Improving Health Through Breathing and Oral Wellness | Dr. Casey Jones on Whiskey and Wisdom Podcast

In this episode of the Whiskey and Wisdom podcast, hosts Chris Kellum and Tyler Yaw welcome special guest, Dr. Casey Jones, an experienced dentist with a special interest in sleep wellness. Dr. Jones discusses her professional journey, the interconnection between oral health and sleep, and how she helps guide her patients towards better overall health. They also discuss mouth and breath training, oral hygiene, and the benefits of an electric toothbrush. Chris and Tyler also share their personal experiences in improving health and wellness. The episode concludes with Dr. Jones offering practical advice for people to start improving their oral hygiene and breathing habits today.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Presentation

00:40 Exploring the Connection Between Oral Health and Sleep Wellness

01:30 The Importance of Hydration and Water Preferences

04:05 Journey into Dentistry and Sleep Wellness

06:31 The Role of Dentistry in Sleep Disorder Treatment

06:51 The Impact of Breathing and Sleep on Mental Wellness

08:06 The Connection Between Oral Health and Overall Health

09:55 The Importance of Oral Hygiene and Its Impact on Health

10:19 The Role of Dentistry in Treating Sleep Apnea

10:51 Understanding Sleep Studies and Sleep Disorders

11:33 The Impact of Mouth Breathing on Health

12:31 The Importance of Proper Breathing Techniques

19:29 Understanding the Role of Tonsils in Breathing

36:49 The Impact of Tongue and Lip Ties on Breathing

44:46 The Benefits of Box Breathing

46:18 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:31

Welcome back to the Whiskey and Wisdom podcast. As per usual, you have your co-host, chris Kellum, and I am Tyler Yaw. This week, we bring on our special guest.

Speaker 3: 0:41

I'm Dr Casey Jones and I am a dentist. I have been for 13 years. I have specialized in sleep wellness and I started sleep wellness Wilmington here and also the wellness collaborative, because I believe it's all connected and it's never one thing.

Speaker 2: 0:58

I love that. Yeah, it's kind of been the theme of 2023 and how all of the natural health and everything is kind of all plays with each other and bringing everything together.

Speaker 1: 1:10

Yes, um, and this week, because we're talking about life and oral health and the things that are good and or bad for you and sleep. Yes, which I need better?

Speaker 2: 1:23

Don't we all?

Speaker 3: 1:26

And it brings that brings into a breathing too, Right. So I would say that sleep wellness. When they say sleep disordered breathing, I think it would be better called breathing disordered sleep, because it's usually the breath that's the issue, and the airways and there's just so much to talk about. So I usually try to follow whatever it seems like life is leading me to. So, as a dentist, I came home one day and wrote I want to teach the world to breathe and I was like that makes no sense, Cause I'm a dentist but, I trained with Patrick McEwen, and so I train people on breath retraining.

Speaker 3: 1:57

I think it's a huge part of the journey towards sleep wellness.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Oh wow, I love that. So, that being said, we're just drinking water. Yep, you know we like to over explain so that way people better understand what's going on, but we know a little bit more. Do you guys have any your favorite water? That?

Speaker 3: 2:16

you drink.

Speaker 1: 2:17

I've never asked anyone this. I think it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 3: 2:20

Yeah, I don't know if I have a favorite water, but water is kind of my favorite thing. I drink water all the time. But I will say we were just talking about Dr Hillary and she just started me on relight. So I have I think it's pink lemonade flavor and just started trying that. It's in my water bottle, which is actually in the car. But yep, and my kiddos are trying it too. They like it, they seem interested, and so we're going with that. Get those electrolytes.

Speaker 1: 2:44

Huh yeah, I mean I just drink the Costco water or whatever comes out of, like my fridge, which I don't know if it's probably the best water out there.

Speaker 2: 2:54

But I'm a big Fuji fan.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Are you?

Speaker 2: 2:57

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Fuji or Fiji.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Fiji.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Okay, I was like you're drinking film water.

Speaker 3: 3:05

Yeah, we have the reverse osmosis, so we have that in our house too.

Speaker 1: 3:08

This is that. Yeah, I'm not that fancy.

Speaker 3: 3:11

I don't know if that's fancy, but we got it yeah.

Speaker 1: 3:15

I kind of wanted I've gotten it somewhere. I think the bar typically has, like their waters, reverse osmosis and I can taste the difference yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:24

But that's probably my favorite. Don't drink too much of it, though, without putting trace minerals or salts in it.

Speaker 3: 3:31

I really like bubbly water and you know the sparkling water too, and so.

Speaker 3: 3:35

I think I mentioned before we started that we moved from Western Massachusetts and the Berkshires and they had actually outlawed single use water bottles and it was the high school kids that came to the town meeting and explained why. And so I came home and I was like, guys, we are single-handedly killing the universe, and so we were getting all of these bottle waters. You know, for the seltzer water, yeah, and so we bought one of those glass bottles where you can actually make your own and do the carbonation and then you put the flavors in. It's kind of fun.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Oh, that's neat. Do you still do that? Do, yeah, I feel like I haven't had that in like a decade. But I remember when it came out and everyone was like, oh, I need to do this, yeah, and then it kind of like just disappeared, I feel like it's making a really big research and slightly I have noticed it, noticing it more again, that's just something different.

Speaker 1: 4:23

I was like you know I do like some sparkling water. We have spin drips at the house or Topochico. Those are like our two waters that aren't just basic yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:37

So I guess the question I have for you, then is how?

Speaker 1: 4:39

do you get?

Speaker 2: 4:39

into dentistry? And then how does that play into the breath work and breathing? Yeah, Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 4:46

So basically, life is a journey and I have so many chapters in my life, right. So I've always loved science and I majored in physiological sciences in college. But I also always loved dance. So I danced from the time I was three years old and when it came came time to graduate, I didn't want to wonder what if. So I moved to New York City to dance professionally. I thought I was going to do it for one year and one year turned into six and I met my husband along the way on a national tour of my fair lady oh wow. And we did cruise ships together. Tons of fun stuff, got to see the world. But then, when it came time to go okay, I want to start a family, all that other stuff started thinking about what interests me and I really loved science.

Speaker 3: 5:27

And when I was in college, I've been interested in sleep apnea longer than dentistry, so I did research in sleep apnea. It runs in my family. I would be sitting there, watch my grandpa fall asleep and he would stop breathing and then he would like gasp awake and you know all in the chair and I go. What was that? And so we started.

Speaker 3: 5:47

I did research in college and that was really interesting to me, and it was all trying to figure out how we could create a pacemaker for the tongue to get it out of the airway and help people be able to breathe, which now actually exists with inspire. That is one option to treat it. I don't pretend that I had anything to do with it, but it's cool that they've come up with that concept. So then, fast forward to when I wanted to go back into science and I was like oh well, I'll do research, right, that's what I know how to do. So I started doing research at NYU and I was sitting in front of a computer for hours and I was teaching the computer how to look at breaths in their their record of a sleep study, so that it could know which ones were obstructed, and that way it could have the CPAP machine calibrate itself and not have to go back to the dentist.

Speaker 2: 6:31

And I hated it because, there was no people interaction.

Speaker 3: 6:35

I was like, well, this isn't it. So then we traveled together, my husband and I traveled together on cruise ships. I did some more dancing and my mom had mentioned dentistry and I was like, oh, that makes no sense. But then it was kind of scientific and artistic at the same time, so started looking into that, loved it, went to the Arizona school of dentistry and oral health and that's where I kind of really got into thinking that oral health is part of overall health. So from the beginning I felt that way and I just never thought that the two would collide. So more recently, you know, I have pursued the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine. They have a diplomat program, so I just got that status. That's hundreds of hours of extra continuing education on it and how to treat sleep disorder, breathing with appliances.

Speaker 3: 7:18

I've trained in my own functional therapy. I was just seeing so much more oral and systemic disease and even you know I think that breathing and sleep plays a huge role in our mental wellness.

Speaker 3: 7:32

And so if you aren't getting quality sleep, how can you feel resilient If you're breathing dysfunctionally up in your chest? That's going to mimic that anxiety feeling. So there's so many things that come into play, and I was seeing more gum disease, more decay in kids and adults that were having these issues, and so that's kind of what drove me to specialize in this way.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Oh, that's interesting.

Speaker 3: 7:54

Yeah, very.

Speaker 2: 7:54

Yeah. So I've been going on this like health journey in general where I'm trying to like Get everything the best that possible. So my mom works with Dr Hillary, yeah, and so, with that being said, she was like, oh, you need to do these blood tests and get on these supplements. And I took like a few gene tests and stuff to find out, like, what my genes are doing, yeah, and she was like, okay, all that's well in dandy, but I know how much you just like the dentist and you definitely don't go as often as possible. Like you're not gonna be the best ultimate version of yourself If you're not going to the dentist because a lot of the stuff that starts that you have to fix on the back end or happening as a result of not having the best oral hygiene, as a like getting everything fixed in your mouth, and I was like, oh, that's really interesting. So I was glad to bring you one. Yeah, see what I talked to you about that as well.

Speaker 3: 8:37

Yeah, so so many people don't realize that it's all connected and it sort of starts in your mouth so that is the window to. They say your eyes are the window to your soul.

Speaker 3: 8:45

I think that your mouth is sort of the window to your overall health, because when we see More inflammation from gum disease, when we see more decay, then we know that there is an Invalence in the bacteria that's in the mouth, because they're all disease processes which people don't realize. Decay is caused by a certain type of bacteria, gum disease is caused by certain types of bacteria and sometimes that gets off balance. So you have way more bad stuff going on. They need to do the good and there are ways to bring that back into balance.

Speaker 3: 9:14

But so many people are talking about the gut microbiome. Well, starts right here, and so you know there are Different ways that you can help get healthy and even with mouth breathing, if your mouth is open all the time, or even for a third of your life when you're sleeping so many people are sleeping with their mouth open You're gonna have more of a dry mouth. So now you're removing your biggest defense against all those diseases, which is your saliva, to help neutralize things. You're changing the environment and you're gonna get more off balance. So it's again.

Speaker 3: 9:44

It's all connected.

Speaker 2: 9:46

See, that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 9:48

I never like I think of myself as like a broad minded person. I never would have Put like a dentist and like sleep breathing together, because every time like I'm a kid from the south if we go into the dentist, it's like, hey, you get your teeth checked or they're telling you you're pulling teeth, so like I think that's a good thing that we're able to like connect that, because a lot, like I said, a lot of people Especially me and the people I know like you're going to the dentist, it's it's never a good thing. Yeah, it's just like Slut. I wouldn't even call it preventative.

Speaker 3: 10:24

I just get my teeth clean twice a year, right, yeah, and I would love to change that perception right, because there's so much that we can do to prevent now and there's so many things that we can look at the root cause Of what is going on with these things. So, rather than the drill and fill a model and all of that Like why is that happening? Because if you don't fix the problem, you're just gonna get your teeth cleaned. So if you don't fix the problem, you're just gonna get decay again right.

Speaker 3: 10:46

And you said something else about going to the dentist and connecting the sleep and I can't think of it. Oh, yes, I know that they've actually asked all dentists to screen. So the American Dental Association has asked that all dentists screen for signs of sleep disorder breathing because we can see them so clearly.

Speaker 3: 11:04

So, as we're looking in the mouth, we can see like do you have a small airway, just from like literally opening up your mouth? Because I'm doing the oral cancer screening that I do on all the patients. I also am looking for signs of you know, I often will lean the patient back and be like has anyone ever told you that you snore and they'll go. How could you tell that? By looking at my mouth and I'll explain. Like, when you open your mouth, there's no space between your riff of your mouth and your tongue when you're awake, and sometimes that closes off even more when you fall asleep.

Speaker 3: 11:31

So just from the way that you're built, you're high risk for it, and so it just starts to open up the conversation and you start to look for more things. And one of my huge goals is to train other dentists, because dental practices are so busy, we're looking at so many different things, and so if you can use that and be looking at your oral cancer screening and then also doing your airway screening, at the same time, 90% of people 80 to 90% of people are undiagnosed for sleep disorder, breathing and so if we could catch them and at least start to raise that awareness.

Speaker 3: 12:03

I think that'd be so cool.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Oh, for sure. So is there a way to fix, like how you're sleeping or what you're doing to stop snoring?

Speaker 3: 12:11

There's so many things yes.

Speaker 2: 12:13

Okay.

Speaker 3: 12:13

So it? I consider it a puzzle because it's never one thing right. So when you come to see me, we're looking at okay, how, what is your tongue doing? Well, first of all, how are you built? Do you have a narrow arch? Because if you have crowded teeth and a narrow upper arch, the roof of your mouth is the floor of your nose. So if that's more crowded and maybe you were breathing through your mouth the whole time when you were kids so your jaws actually develop in a certain way because of the muscles, so you grew a smaller airway, you grew smaller jaws, but now there's no room for your tongue to be there. It's like having a small garage for a big car, right, it's just not gonna fit and so that's gonna go somewhere.

Speaker 3: 12:49

That's gonna go back into your airway. Or is your tongue weak? It's just like any muscle. It's a very strong muscle, but if it's not strong when you fall asleep it's gonna collapse and it's gonna go back into the airway. And there are ways to train that.

Speaker 3: 13:02

So there's my own functional therapy. That's kind of like physical therapy for the tongue and airway, to help to make it stronger. And then is it, you're breathing. Can you not breathe through your nose? And if you can't breathe through your nose, why can't you breathe through your nose? Can we fix that. But then, once we fix it, do you know how to breathe out of it?

Speaker 1: 13:19

It's not magic right.

Speaker 3: 13:21

If you've been doing it for years, you might need to Re-learn how to do it. Or if you're taking huge breaths and you're breathing through your mouth at night, you're gonna be more likely to collapse the airway because you're not using your diaphragm to keep it open. Or if you imagine a straw and you suck really hard on it, it's gonna collapse, and if you're not breathing as hard, then it's not gonna collapse as much or if you're snoring, you can snore through your nose Right, but if you breathe less hard in you can't make the same sound.

Speaker 3: 13:52

So sometimes changing how you're breathing during the day can affect how you breathe at night and then in the. If you're breathing through your mouth and you're snoring, if you close your mouth you can't make the same sound. So as we open our mouth, we close off our airway because our jaw goes down, but our airway is back there.

Speaker 3: 14:11

And so if you can close the mouth and have you guys heard of mouth taping yet- yeah, I have actually Do you do it I know, so it's a thing, and there's so many different ways to do it and I do it every single night and so there are ways that you can go around your mouth instead of across it so myo tape, for example, or I have tons of videos out there that you can know how to tape it.

Speaker 3: 14:33

Three in micro pour tape you can take a tiny piece and close it off. So some people you know, certainly if you can't breathe through your nose, or if it's a young child or you're sick, there's a lot of common sense that goes into it Right. But if you can, you can't tell yourself to keep your mouth closed. So a little bit of tape, either around the lips to help remind them to close, or gently across, can be a great thing to help people stop storing.

Speaker 2: 14:55

The thing I see on Instagram all the time with the Instagram ads is the hostage tape. I don't know that that is, but that does not sound good, and that sounds like it's not common sense, right. I was like that seems dangerous yeah.

Speaker 3: 15:09

I'm not talking about the dangerous.

Speaker 2: 15:10

Yeah, it was meant for that and it was the reason why they came up with that name, because I looked into it. I was like this is just crazy enough that I have to look into it now. Is that's the reason why they did?

Speaker 1: 15:21

it.

Speaker 2: 15:21

So people like me are like why in the heck is it called this? Why are they using this while they're sleeping? And you click on it and then it goes through the whole like scientific part. It sounds like weird. I'm like I'm not sure how well the marketing technique it is, but it worked for me to at least click on it.

Speaker 3: 15:35

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:38

Yeah, no, nothing you're going to do Nothing, called hostage tape. Oh gosh, no, but I've seen it. I've just haven't done like research into it and I have this feeling that if I put tape on my mouth, that I'm going to pull it off and I'm be missing like half of my mustache and like that's don't use duct tape, that's everything about me. It's like if I lose my mustache, I'll just look.

Speaker 2: 16:02

I heard something else that kind of goes along with like the different ways that you've grown up in your teeth and stuff like that too. I don't know if this is true. This is again something I saw online that a lot of kids are eating stuff that's too soft now, so they're not developing the right type of. I don't know if it's the muscles or the teeth or what it is, but it's making their mouth smaller. Is there any truth to that?

Speaker 3: 16:22

There is, yeah, so you're talking about evolution and epigenetics and so that's affecting how we are growing our jobs and, yes, a lot of it has to do with our diet. So we're just not using the muscles in the same way. So if we're not chewing hard things, we're not. Form follows function, so the muscles will dictate how everything develops.

Speaker 3: 16:41

And if we are, you know those pouches as a mom, we're really really convenient for my kids to suck the food out of it, but it takes out that chewing action and we really want that to be able to develop the jaws in the way that we need to. So, 100%, you are absolutely right about that. The other piece that comes into play as far as like oral health is that a lot of the snacks have become kind of fake food and you know carbohydrates, and so people think of candy as causing cavities, but I would say the goldfish crackers are one of the biggest culprits because, yeah, what causes a cavity is that the bacteria that causes cavities likes to eat any carbohydrates, so it doesn't have to be, you know, candy. So anything that sticks to the tooth is. Every time you eat something for 20 minutes afterwards you get an acid bath. So my husband likes to say that they're the bacteria are pooping acid on your teeth.

Speaker 3: 17:35

And so it starts to make holes, and so the longer you have that stuff stuck in your teeth, the more likely you're going to be to get cavities. So I love to do the Oreo challenge and my kids love to help me with this one.

Speaker 3: 17:45

I'm sure you haven't made an Oreo. And then you look inside your mouth and there's black everywhere. But if you take a piece of cheese, an apple, a carrot, something like that, it's going to naturally clear that stuff out of there. So any of those snacks that are more likely to not have stuff stuck to your teeth, the better they're going to be for you to see, even if you can't brush.

Speaker 1: 18:30

So that's interesting. I saw something about that, and so almost after every meal I try and drink some water and like rinse my mouth out, or I chew a piece of gum, and I know gum is not the best for you, but it is.

Speaker 3: 18:45

Yes, and then, well, if you're going to choose to chew gum, there are ones that have xylitol in it, so that xylitol is a natural sugar and you find it in strawberries and stuff. But it helps to fight the bacteria that causes cavities. They can't digest it, and so there are ones where that's the first ingredient. You can't use it more than five times a day because it kind of causes some stomach upset and stuff and you can't. It's like chocolate for dogs.

Speaker 3: 19:08

You can't have it, you can't give it to your dog, but, yeah, it's great. And same thing. Even there's excler nasal spray, xlear and I love to recommend that for patients because it also has xylitol and it helps to prevent. It helps to fight the virus that causes flu and COVID, and it also helps to prevent bacteria from adhering. It's kind of like saline, but it lasts a lot longer and it's totally natural, so I love to recommend that for patients that might need it.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Overflow natures? You do, yeah, nice, his house is a lot healthier than mine, with my wife and my mother.

Speaker 1: 19:45

Yeah, I mean I will say it. Growing up, I will say my fridge is a lot cleaner with, like, healthier foods, because we, I think, one, the cost of everything is way too expensive, so we make a lot more of our food than I used to. And two, I just I feel like sitting, like we were saying earlier on this podcast, listening to people. I'm like you can't just flip a switch and change everything overnight, but doing those slow tweaks, will slowly help your body get better, and those are the things we've done.

Speaker 2: 20:19

That's what it's like here. Yeah, you have tried changing everything at once. It's not going to stick.

Speaker 3: 20:24

Yeah, it's kind of like atomic habits, right.

Speaker 2: 20:26

Yeah, you guys read that book. It's great. No, not yet. James Clear right. Yeah, I think. I think we have it. I'll give it to you.

Speaker 3: 20:33

That's really good. It's about making those small little changes that cause big changes really, and so like taking a sorry taking a habit that you're already doing.

Speaker 3: 20:43

I talk with my hands, Taking a habit that you're already doing and sometimes attaching something else to it. So, especially when I'm trying to teach people, you know, retraining their breathing, I'm like, okay, well, what are you doing? Could you do this right before every meal? Or you know if you take something that they're already doing instead of? Or you know if they already have an exercise, attaching it to that exercise, instead of trying to find more time in the day, because nobody has more time in the day.

Speaker 2: 21:07

No, yeah, what are two or three things that like the average listener listening right now, that they can do today, that they can start doing something to improve just something in general that you work on or something that you notice a lot of people need to improve on?

Speaker 3: 21:21

Yeah, so let me think about that. I would say that if you're start to notice how you're breathing, so if you are not already breathing through your nose, basically at all times, even when you're exercising for the most part can be breathing through your nose and there's lots of reasons for that.

Speaker 3: 21:37

But then close your mouth and start breathing through your nose. You know, I like to say tongue up, lips together, teeth apart, breathe through nose basically at all times. Okay. And if you have a kiddo and they are not breathing through their nose, see if you can change that, because if they're young you can sometimes change the trajectory of how they're going to develop. And if they have their tongue and their lips and everything else in the right position, sometimes you can have those teeth come in naturally and not it's not normal to have to. It's common to have to have braces, but it's not normal. They should be able to come in if things are if you're eating, you know the harder foods and all that sort of stuff to be able to grow the jaws.

Speaker 3: 22:16

What else would I say? I would say that, hi gosh, I wish that we learned how to take care of our teeth and dental school because I or sorry, in regular school, because some of the things I didn't even learn until dental school, like the fact that decay and other things are caused by bacteria, I didn't know that. I didn't know that as a parent you can pass. Kids aren't born with the type of bacteria that causes cavities. They get it from their parents or their caregivers and so if you are, you know, sharing utensils or cleaning their pacifier off or whatever, then you can pass on that bacteria. So the better health, the better care that you take of your mouth, the better that is for your own children.

Speaker 3: 22:54

And sometimes we put ourselves second, but sometimes it's nice to put yourself first. Right, and if we were learning how to take care of our teeth, so many people do such a great job. I'll often hand people a toothbrush in a mirror or even floss and tell me tell them, show me what you're doing, cause I never assume that they know how, and if they're doing it anyway and I can teach them how to be more effective with it. It sounds so simple, but sometimes people don't know to brush right along the gum line where the pink joins the white. The brushing the teeth really, really well, but most of the cavities, that most of the inflammation in the gums, happens right there at the gum line and people don't realize that gum health is related to heart health. Alzheimer's, preterm birth all sorts of things come from that inflammation that's happening in the gums and we can prevent a lot of it.

Speaker 2: 23:41

So Interesting that was. That's one thing I remember from my elementary school is they always brought in someone from the local like. I don't know if it was a local dentist or what it was, but it was this lady that would come in and she would teach you how to like brush your teeth. And she always said, like make sure it's not just your teeth, and you want to go up and down. And it was. I don't know why.

Speaker 2: 24:00

I remember this, but it was this mouth and you would just go wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, and then they'd move around to like the other side wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. You want to stay in these spots, spots of your mouth, for 20 seconds each, for like two minutes total.

Speaker 3: 24:11

I love that and I was like yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:13

And evidently it worked, because I still remember it now, 20 years later.

Speaker 3: 24:17

That's awesome, yeah, and a lot of people don't realize when you're flossing that your tooth is kind of like your finger. There's a space between your tooth and your gums, just like there is between your finger and your fingernail and you actually. The reason we want you to hug that tooth and go down is because there's a space there that gets all sorts of gunk stuck in it and that floss can disappear and you're preventing cavities between the teeth and also gum health. So we don't make up that you need to floss.

Speaker 3: 24:42

It's one of those things where you need to mechanically remove that bacteria.

Speaker 1: 24:46

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 24:46

So is there a difference between a electric toothbrush or a regular toothbrush?

Speaker 3: 24:52

I think. So I mean, I don't it doesn't matter to me as long as you are doing it, but I think that it's kind of like having a smartphone versus just a regular phone right, there's so much more that an electric toothbrush can do, and if you just get it in the right place then it can do what it's supposed to do without you coming into the mix.

Speaker 3: 25:08

So usually I tell people to count to three on each tooth so it gives it the time to do what needs to do and get it in all the right positions. But there's a lot of affordable choices these days for an electric toothbrush, so that's I'm thinking, for sure.

Speaker 1: 25:22

Okay, Going back, you were talking about mouth breathing One. I have to say I always thought it was a joke, because then when I was in the military, they would always just fuss at people like you're being a mouth breather, and I was just like, oh yeah, you're just calling people stupid, I mean, and it is. But I'm putting two and two together, I'm like, oh no, they're, they're doing it to as Jess. But they were also trying to get people to breathe through their nose because it's healthier for them. I was like.

Speaker 3: 25:51

Oh, interesting but the perception is that when your mouth is open, it does make you look less intelligent.

Speaker 1: 25:58

For sure.

Speaker 3: 25:59

There's lots of pictures out there.

Speaker 1: 26:00

I feel like there was a question there. Oh no, that's why I thought it was funny, but my real thing was you said breathe through your nose, close your lips and keep your teeth apart, please explain that Like, I understand the concept, but like why would you want that?

Speaker 3: 26:16

Right. So the first thing is sometimes tongue position. It's even more important than whether your mouth is open or not, because sometimes the mouth will be open but people are still breathing through their nose. That is possible, but that also means that the tongue is enough to the roof of the mouth. So if you think of it like clicking right, you want that tongue to be suctioned up to the roof of your mouth and that will usually mean that your mouth is also closed.

Speaker 3: 26:38

Now, we don't want you clenching your teeth together, so it'd probably be better for me to say lightly touching. But you wanted to get tongue up and then put your lips together. But so many people are clenching their teeth together so you want them to be lightly apart. And usually, if you are suctioning that tongue up to the roof of your mouth, most people and there are some that can do this, but most people can't clench their teeth and have their tongue up to the roof of their mouth at the same time. Suctioning it up kind of takes that off of there and then breathing through your nose yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Interesting. You were munching in it and my brain was like understand the reasoning, but I want to know why.

Speaker 3: 27:17

Yeah Well, and clenching and grinding is such an interesting thing because there's stress, there's how the teeth fit together. But then also now we know that the body is smart and especially at night, if you're struggling to breathe, the body will kind of try to do CPR and move that job forward to open up your airway and be able to breathe. And the teeth get in the way. So one of the signs of sleep disorder breathing is clenching and grinding broken teeth, chip teeth, all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1: 27:43

So mouth guard could help.

Speaker 3: 27:45

Yes, mouth guard can help, but if somebody actually has sleep apnea, so a huge part of it is figuring out what's the diagnosis. So having a sleep study is their sleep apnea. Because if we put a traditional night guard just to protect the teeth in there, a lot of times it makes sleep apnea worse because there's less room for the tongue. A lot of times it helps to relax the jaw, which is by design. We don't want you to be clenching and grinding, but if you relax the jaw, sometimes your mouth will open or the jaw will fall back into the airway, making you even harder for you to breathe. So there are different types of night guards or mouth guards that can reposition the jaw, help to keep it from falling back, which is a treatment. It's an actual treatment for sleep apnea. So some people can't tolerate positive airway pressure or maybe they need both to help keep the airway open. But it helps to prevent that grinding and to open up the airway at the same time, and that's one of the things that I do.

Speaker 2: 28:42

So what is a sleep study?

Speaker 3: 28:44

Yeah, so there's different types. One is if you think of the person that you see that has all those electrodes on your head and stuff, and so it's actually measuring the brain waves.

Speaker 3: 28:54

When are they asleep? There's different stages of sleep and so it's recording. Are you stopping breathing, okay? So sleep apnea essentially means obstructive sleep. Apnea anyway means that something closes off the airway to prevent you from being able to breathe. So an apnea is when you stop breathing for 10 seconds or more, and a hypopnea is when you're breathing badly for 10 seconds or more. So it's the number. We do met, we do studies and it can be a home sleep study also which are really really good and easier sometimes to be in your own bed.

Speaker 3: 29:25

But it's measuring how often do you either breathe badly or stop breathing at night. So you'll hear an AHI, which is an apnea, hypopnea index and it's you know, if you have sleep apnea. It starts at five times an hour and goes up. So there's mild, moderate and severe, or stage one, stage two, stage three. So if you think of if you're stopping breathing let me see if I can do my mouth right but I think if you're stopping breathing every five times an hour, that means every 12 minutes throughout the night, right?

Speaker 3: 29:57

That you are struggling to breathe in some way, which is a lot. If you think of it that way, and it goes all the way up. I've seen it all the way as high as like 80.

Speaker 2: 30:06

Is the highest set at hmm, can you imagine.

Speaker 3: 30:09

And some of these people aren't even waking up at night, so they don't realize that they're struggling to breathe all night. But it can absolutely increase your risk for stroke, for type 2 diabetes, for Alzheimer's, for so many things.

Speaker 2: 30:23

I'm sure you're just not getting a good sleep too, if your body's always fighting for air.

Speaker 3: 30:27

Right, yeah, and you're never. So. The time that you're most prone to it is during REM sleep, too, when everything relaxes. You're meant to be paralyzed so you don't act out your dreams, but that's going to be when you're more likely to have your airway collapse, and so a lot of these people aren't getting into that deep sleep either in three, or especially REM, where it really helps to, you know, clean up the brain and all of that.

Speaker 3: 30:50

So, yeah, it's kind of like getting junk sleep. So they might be sleeping, but it's like junk food. It's not quality sleep that makes you feel rested.

Speaker 1: 30:58

So they'll wake up exhausted. So question for you Do you see a correlation with people who are overweight versus people who are more in shape? Or is it just like? Hey, you have plenty of people who are in shape who still have this issue?

Speaker 3: 31:15

Yes, that's such a great question. So, yes, there is a correlation between weight and the fact that we can actually even gain weight in our tongues, as crazy as that sounds, and then also in our neck, and so both of those things are going to affect the airway.

Speaker 3: 31:27

But it's a common misconception because there are so many young, fit females, there are kids that actually have obstructive sleep apnea, and so we are not catching a lot of these people because we're like no, you should be fine, but for me, if I'm on my back, I have moderate sleep apnea or stage two. I stopped breathing 17.5 times an hour and I don't really. There's something called positional sleep apnea.

Speaker 3: 31:50

So if you're, on your back, you're going to be more likely to have it collapse. But if you lay on your side then you don't have gravity coming into play. So you know that can be one treatment. But sometimes it's just how you're built. Remember how we talked about the tongue and the roof of the mouth. If they're really close together, that just makes you more prone. There's so many things that come into play with it and I've been a dysfunctional breather my whole life. I had asthma, allergies, all that stuff growing up, so I just never knew it because I seem fine breathing.

Speaker 3: 32:19

But yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:20

Interesting.

Speaker 3: 32:21

Yeah, I'll have to.

Speaker 1: 32:22

I will actually have to come see you because I personally diagnose myself for everything and I've noticed I'm like well, if I'm on my back I will snore. If I sleep on one side, I'll snore less.

Speaker 2: 32:36

If.

Speaker 1: 32:36

I'm on this side, I don't snore at all and I'm like there has to be a way to fix that.

Speaker 3: 32:41

Yeah, yes, there are ways to fix that, and the interesting thing is there's snore apps too. So sometimes when I'm asking that question, they'll be like I don't know if I'm snoring, and so SnorLab is one of the free ones that you can download and then sort of get some objective data on am I snoring, how loud am I snoring, what happens if I do this and you know, kind of do your own little research too.

Speaker 1: 33:02

I know when I snore. Oh, because my wife hits me and I wake up. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2: 33:07

That's the only time I know. I have an Apple my Phone too that like manages my sleeping and snoring and stuff too, and I would keep it, keep it right there. And so it's like I snored this much today and I've realized too, like, oh, it's because I was sleeping on my back today, or it's like, oh, I didn't snore at all, I'll sleep you on my stomach or whatever else was going on. It even tells you if you're talking in your sleep and it'll record you and all kinds of weird stuff.

Speaker 1: 33:30

Interesting On your stomach.

Speaker 2: 33:33

I don't like it, but I can.

Speaker 1: 33:36

Sorry, I'm just looking. I'm like I just I know people do it in my head. I'm like that just seems very uncomfortable.

Speaker 3: 33:43

Well, I did it for years until I had kids, and then I couldn't really sleep on it. I was like I had to learn a new way, but I thought it was comfortable at the time.

Speaker 1: 33:50

Interesting.

Speaker 3: 33:51

Yeah, and in kids. So you know I said I was just functional breather my whole life so I used to suck my finger. That can be a big sign that the kids are trying to open up the airway. So this helps to bring the jaw forward, kind of tongue. And I was super messy sheets right Like. There's even pictures of me where I've got one leg on the ground but I'm still sleeping. I just toss and turn. They called me floppy and you know. So that's another sign that these kids are kind of not getting that restful sleep.

Speaker 3: 34:19

I had tonsils and adenoids removed when I was little, so all these things that you know we think they're going to grow out of it, but they don't necessarily grow out of it. It actually gets worse over time. So if we can catch it and redirect it which is one of the things I do too you help. There's like functional appliances that can be used. We can expand the air, you know. We can expand the jaws and stuff. There's some really cool things that can be done early on instead of waiting until the traditional like 11 years old to start braces and stuff.

Speaker 2: 34:48

Do you believe that, in general, people are getting their tonsils taken out too soon and too often?

Speaker 3: 34:54

Oh, that's such a hard thing, because I think that you know so. If you're breathing through your nose, it does all these cool things to filter the air, and if you don't, if these kids are breathing through their mouths, then that's the only thing that's available to filter our filthy air.

Speaker 3: 35:07

And our air is really dirty and so they're trying to, but they're working overtime and they're getting really big. So if you can change that child so that they can breathe through their nose sometimes it gets smaller and it's not the only reason. But if you can't and that kid is struggling to breathe at night, then I'd rather have them have their tonsils out, learn to breathe correctly and then, you know, have them be able to. You know you just want them getting that oxygen.

Speaker 3: 35:32

That they need at night, and that means the tonsils come out. You know, I'm still alive.

Speaker 1: 35:36

And so there's contra.

Speaker 3: 35:37

they go back and forth all the time with those and it's it's hard to say it works. You have to work in a team with an ENT and their position, and I think we can't work alone. We gotta figure out what's the best for this individual person, and that is fraud. What are you Googling?

Speaker 1: 35:55

Sorry, I have my computer.

Speaker 2: 35:56

Are you looking at Mal and Patty.

Speaker 1: 35:59

No, I'm quite literally I had no idea what your tonsils did Like I always knew people like, oh hey, I had to get my tonsils out or you need them out. And I'm like what, what are your tonsils for?

Speaker 3: 36:10

Yeah, and your tonsils are like back in the back of your mouth, but then you also have your adenoids, which are up in your nose, and so those kiddos that are struggling to breathe through their nose. A lot of times their adenoids are huge, and so if you can get those out of there, I mean, think of it if you bring up the point, how we're growing these smaller airways, so we would love this garden hose to be able to breathe through, but it's more like a straw or, even worse, a coffee stirrer these days. And then if you throw a couple of pebbles in there, those are those big tonsils. How can you breathe? Right, there's no way for that air to get through there. And so trying to figure out how can we get that person breathing and then retrain them, because tonsils can grow back.

Speaker 3: 36:48

And so it depends on who you ask and who removes them. So I think the adenoids are more likely to grow back than the tonsils themselves, depending on how they're removed. But they can. They oftentimes don't remove everything and if they have it that cause them to get big, doesn't get removed. Then they can grow back.

Speaker 2: 37:03

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3: 37:04

And same thing with like ooh, nancy, look Okay. Same thing with nasal surgery. So if we remove, we reduce the turbinates. Not we me, I don't do that but they can grow back too. They can get inflamed again, and so sometimes people have had multiple nasal surgeries to correct and get the structure how it should be, but they still can't breathe through their nose. So it goes back to that whole. I wish that breath retraining was a part of all of these procedures, because it's not magic. If you've been breathing that way for 30, 40, whatever years, all of a sudden you're not going to just be like, oh, I can breathe through my nose, and so now.

Speaker 1: 37:38

I'm going to do that all the time, right? Yeah, they're probably going to be like oh, this hurts right now. I don't want to do it.

Speaker 2: 37:44

Right, so do you also work with lip ties and tongue ties?

Speaker 3: 37:50

So I am not. So the first step to a lip tie or a tongue tie is myofunctional therapy, that physical therapy for the tongue or the airway. Because if we remove a tongue tie right away, so for people who don't know, there's like a tight attachment under your tongue.

Speaker 1: 38:06

All right.

Speaker 3: 38:07

And so for some people it's tighter and they can't move their tongue up. So they can't. Sometimes it affects nursing swallowing it may affect in adults. There can be some neck and back pain that go along with it too. So it's a really interesting thing. But only if there's a functional problem with it do we have to address it. And so if we can train that tongue, sometimes you just never use that muscle in that way to be able to suction up and get up into the roof of the mouth. So the first thing is how well can we get that tongue moving so that when we do release it it's not this crazy tongue that all the stuff falls back into the airway and you don't know what to do with it? So I'm doing the mild functional therapy part of things, and then there are some other dentists in the area and there are some ENTs that are releasing that tongue attachment and lip ties and stuff, and you can even do it as infants, which is great.

Speaker 2: 38:56

Yeah, that's how I've heard of it, so my son wasn't able to nurse properly because of it, so he had to get it. It's called a revision or something. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 39:06

And it's great because I wish they were looking at that with all kids right. And sometimes you don't know why they're struggling to nurse. And then, as a mother, you might feel like, oh, what am I doing wrong? You know, but I had my son struggled, whereas then my daughter had no issue, and at the time I didn't know about tongue ties, but I was the same person.

Speaker 2: 39:27

So I'm not doing anything different when I came out knowing how to do it.

Speaker 1: 39:30

So yeah, that's. I liked it because I'm just getting there. I know you've done a lot in your in your life, so my question for you currently is what would success look like for you going forward, like in business or in life?

Speaker 3: 39:51

Yeah. So I think that my biggest life goal is to make a difference, and I want to do more than my own two hands can do, and so that is why I'm so passionate about teaching and my son, who I love. He's one of my best teachers. He's such an old soul, but he he helped me come up with. If you go to my website, sleep on this Wilmington, and you see the little it looks like a cursive I. Essentially it's meant to be an I and an E at the same time, Cause at one point I was thinking of doing an app and I was like well, nobody knows what Dr Casey Jones is, so what would I call it?

Speaker 3: 40:28

And we're on the beach walking around. He's like well, mom, you're always saying that you want to inspire and empower people, but what if we did I? I and I was like well, honey, one of those starts with an E.

Speaker 1: 40:39

But yeah, what if? And?

Speaker 3: 40:41

so we started drawing in the sand and that's when we came up with the cursive. It's a cursive E with an I on it. So I think those are my things Like if I can inspire and empower someone to make a change in their life, that then maybe even makes another change in someone else's life. I'm also a very strong person of faith, which sometimes, you know, sometimes it's hard to trust that there is a plan. I've been redirected multiple times, but I think that success looks like being there for the ones that I love, being true and my authentic self, not feeling like I have to fit in because I see things differently sometimes, and having the courage to maybe go forward in a little different. I sort of have a different vision for what I think that dentistry could be, and one of those steps is starting sleep on a swimming tent, but I think it's bigger than that and so seeing, trying to have the courage to see where that leads and what that might look like.

Speaker 1: 41:41

I like that.

Speaker 3: 41:42

Thanks.

Speaker 2: 41:45

And so, with that being said, one of my last questions is if you could tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

Speaker 3: 41:51

Don't worry so much. Yeah, it's a good one.

Speaker 3: 41:54

Yeah, it's all going to work out. I think that you know my younger self. There's so many things as you start to learn more about yourself. And you know, like I said, I love books, right, so there are. I was so hard on myself, so serious. You know I would be a perfectionist and overachiever. People, please, are all those things and you know that's not my true self. Those are all pieces of me. I do love excellence and all the other things I can't take out loving to learn, but at the same time it's like it's the joy and the dance and the light and you know all of that that really makes up me, and when I don't get to have those as part of my life, then it's not. I am not in a happy place.

Speaker 1: 42:35

Right, yes, it does. So a few more questions, so, round things out, most of them are kind of silly. So, first off, what kind of dance did you do?

Speaker 3: 42:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:47

You said you went. I've heard of my fair lady. Unfortunately I'm not the biggest theater person so I don't know what kind of dance they do on that, but I grew up on so you think you can dance so.

Speaker 3: 42:58

And so, so you think you can dance, had a lot of the teachers that I grew up dancing with and if it had been around when I was younger I absolutely would have auditioned. It just didn't come around till I was older and I was on Ed McMahon Star Search, if you remember that.

Speaker 3: 43:13

Yes, so, but the types of dance that I loved were jazz was my favorite, but I did it all. I tapped ballet, hip hop, lyrical, I tumbled what else is there? Even when I was on cruise ships I did some salsa, some Argentinian tango. You know, I just, I just love to dance, but I think that the dancing to me dance for the sense of entertainment and like making people happy and smile.

Speaker 3: 43:38

I love to make people smile and so I'm always saying don't forget to smile and dance, because life is always better when I get to dance in the morning.

Speaker 1: 43:47

So so number two Do you think that Ed McMahon was with publishers clearing house?

Speaker 3: 43:56

I don't know.

Speaker 1: 43:58

I can't tell the answer to that but. No, I saw that thing running around and people were like I'm pretty sure he showed up with a big check and he's adamantly like no, I never did this. I'm like, are you sure about that? I remember these commercials vehemently.

Speaker 2: 44:16

What do they call those things? The changes in time and the effects?

Speaker 1: 44:21

Yeah, I feel like we have a lot of those.

Speaker 2: 44:24

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:25

But you said star search and I was like oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that show.

Speaker 3: 44:29

Yeah, that's a long time ago. I was 11.

Speaker 1: 44:31

Oh, wow, yeah, I'm like you look really young, so I wouldn't guess that.

Speaker 2: 44:36

I thought you would have been like.

Speaker 1: 44:37

I was like oh yeah, I was in star search. When I was like four.

Speaker 2: 44:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:41

Super cool like that. And then for all the work and people find you on social media or learn more about you.

Speaker 3: 44:48

Yeah, it's pretty easy. So I'm at Dr Casey Jones, dr C A S, e Y J O N E S and you can find me there on social media. There you can go to link tree. I have tons of YouTube videos to. That can help. I'm also at sleep wellness Wilmington. I just don't post on that one as much, but I do have a website that is sleep wellness Wilmington, and if you go on there, there's parts for both providers and for patients, and so all of the books and the products that I'm often recommending are all on there and part of it and they explain why I recommend them. Or there's some resources for, okay, I want to get a sleep study to see if I have this, and so how do I go about doing that? Because sometimes that's the barrier is that you can't get into your physician to get a sleep study done and you're waiting forever.

Speaker 2: 45:33

So right, yeah. Something that was interesting too is when I reached out to have you come on the podcast. I was looking at your socials and stuff and I think one of them was about box breathing, yeah, and so I saw that I'm like, oh, that's really neat, I need to keep that like my back pocket. And then, literally two days later, I have a performance coach and he was talking about box breathing because it was one of the, like one important things that the Navy SEALs do, yes, and I was like, oh, wow, like I definitely need to start doing this more now that it's just coming full force at me.

Speaker 3: 46:01

Yeah, it's such a cool one because it's meant to make you feel both calm and alert at the same time, and that's why the Navy SEALs use it, and it's so simple. So it's just basically creating a box with your breathing, so you, if you picked four, you would breathe in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, exhale for four counts and then hold your breath again for four counts.

Speaker 3: 46:21

So, but it's also cool because there's things that are called sunrise or sunset breathing. So a lot of people will use coffee in the morning and then wine or something at night to kind of wind down. But you can do part of the box. So if you're doing sunrise, you're going to hold your breath. You're going to breathe in for four, For example, hold your breath for four, exhale and then for four, then breathe in again and hold. So if you're holding your breath on the inhale, that's going to be more likely to upregulate you, which there's nothing wrong with your sympathetic nervous system. We need to do a lot of things where we're in that mode. We just don't want to be in it all the time.

Speaker 3: 46:53

And so if you use the sunset breathing, then it's the opposite. So you would breathe in for four, out for four, hold it for four, because anytime that you're in that exhale for longer you're going to be more likely to trigger the vagus nerve and the rest and digest.

Speaker 2: 47:08

That's neat, good to know.

Speaker 1: 47:10

All right, I love that. Sorry I'm, I'm learning so many things today, yeah.

Speaker 2: 47:15

We are coming up on our time for today, though, so I do want to thank you for coming on out and telling us a little bit about what you do. We've learned a lot today.

Speaker 3: 47:24

A lot of stuff I didn't know too, so that's very good. Thanks, this was super fun. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 47:29

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 47:29

I felt like there was a lot in such a little bit of time.

Speaker 2: 47:32

Yeah, yeah, thank you guys. It was a fun Action pack, super fun.

Speaker 1: 47:36

I just want to say thank you, everybody for listening to our podcast. If you would, we'd love it. If you'd like comment, share, subscribe, check out our YouTube channel. That we got going on and, you know, just loving the support of us and all the local businesses and people we work with.

Speaker 2: 47:51

Yeah, thank you so much for listening and to Chris's point, make sure you check out the YouTube. That's brand new, so like and subscribe, all right.

Speaker 3: 47:59

Awesome. Thank you so much, thank you.

Speaker 2: 48:01

Cheers, cheers, cheers.