, is bone loss. And that's a big issue. It's a bigger issue or just as big as the, as the gum loss themselves. And a lot of that can be from improper bite contact starting to make that bone go away. That was like, fuck, that's a big one. Yeah, that's so big. And within dentistry, oh man, this just gets me going. But within dentistry, there's still a fight as to this thing called an abfraction. So what's an abfraction?

Abfraction, and a lot of people will have this if they check, if you go to kind of the edge of where the tooth and the gum meets, and it's typically on side teeth, you might find a little groove there, a little notch that's developed. And then some people, it's a huge freaking notch. I mean, it's like a chunk of the tooth is gone. But you could have a tooth that has that and the tooth right next to it not have anything. It's a perfectly normal tooth. So what I was taught in dental school, and it's still a very pervasive thought process about that problem,

is if you see this in your patients, tell them to quit brushing their teeth so hard. What does that even mean? You have this thing with that one tooth that you're going to take your toothbrush and scrub that tooth so hard that you're going to remove the hardest substance in the human body with your toothbrush, but not affect the tooth next to it. And how does that work? It's just asinine to think that that's even a concept, but it's still, I don't know numbers, I don't know percentages, but a big number of dentists still think that that's the problem. Specialists, periodontists, gum specialists, many of them say that bite has nothing to do with ab fractions, with bone loss, with anything about that. Their mind is so focused on just the traditional teaching that they can't expand out from that. But the reason that those things happen, the ab fractions, the bone loss

that occurs around teeth from bite forces, is that if the jaw position is such that forces are created that don't transmit through the tooth the way that they're designed to, the tooth will actually flex a little bit. So this gets into, you know, engineering and physics and stuff that people a lot smarter than me understand better. But basically, you know, the teeth were made to receive and give forces down kind of the long axis of the tooth. But if that's off for whatever reason, the tooth flexes and the enamel coating on the tooth gets thinner as it goes to the gum. And so the enamel starts to flake off. So you get enough enamel that flakes off

and that's how those little grooves develop. You can take that same tooth that is having those problems and change the bite force on top of it and won't progress at all. But on top of that too, you can have the more visible abfraction problems, but you also can have bone loss around the teeth as well. And so typically patients will many times understand what gum recession is. So you have receding gums.

The gum is pulling down from the tooth. Well, what they don't also realize is that there's bone underneath that gum. And so if you see gum recession, what you don't see is bone recession. Because the gum and the bone stay in this kind of this constant relationship. So, if gum's down, bone has to be down. Well, I can go to a periodontist, a gum specialist, and have some gum grafting done to give me more gum tissue, but I can't grow the bone back. So, once you lose bone, ultimately, the end result of bone loss is tooth loss. And you can lose enough bone and lose teeth strictly from bite forces. It doesn't have to be from active gum disease where you lose bone.

And the tissue itself can be perfectly healthy. So it's not a disease pattern. It's strictly a force response pattern. But those are some of the less obvious signs that there's a bite issue with TMJ patients and stuff. And one of the early signs that we use to kind of help diagnosis, because it is obvious, you can start to talk about it with patients. You can take a picture, show it to them. When you combine that with the fact that teeth are showing wear, you know, teeth, especially back teeth, there's lots of peaks and valleys and stuff, and many times the peaks are flat. You know, how did that happen?

I don't know. You know, they have no idea. Many times. Well, we know that unless you had some sandpaper back there and just grinding your own teeth off, that something caused this. So, you know, the tooth grinding, clenching becomes a discussion. You combine that with bone loss, with ab fractions. Now you look at CTs and you look at enlarged turbinates inside the nose and you look

at the joint position there in front of the ear and different things that are going on. You start to find all these pieces of the puzzle that enable you then to come up with a pretty good idea as to how you're going to be able to help these people. So it's a little bit of CSI stuff, you know, which makes it kind of fun on my end to put all the pieces together. But we're just using so many different things to come up with this diagnosis rather than just, you know, you've got a cavity, you need a filling. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I'm fascinated by it. It's a holistic approach. Very much.

Further I dive into health and wellness, that really holistic is a big word. It can mean a lot of different things, but really just looking into the whole organism and every contributing factor. And you guys do that right when I got with you and we started diving into different questions around breathing patterns, airway,

all the different things. Have I ever seen an ENT for some of those things? And I had after Cain broke my nose the first time. Cleaned up a bit. So yeah, it's been awesome. And the results have been nothing short of awesome. And I really appreciate you, brother. That's why I wanted to have you on today. Where can people get ahold of you and where can people work with you? Yeah, well, website is thehillsdentalspot.com. We've got a lot of information on the website in regards to TMJ issues. And we've got some good for people that are more involved on the aesthetic side of things. We've got a great

amount of information there as well, a lot of before and after pictures to show some of the cases that we've done. And really, that's the main way. The phone number here locally, 512-347-0044. One thing you'll find if you call is we've got some very highly trained team members that are going to be able to help you decide, you know, if this is the place that you need to be, if we can help you. And if we can't, we're going to know some people that can and can refer you in the right direction. But I think as you found out, the process, it's not like going to the dentist down the street. It's a little bit different atmosphere. It's a little bit different technology that we have.

You know, some of the computer stuff that you get hooked up to is kind of weird and certainly different. Never been through that before. But it's all for a reason, all for a purpose that helps us come up with an idea as to how we can help you give us the right amount of information and get the information really that no one else has been able to get before to come up with some ideas, some options for you. And that's one thing that I try to do is give people options. It's not, you know, my way or the highway. You could do this, and here's the pros and cons. Here's the limitations. You could do something else. Here's the pros and cons.

Here's the limitations of that. You know, and have maybe two or three different choices. We always like to let people know ahead of time financially what's involved so there's no surprises. But the main thing I think is different about what we're doing is just the ability to have a greater amount of success in dealing with this whole TMJ thing that a lot of people have tried to help, but really haven't. And the main difference in our approach is how we address the muscle part of it.

And it's not just teeth and jaw bones and head bones, but it's the soft tissue stuff. It's the muscles. It's the positioning of the jaw and teeth. And that is the part that the normal approach to TMJ that dentists have used never addressed because they're not taught that. So that's, I think, really the key component to why we've had such great success. And some of the options, and this is certainly where you went, the end result is not only you feel better, but you got a great smile to go on top of it. Fuck yeah.

Yeah, so that's always kind of the icing on the cake. Absolutely, brother. Well, feeling my best and being able to sleep on my back. I mean, it's funny. People are like, oh, cool. But it actually is really, really cool when you've got my little girl buried under one arm. Whereas in the past,

I would literally have to sneak away from her to turn onto my side. Then she's going to wake up pissed. I'm not holding her. Now I get to snuggle, lay on my back, and I'm out cold, no snoring, no nothing. Wake up feeling like a million bucks, nose breathing the whole night.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and that's great now for you, but where that's going to pay off is 20 years down the road when you're not dealing with uncontrolled high blood pressure. Your diabetes is not, you know, it's up for no apparent reason. You know, one of the things that we're knowing, finding out so much research on now of the effects of sleep breathing disorders is the contribution that it has with Alzheimer's, certain cancers. Nothing that you're going to feel any different about tomorrow.

But again, 20 years down the road and you're not dealing with all of these different breakdowns of your system, I mean, hey, little thing in your mouth to help you sleep at night is not such a bad tradeoff. Yeah, not at all. Yeah. Thanks again, brother. We'll do it again at some point. Love to. Love to. Thanks. Thank you.