Dr. David Shirazi is the founder of the TMJ and Sleep Therapy Center of Los Angeles, he holds multiple advanced degrees in dentistry and acupuncture, and he has traveled the world to find the best solutions for the problems that may be hurting you while you sleep.

Dr. Shirazi joined me to discuss medical science, ancient wisdom, current practices, and how they all intersect to form his view of the best ways to maintain and even improve our health. Healthy sleep is vital to healthy function. But what makes sleep "healthy"? So many of us experience low-quality sleep for years or even decades, and may not even be aware that they have a problem.

Did you know that children who are breastfed are far-more likely to develop proper breathing/swallowing mechanics? Not to mention, better breast-handling skills.

Sleep apnea is an increasingly common threat that affects a growing swath of the population, including kids! But did you know that a commonly administered treatment can literally change the shape of a child's face, causing serious damage that can impair development and cause disordered breathing? No? Well my friend, get ready to learn some new shit.

A big THANK YOU to Dr. Shirazi for being an excellent guest.

Enjoy the show!

Topics/Keywords:

Howard University; Temporomandibular Joint Disorder; craniomandibular orthopedics; polysomnographic technologist; sleep research; sleep technology; polysomnogram studies; sleep labs; first-night effect; China-Beijing International Acupuncture training center; Acupuncture; Taoism; Qi; energy; Human Genome Project; junk DNA; psychedelics; pharmaceutical drugs; eastern medicine; western medicine; preventative care; massage; Japanese needles are the best; New German Medicine; breath; breathing; Sleep health; box-breath technique; fight-or-flight mode; nasal rinse; essential oils; functional orthodontics; nasal breathing; mouth-breathing; evolutionary biology; breastfeeding; Sleep apnea in children; human growth hormone; Nutrition and Physical Degradation; Weston Price; passive self-ligation; holistic health, integrated medicine.

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Breath, By James Nestor [Audible link] --> Click here.

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CONNECT WITH DR. DAVE SHIRAZI

Website https://tmjandsleeptherapycentre.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/DocDavidShirazi

Facebook www.facebook.com/DavidShiraziTMJ/

Linkedin www.linkedin.com/in/dave-shirazi-2281917/

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Music Credit(s):

Still Fly, Revel Day.

Mr. Wilson Visits, Mary Riddle.

They Say I'm Mad, Mary Riddle.

PANTRY DROP (instrumental version), Zorro.

David Shirazi

intro jeff

[00:00:27] And I'm panicking. Oh my God. She's probably looking at me right now. I hope she's laughing. Please be laughing. We've got a great show for you today. My guest is Dr. David Shirazi. Dr. Shirazi is the director of the TMJ and sleep therapy center of Los Angeles. It's a state-of-the-art private practice where practices limited to the treatment of TMD, which is temporomandibular joint disorders, cranial facial pain.

[00:01:19] He has a master's degree in Oriental medicine from Samra university. In 2007, he received the prestigious fellowship award from the American academy of cranial facial pain, an organization dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of cranial facial pain and sleep breathing disorders. He's traveled all over the world, done some really cool education, learned some really cool things.

[00:01:55] Oh man. This morning I embarrassed myself in front of my [00:02:00] family.

[00:02:20] Well, she calls up and her nuts, but the, the trail mix a little pack of trail mix, individual packs, get them from Costco. And, uh, I go to grab one and I reach up there and the box is empty. And, um, just something about the hectic morning, whatever it irritated me and I was, I needed to right this wrong.

[00:03:00] I yelled who did this. , I didn't tell him what it was because I wanted them to wonder, you know, I wanted the whole family's attention. I wanted everybody to stop what they were doing and make their way to the pantry because I had a wrong, that needed to be righted. And that's exactly what happened.

[00:03:42] Uh, remember the other day, when you were talking about how you've been eating so much trail mix, was it you? And he said, no, it wasn't me. When I took the trail mix, there was still one more pack in the box. And I looked at him and I think this kid is telling the [00:04:00] truth and I swing my gaze over to Elsa.

[00:04:25] Why did you do it? And she said, no. And she looked me dead in the eye. And she said, I swear, I didn't do it. When I took a pack, there was still one pack left in the box. And I said, aha. So you both say there was one pack left in the box, but somehow magically there's no packs left in the, and I reached my hand up.

[00:05:24] I do things like that all the time where I feel like I'm on some kind of a righteous anger quest, and almost every time it ends in embarrassment or at the very least shame. Like it never feels good to make your problem. Everybody's problem. Once you're not mad anymore, that feeling where everyone's just kind of looking at you.

[00:06:08] Anyway. It was just a good reminder to do my research before I start throwing around accusations. Like. If you need to contact ramble by the river, you can do that by getting us on social media, on Facebook and Instagram at ramble by the river on Twitter at ramble river pod. And if you want to reach out for business inquiries, guest suggestions, that kind of thing.

[00:07:00] Every single one of those makes a huge difference to the algorithm and it helps to spread the podcast around. I would really appreciate it. And if you leave an actual, like written review, that's even better. They, they send me those, they feel great. I love them. And I really appreciate them when you guys do that, it helps out a lot.

[00:07:33] There's a link at the top of the page where it just says support, click that and follow the instructions. And finally. If you really want to go all out, you can become a subscriber to the exclusive content through Patreon.com/Ramblebytheriver. And through that portal, you'll be given access to bonus episodes and exclusive behind the scenes stuff, early releases, all that kind of stuff.

[00:08:19] So I really appreciate it and I couldn't do it without you guys. So thank you just as a heads up. Although my guest today is a doctor. This show is made for entertainment purposes and should not be taken as medical advice. If you want as medical advice, you're going to have to pay him. So this is just for entertainment.

[00:09:01] And Dr. Shirazi is an expert. So without further ado, please welcome Dr. David Shirazi.

INTERVIEW

[00:00:07] Jeff Nesbitt: Thank you for joining me. Yeah.

[00:00:12] Jeff Nesbitt: absolutely. So first of all, thank you so much for being a guest on ramble by the river. It's great to have you here. And I'm excited about this one. I've been looking forward to it for a long time, because it seems like you have the perfect background and expertise for a guy like me, because I am constantly thinking about the issues of sleep, breathing and TMJ.

[00:00:43] Dr. David Shirazi: No. All I was going to share was, um, you know, in my experience. , when you, like, like when you said you have like your own personal questions and queries and all that, when, when you ask like a [00:01:00] specific question, like, as it pertains to you, uh, by the way, if I don't know the answer, I can easily say, I don't know, I don't have any problem saying I'm ignorant in that subject.

[00:01:30] And it's just flowing. So just kind of say what's on my mind and I just kind of get on with it. I love

[00:01:47] Okay. Do it. Definitely do it and I'll follow you right in. Okay,

[00:01:52] Jeff Nesbitt: All right. So in two year, 2000, you graduated from Howard university college of dentistry. And [00:02:00] in 2006, you graduated from Samra university with a master's degree in Oriental medicine.

[00:02:22] Dr. David Shirazi: is. The MD is just team temporomandibular joint disorders.

[00:02:42] Jeff Nesbitt: We're off to a great start. That's a huge pet peeve of mine. People are like, oh my TMJ, I have TMJ. I was like, yeah, we all do actually have two of them.

[00:03:03] Dr. David Shirazi: Particularly sleep disorder breathing, but he has sleep disorders.

[00:03:14] Yeah.

[00:03:17] Jeff Nesbitt: Um, you're dual certified as a dentist and also in RPS GT, which is a registered polysomnographic technologist. I

[00:03:40] So I didn't renew my sleep technology license. I still opened up my own sleep lab, but I didn't, um, I didn't do that. So I was asleep technologist for five years. Gotcha.

[00:04:03] Dr. David Shirazi: That's exactly right. So asleep technologists conducts the sleep studies, the in-lab polysomnogram studies, but, um, and we even have a daytime, one called an MSLT, um, But, uh, but the vast majority of the time it's in a, it's in a sleep lab at night, something

[00:04:37] And does that create any kind of, uh, confounding variables you have to get them used to at first or anything?

[00:05:05] They become a little bit. Um, like that, um, with

[00:05:09] Dr. David Shirazi: open, but they can be. So what I tell my patients that I offer both in home and in lab testing, and to be honest, my in-lab testing is predominantly research. Um, uh, there's a great number of good sleep labs around me and they all take insurance. I don't.

[00:05:45] Oh, Which is a very niche, uh, subject, but what, when I, when people ask, should I do an in-home or an in lab? The first thing we want to know is, well, we're looking at sleep apnea, right? Snoring, [00:06:00] that's your concern? They say, yes. If that's what they say, then I'll say, okay, when you go away on vacation and you're sleeping in a hotel for the first day, does it take you a day or two to get used to the bedroom and the bed and the lindens and the pillows and all that?

[00:06:48] Jeff Nesbitt: What are the

[00:07:03] Jeff Nesbitt: Okay. And they do the sleep stages through like a. What a, of, one of those, what do they call them? The little mesh things.

[00:07:14] Dr. David Shirazi: no, I know. Believe it or not. So it depends which technology you're using. Like, um, there's one brilliant technology called the endo pact. The name of their device is called watch pat, and they have a device that's so sensitive. It can detect just on your peripheral artery tone.

[00:07:59] And then they [00:08:00] would suddenly let go all at once. And what should happen is let's say the diameter, your normal dammit, or luminous that day, it should immediately double and then go back to normal. Right? If on the other hand, it just opens up like 25% instead of a hundred percent, then that could indicate that you have, , atherosclerosis and hardening of your arteries, which is very indicative of a heart problem that.

[00:08:50] Right. And then the nasal cannula comes down from that. So it just depends on the technology.

[00:09:11] That sounds like a pretty legitimate, well

[00:09:38] So people can come for a few weeks, years, whatever they want to do. And it'll be recognized by the world health organization as a legitimate to be. I had a, I met someone randomly who was from Iran and he was a psychiatrist and he was, hadn't been doing acupuncture on his patients for 30 years. And I said, oh, so you're doing some continuing ed.

[00:10:20] Do you need to have like proper credentialing? So, you know, he had to come to a place like Beijing to get trained, to get certified so that he could continue to do acupuncture for psychology.

[00:10:43] Training center is where all the ancient knowledge has kind of coalesced. And that way they can keep it in kind of a systematic training method, or is it a system that,

[00:11:07] And, you know, prior to that, Chinese medicine was meshed without wisdom, right. And the Chinese government is very much anti religion, right? So they consider Taoism, even though Taoism is a philosophy, they consider down with them a religion. So they deleted, , portions of in terms of training. , and they massacred a number of physicians, um, who, you know, stubbornly.

[00:11:46] Jeff Nesbitt: more of the spiritual aspect of it?

[00:12:07] Is it measuring. She, yeah. Yeah. In fact, in the, um, in Boston, I want to say long time ago, 30, 40 years ago, uh, Dr.

[00:12:24] Dr. David Shirazi: just go into airplane mode? I apologize.

[00:12:45] guard, its tail and it gets the scamper off and lift. So, and then they grow the tailback. If they're unmolested and they have enough food. So this physician put lizard that just had its, , tail taken off [00:13:00] on a plate that could measure electrical conductance and on the plate, he saw an outline of the lizard's tail, what right.

[00:13:44] And when we superimpose these tracks, On the meridians in Chinese medicine, it just, coincidentally just happens to be on the same exact track. So, you know, we could postulate, I don't know if we could ever test for that, but we could postulate [00:14:00] that it's these energetic meridians that carry, uh, the chi, and, and then carry , the direction for blood vessels and nerves to be built on.

[00:14:11] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. That makes total sense. So like I remember in biology learning about the early development of that, like the human early development. So you get your embryo and it turns into your neural tube. And then from there, from there, like the brain stem is forming and the, in the lower parts of the brain are all forming and these.

[00:14:38] Dr. David Shirazi: yes.

[00:14:48] And somehow knows. Would that be a similar philosophy? Like the, maybe these cells are following these lines of chi to otherwise, how would they know that this stem cell, which could be anything, [00:15:00] needs to go and be a bone cell in the skull? And this one needs to go be attendant in the ankle and like, you know what I mean?

[00:15:09] Dr. David Shirazi: mean, it could be, we don't know. Um, we do know that, stem cells, um, if you put stem cells adjacent to a tissue, right? If you put it in adjacent to heart tissue, uh, skin tissue, bone tissue, it will, I don't know about bone tissue, to be honest, um, brain tissue tissue too.

[00:15:47] Jeff Nesbitt: How do you, how do you explain that?

[00:15:52] Jeff Nesbitt: yeah.

[00:15:55] Dr. David Shirazi: for sure. The egg, so the egg is what carries the new genetic [00:16:00] material,

[00:16:02] Dr. David Shirazi: Right. So just from the, uh, cell division, just from the, the, the genes that came together and how they decided to express, and then the environment that the genes were in will cause it to, you know, the phenotypic expression will be the phenotypic expression based on those factors.

[00:16:23] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, I get that, I think.

[00:16:43] Jeff Nesbitt: the interplay of nature and nurture.

[00:17:19] And those proteins could be had from either diet breathing excercises, and meditation, like your brainwaves. Okay. So it was, it's a, it's a very interesting discovery that turn. I wonder how they must have felt because they must have felt like, oh my God, I'm going to be a trillionaire. I'm going to sell all these products.

[00:17:43] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. It's not quite as simple as we thought. Huh?

[00:17:48] Jeff Nesbitt: Well, okay. So the genome project was huge and it brought in people from all over the world.

[00:18:02] Dr. David Shirazi: I don't know if we knew back then about Jay, it depends who you ask. Right. So if you asked him like a seventy year old geneticists, they tell you, yeah, junk DNA doesn't do anything.

[00:18:22] Jeff Nesbitt: Okay, cool. It is. And I like, again, I'm very basic in my understanding of genetics, but is it that junk DNA is unexpressed. Genetic code that essentially like the whatever environment, uh, whatever the environment called for, from the organism in order to stimulate development in a certain direction and a subsequent phenotypic expression, everything else that gets left behind is that the junk DNA

[00:18:57] That's that's the basic blanket [00:19:00] expression. Cause they might be doing anything. Well, we that's the thing, when we look at it, we don't know that it's doing anything or not. You know, it could be that our, , measurement techniques are not looking at the right thing, that they're not sensitive enough. We don't know what we do know in nature.

[00:19:35] And, you know, generally speaking, because , when we look at more Aboriginal, , societies and ones that deal with psychedelics, , they are more in touch with, , deeper and broader, , spectrums of their brain than the average person, especially in the west. But you're

[00:19:57] Dr. David Shirazi: Well, there's nothing to be into. It's just, what [00:20:00] does the literature disagree? We got lots of, I mean, it's like I'm into it. It's like, but I'm a scientist. I'm a clinical researcher. So I look at it and it's so inspiring. It's so inspiring. And I am one of those people that just doesn't believe that, you know, if someone has depression and anxiety, that they're born with a deficiency of a pharmaceutical drug.

[00:21:00] , and, and just to surmise, , the hallmark. Have a white supremacist, their hallmark is that they feel they're the best at everything. Right. They feel like they're re as, as if the white race is a race, it's not, there's only a human race. There is no, you know, you know, we got a Calico cat and we got a black cat, just relax, dude.

[00:21:45] Jeff Nesbitt: it's illogical., have they ever seen the NBA??

[00:22:02] And that alternatives. And this is of course, you know, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, they feel that, , alternatives like Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, psychedelic medicine, , even chiropractic medicine, which is Western.

[00:22:22] Dr. David Shirazi: homeopathic medicine, which is traveling in.

[00:22:43] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. And it doesn't make well, I mean, there's a good chance that Western medicine is the best, but that doesn't mean it's the only one that works. And it doesn't mean it's a full encompassing.

[00:23:03] Yes. They're the people you want to go to for emergency medicine. They are, they are the best that emergency medicine. I can, I can say that with ease and, and, and, uh, certainty, but they're certainly not the best at treating diabetes. They're certainly not the best to treating hypertension,

[00:23:27] Dr. David Shirazi: The preventative care. It's not their thing. Well, they say it is,

[00:23:33] Dr. David Shirazi: it clearly isn't. But the on top of preventative care, not being, you know, in their wheelhouse, actual care is not in their wheelhouse. Right.

[00:24:12] Right. Substantial. So thousands of articles like this, both for C-PAP and for oral appliances, same thing for hypertension right now. Does that mean that sleep apnea causes all of type two diabetes and hypertension? Of course not. But what physician would sit there and they'd go, oh wow. Your blood sugar is very high.

[00:24:56] And they just show me a big fat zero. So [00:25:00] something that we do eight hours out of every day, that is where we get almost a hundred percent of our growth hormone and almost a hundred percent of our mental, emotional, processing. They have zero training

[00:25:15] Dr. David Shirazi: It's not.

[00:25:21] Dr. David Shirazi: and health whenever possible?

[00:25:25] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, because you don't have a choice on the experiential level, it's all holistic because that's how we experience the world. I agree. You might as well think about your health that way you don't really have a choice. That's how it functions. Yeah. Um, so before we get too far off, I want to get really quick back to acupuncture.

[00:26:06] Could you talk a little bit about the flow of energy in the body and how acupuncture affects that,

[00:26:35] Uh, some of the organs, when they say the organ, they mean the actual organ and some of them, they mean the metaphorical organ , like the heart, like the heart, for example. Right. So the heart would be yeah, the heart, but it would also be your shin, which is what we call your emotions and your spirit. So bring it to me, but it could also be your fears. Right.

[00:27:08] Like the whole.

[00:27:29] So we'll often, um, if someone has pain in an area, especially a sharp stabbing pain, we'll do acupuncture to unblock the chi. Which could also be blocked in the blood as it turns out in the sharp stabbing pain. But, um,

[00:27:51] Dr. David Shirazi: Well, that's, that's the miracle thing that we know we can't fully explain.

[00:28:27] That's on the pinky toe. And I believe sometime like in five or six subjects, they could see the eye centers of the brain light up on the functional MRI, the ISOs and it's instantaneous. So the. Yeah. So they had the, you know, the functional MRIs on the brain. We're looking at the brain brain looks normal, and then you go and stimulate the eye point on the pinky toe, and then you go and, you know, watch the functional MRI and you'll see activity, energetic glucose activity [00:29:00] in the centers of the eye and the brain.

[00:29:16] you know, you could even do it with the magnets, on. On top of an acupuncture point without even breaking the skin. Wow. , and that's actually something that the, , different schools of thought vary on. So, , when I did a hospital residency in China and Korea, they very much believe in strong needling.

[00:29:44] Jeff Nesbitt: So then they want you poking them hard.

[00:30:06] And when they try to massage you there, it's like, they're trying to massage your bones. They're pressing so hard.

[00:30:19] Dr. David Shirazi: No, no, not that, not

[00:30:25] Dr. David Shirazi: No. So these kinds of places are an actual massage therapist will own it.

[00:30:58] Cause you're not working for it. [00:31:00] Do you know what I mean?

[00:31:05] Dr. David Shirazi: You do

[00:31:09] Dr. David Shirazi: Well I do too, but I like it like to be clinical. I like it too precise. No, these people are not precise.

[00:31:19] Jeff Nesbitt: board. Oh, they're just trying to rile up the nervous system.

[00:31:31] I love it. When the misuse digs their elbow and just digs it in there and just smashes that. Right. And I go get, I get it. It's great. I have a high tolerance. I love it. Uh, these people are not doing that. They're doing karate chops and, and these men handling maneuvers, which makes it more painful or make you tense up more.

[00:32:00] Dr. David Shirazi: Yeah. So like I said, it's a cultural thing in China and they reuse their needles in China. So they, they it's efficient, but it's painful. So after they use the needle, then they run it through an autoclave and then they use it.

[00:32:39] They just, they it's like throwing darts. Oh my God. Right with that. Now in Korea, they also like pain, but they're, they're a bit more precise. So they want the. You know, they, they want disposable needles. Right. but in Japan they have, I use only Japanese needles they cut [00:33:00] their needles with a laser.

[00:33:14] Jeff Nesbitt: Okay. Which is where the meridians are supposedly laying. Right.

[00:33:29] Right. But right where the acupuncture meridians are and especially where the points are, the resistance just drops off. Right. So what they found was they don't need to go an inch deep. Just to get to the acupuncture point, they can just superficially, , go onto the skin and, and get the same effect as long as they're on the meridians.

[00:34:04] Jeff Nesbitt: Wow. So I think a lot of people, especially in my audience are completely inexperienced when it comes to acupuncture, but interested, I myself have always kind of been interested in it and I've always wanted to try it, but I have not done so mostly because the options for practitioners where I'm from, it was very, very slim pickings.

[00:34:44] You know what I mean? So what are the things that you should look for when choosing a practitioner for Acupuncture .

[00:35:05] And I want to say the acupuncture board exam is way harder than the dental board exam. Wow. Really way harder. When I got my fellowship and my diplomats at the academy, cranial facial pain, they're slapping my back and congratulating me on doing such a great, you know, cause it was a hard test because after you do the written test, if you pass it, then you have to do a three hour defending test where you have to show three cases that you've completed and how you did it.

[00:35:57] Like I had classmates that were passionate [00:36:00] about infertility. Even my mentor is passionate about helping people with infertility. I had people that love children. I have people that specifically love pregnant women. I have people that love, um, geriatrics, , and, and you know, whatever specialty you can come up with.

[00:36:31] Jeff Nesbitt: it

[00:36:52] Right. But I would be worse than useless, um, with someone that had, you [00:37:00] know, uh, dysmenorrhea that was caused by PCO S that extended their periods and they needed, like, I, I don't know how to approach that patient. You know,

[00:37:35] Right. , and you know, just sort of family practitioners, sort of things like you would a Western doctor that are not severe. But then, you know, if they say, my focus is women. I treat women's issues. Have a great, I have women issues. Let me come and see you. Right. So it's, it's sort of like that.

[00:38:20] Right. So sometimes asking them, Hey, um, what are you, what are you good at? What do you like to treat? But, you know, they're confused by

[00:38:39] Absolutely. Right. Then just ask the right questions.

[00:38:58] Um, and you know, [00:39:00] this is the thing, like, I've seen this among IQP outside of myself. I've seen this among acupuncturists and chiropractors you'll have an issue. And you'll say, can you treat this? It's like, well, I've treated it before and you treat it. And after like three visits, they should be able to tell you, yeah, you're getting better.

[00:39:42] Jeff Nesbitt: That's important. Yeah. You don't want somebody, who's just going to keep you coming back week after week for 10 years. Not doing

[00:40:04] And then he decided to be a chiropractor and he was practicing. He was doing fine. And he developed lower back problems, presumably from leaning over his patients. But he developed the lower back problem and he went to 25 different chiropractors. Wow. With no resolution

[00:40:23] Dr. David Shirazi: taken a long time. It did.

[00:40:50] And you know, it's not that it wasn't working, but it was like, he was so skeptical after the 25 failures. And he had, he, [00:41:00] he was dating, he was courting his now wife and he was talking about that and she would say, you know, um, Uh, maybe you should just give it a try. You know, you never know, maybe 26 is the charm.

[00:41:36] And before he knew it, his back problem was gone. Wow.

[00:41:55] I mean, it makes it, he has a huge effect on the, uh, impact of treatments of, of every [00:42:00] kind, essentially. How much of that impact do you think is, is something you can actually calculate. Going into it, uh, especially with something like acupuncture where there's quite a bit of misinformation out there and doubt.

[00:42:15] Dr. David Shirazi: Yes. Yeah. That there is no escaping the placebo, no CIBA effect. It applies to surgeries. It applies to everything. There, there is no escaping it,

[00:42:38] It's like the first step

[00:43:03] Jeff Nesbitt: right after this podcast.

[00:43:33] I just, I called them out on their bullshit. You know, it's just total bullshit. Um, because everything is genetics. Okay. Like everyone has genes, but as we talked about earlier, your epigenetics, you know, dictates your expression. Right. And stress like stress is too. You gotta be a little bit more specific.

[00:44:14] So highly traumatic

[00:44:15] Dr. David Shirazi: highly traumatic event. After his son passed, he developed testicular cancer and his wife developed breast and, uh, um, ovarian cancer, but he asked his physicians that diagnosed it. He said, listen, I have zero family history in cancer. I am in perfect health. Why did I get cancer, testicular cancer?

[00:45:07] So he asked the radiologist, he goes, what is that? Because it's an artifact. He goes, is it an artifact of my brain or of the machine? He goes your brain. And he goes, well, then what is it? He goes, we don't know. We see it randomly all the time. Okay. So then he asked his testicular and ovarian cancer patients, right before your diagnosis, did you have a sudden loss?

[00:46:21] Where you're kind of like in a state of shock, unmanageable, Yeah. And in this unmanageable, , stress state, a couple of things can happen. , one you could, you know, not be paying attention and get run over by a car or a truck or something, or you could have a form of adrenal exhaustion that could cause death.

[00:47:10] How can we get him more sun? Oh, we can make, , more sperm. Well, how do we make more spring? But we got to make more testicular tissue. Okay. Let's make more testicular tissue then whole, which is what, which is what cancer is, is it's a redundancy in tissue. So, um, predominantly, so, uh, so was such

[00:47:34] Dr. David Shirazi: was a psychiatrist.

[00:47:46] Jeff Nesbitt: schools. Yeah, it's in, it's in the water. It's everywhere. Even yesterday in this country. It's, I mean, it's in our cultural lexicon, a lot of Freudian concepts. Yeah.

[00:47:58] I think so, [00:48:00] um, he went and just went deep. He decided to forgo the chemo. He did Ivy, vitamin C only. And he, you know, did you know way deep dives into the subconscious of the trauma of his son's death. Yeah. And low and behold, he made a full recovery.

[00:48:24] Dr. David Shirazi: And then he went off, that's just the beginning.

[00:48:51] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, that totally makes sense. It's a holistic

[00:48:55] It is. It's brilliant. So the closely, the placebo and the no CBO effect [00:49:00] are real. And this is what I try to tell doctors when, when, when I talk to a doctor and something like this, that like the conversation you and I are having is coming up. I challenge them. You know, they're like, well, that's a bit too will for me, I can really go with that.

[00:49:45] Right because we know placebo is so real that we don't even value a study as being that concise. If it doesn't have a placebo control,

[00:49:59] Dr. David Shirazi: Very [00:50:00] little so, so we know placebos are, so then placebo must mean that we are mentally controlling the outcome of our body to get what's called a medicine, a spontaneous remission.

[00:50:42] We just have a hypothesis. I go, exactly.

[00:50:53] Dr. David Shirazi: And I want to come back to this whole white supremacist attitudes, thinking that they have the best, [00:51:00] even though, you know, there is there's giant holes in their system as well inside their system is so perfect.

[00:51:23] Jeff Nesbitt: The body can kind of lead its own healing process and the placebo or no CBO effects and how they. Fundamental to how we function.

[00:51:37] Jeff Nesbitt: where I started getting choppy.

[00:52:10] It was really this. And therefore we give the right formula and the patient gets better.

[00:52:17] Dr. David Shirazi: it's a corrective and it's, it's, it's horrible. Right. Nothing is perfect. Right. Even doctors are humans, so we make errors, we make mistakes. It happens. So sometimes we just have to do things just for a trial to see if it works or not.

[00:52:34] Jeff Nesbitt: like that system would allow for more individual difference also where you could acknowledge it. Like, Hey, this works for some people. It might not work for you. Exactly.

[00:52:49] Jeff Nesbitt: Um, okay. So we're about halfway through and I still have, I'm really, haven't gotten through many more than just like two questions, but, um, we're, we're.

[00:53:39] And like, I get less pain and headaches and things are much, much better. It hasn't completely cured me of all my issues. I still have a lot of, , muscular issues and mine. I'm always having problems with swallowing and like having pinched nerves and a lot of neck pain. And it ties in with like, I'm [00:54:00] getting kind of real restricted movement in my shoulders.

[00:54:24] Is that true?

[00:54:53] Um, but I often find this has been my experience. If you're not controlling the clenching that [00:55:00] people do at night, the effects will be very temporary.

[00:55:14] Bruxism um, I read a book by James nester called breath. Have

[00:55:23] Jeff Nesbitt: yet. I would love to hear your opinion on it because it's, it presents some ideas that I had not really put much thought into before about breath and how it, it really is like the gas pedal and the brake for your nervous system.

[00:55:57] And he said that it really helped his breathing and. [00:56:00] Uh, functional problems he had with his jaw and his breath resolved. And, uh, I was wondering if you knew anything about pallet spreaders and, or really kind of functional?

[00:56:19] Um, I loved surgery. I assisted, I was a dental assistant for eight years before I went to dental school. Um, I even brought my own scalpel to dental school and my cadaver scalpel. No, it was painless. It was definitely stainless. Yeah, this is in 1996. I don't think they made ceramic ones then. And, um, and you know, on the Cadabra was just me and five girls and they were fine with me doing most of the dissection.

[00:57:16] I go, what do you mean? We don't know. He goes, well, these people don't have very many options and you know, this is trying to help them out, but we don't know. I said, okay. So I was so naive. I thought that, , If I, , became a surgeon, I couldn't turn down that surgery. Do you know what I mean? I used to joke around that if I was a root canal specialist, I couldn't say boy, that root canal is too hard right now.

[00:58:03] I was doing it all. And my mom was the dentist and she strongly encouraged me to do, uh, uh, orthodontics. So I took courses and thankfully the courses I took were. And they would teach us things like expanding the palette, bringing the jaw down with them forward and et cetera. Um, we didn't know very much back then about

[00:58:33] Jeff Nesbitt: lost you for a second. Could you say that again? We didn't know much about what,

[00:58:37] Jeff Nesbitt: uh, sorry. I'm having a hard time hearing you. Alright. Sorry about that. Go ahead.

[00:59:07] It's a huge factor.

[00:59:16] Dr. David Shirazi: or

[00:59:21] Dr. David Shirazi: be nasal or, or mouth breathing

[00:59:29] Um, but yeah, two separate things, my bad.

[01:00:10] So, so we, we have way more receptors of CO2 than we do oxygen. I think we only have one or two oxygen receptors in our body. Um, but we have, um, Uh, hundreds of, uh, CO2 receptors. That to me means that CO2 is an extremely, uh, important, sorry.

[01:00:44] Dr. David Shirazi: Well, it is, but as it relates to us, listen, nitrogen is extremely abundant in the environment, but our body doesn't seem to care that much about it. Right? It's it's, it has to do with what our body needs and wants. And like I said, evolution doesn't, [01:01:00] um, make things that are unnecessary, right? So what we know is we have a very narrow window of entitled CO2 tolerance in our body.

[01:01:27] Jeff Nesbitt: So it's something we need, but we can't have too much. Exactly. So you've got to keep that balance.

[01:01:53] So if our CO2 levels drop too low, we get into a fight or flight mode. [01:02:00] Okay. Yeah. And then the more our, our, uh, parasympathetic levels are up is when our entitled CO2 is in that 40 to 43 range.

[01:02:31] Is it, is it a little bit more complicated than just like you're either in fight or flight or you're not.

[01:03:08] Jeff Nesbitt: and nonessential functions shut down.

[01:03:16] Dr. David Shirazi: Yeah. Well, so erection and orgasm are parasympathetic and sympathetic respectively. Yes. So the, the acronym we used in, in, in dental school was point.

[01:03:35] Dr. David Shirazi: So P being parasympathetic point, meaning erection. Gotcha. And shoot being organism and shoot an S being sympathetic.

[01:03:51] Dr. David Shirazi: Why would that be well, so again, you have to always think about it in terms of survival, right? If you are in a survival [01:04:00] moment, right. Wasting years, resources on direction are not conducted to long life. No, that

[01:04:10] Dr. David Shirazi: It's not immature.

[01:04:13] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. That's, that's,

[01:04:31] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, you'll be distracted and the lion's going to eat ya. Yeah,

[01:04:36] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. W w whenever we can, um, focus on, uh, the survival aspects of why we do things that will go along with yeah.

[01:05:08] And it it's talked about in every society throughout history. Uh, what's the best way for a person who just like regular American without a whole lot of experience or education to, to start taking advantage of this tool that they have at their desk.

[01:05:26] Jeff Nesbitt: do. Yeah. Where to begin.

[01:05:37] Dr. David Shirazi: great question. So the first thing, if you want to do this during the day, don't start by doing this at night, but during the day, tape your lips and see if you are breathing through your nose or if you're unconsciously breathing through your lips.

[01:06:22] So. First thing you do is take your lips, breathe through your nose and make sure you can breathe calmly through, you know, the you're not panicking. Right.

[01:06:36] Dr. David Shirazi: I mean, they expect that well, as you're doing it, if you're thinking, you know, one of the ways I tell people to tape is to tape their lips in a V so that the very, very middle is not sealed.

[01:06:51] Dr. David Shirazi: exactly, you can do it. That gives people less anxiety. Um, but go ahead and bring through your nose. The point is, can you read [01:07:00] people who are nasal breathers can comfortably read through their nose and have their tape look shut? It's not a big

[01:07:08] I sleep better than ever.

[01:07:33] Nice and slow. Hold your breath for five seconds and then comfortably and easily exhale for five seconds. Okay. And then read there to. No, no don't hold then go from exhale to inhale.

[01:07:57] Dr. David Shirazi: flight?

[01:08:04] Jeff Nesbitt: Exhale. And then immediately re inhale or, or, yeah. Yeah,

[01:08:09] Jeff Nesbitt: So that's pretty similar to like the box breath technique. Yes.

[01:08:18] Six work better, whatever works better for you, right? So that's a great way of getting your body to go more and more into a parasympathetic state. If on the other hand you find, wow, I am, I am really struggling to read through my notes. Okay. Don't move on to the next step. Okay. Go see an ENT. Go Lavanya knows what some saline nasal rinse.

[01:09:08] And some people, I hate to say it, some people need surgery, right? But like the context of the functional orthodontics is to expand the palette, to drop the palette because usually people that have a narrow palette have a very high arch and that, that occupies nasal breathing.

[01:09:37] It's right there. I remember reading something about the evolutionary history of humans in the fact that with the advent of agriculture, we did a lot less chewing. We started, favoring foods that were easy to chew. Um, more stuff that was based basically made out of sugar stuff. That's carb and not as much fiber.

[01:10:18] Dr. David Shirazi: Yes. And that, and I believe that as well, when we look at, and this is why I get very irritated by orthodontists who say that crowded teeth are due to genetics, because that is not true for the vast majority of the time. That is not true. What

[01:10:35] Dr. David Shirazi: So when we look at skulls and the, you know, from before the industrial revolution on people had wide pallets, big developed jaws, and they even had space for behind their wisdom teeth.

[01:11:16] Jeff Nesbitt: So you're thinking that's definitely the environment, not the genetics, a

[01:11:30] Jeff Nesbitt: was my next question. And, uh, I is breastfeeding so important for TMJ health and airways and straight teeth in general.

[01:11:39] Dr. David Shirazi: you're doing when you're properly breastfeeding is. The nipple goes inside the mouth, the child, or the infant puts the, their tongue on the base of the nipple and then rolls the back of their tongue up on the roof of the mouth and kind of squirts the milk down their throat, [01:12:00] create a little seal.

[01:12:37] The classic, you know, visual. I have a bottle is you got this nipple that not as soft as a human nipple and longer and longer and produces more milk. Each cycle will produce way more milk than from a mom's breast. Yeah. They're going to work for it a little bit [01:13:00] on there. Right. But more importantly, the nipple that's harder presses the tongue down and the child has to use their cheek muscles, their Buxton ears to suck the milk out and the using of the, of the cheek muscles collapses the arch, which is good.

[01:13:39] Jeff Nesbitt: Gotcha. Right. So now you have no stability.

[01:13:57] . And they had to chew foods. . [01:14:00] Real foods, not a puree of peas. Yeah. . And that muscle activity in their jaw develops their, mandible, like the vertical height.

[01:14:17] We, we look at Aboriginal societies that do this sort of thing. We can see it in that. Right. It is not it's it's, it's not rocket science, anyone that, that adheres to the belief that crowded T is predominantly caused by genetics and can only be resolved by, or the best way to resolve it as amputating perfectly healthy teeth to make them all fit in there is, is either intellectually stubborn or they're just lazy.

[01:15:02] Dr. David Shirazi: not like, yeah, well we, you know, uh, why would you want to amputate a perfectly healthy tooth if you don't need to? Yeah, you

[01:15:13] I got all my wisdom, teeth pulled and, um, or amputated and yeah, I definitely would have preferred not to have to do that, but there was no space. There's still no space. I still have crowding back there and I've gone through all kinds of stuff trying to address it. But so is this, does that mean that we could essentially fix this problem if we changed our food system?

[01:16:05] The breastfeeding, the breastfeeding, which in modern society is very challenging.

[01:16:12] Dr. David Shirazi: Yeah. Which is, which is an awful shame. It's like they'll, , we'll and we'll feel chastised for not breastfeeding and she'll feel chastised for breastfeeding.

[01:16:25] Jeff Nesbitt: almost four. And we had her breastfeeding until she was almost two and she definitely has not forgot about it. She's still pretty interested in my wife's breasts.

[01:16:37] Jeff Nesbitt: It seems like something that's just. They really, really enjoy breastfeeding kids.

[01:16:46] Dr. David Shirazi: After. So, uh, I told them, I want to go now, honey. It really would be great if we could breastfeed for at least a year. Right. And my wife's a pharmacist and she's like, well, I was thinking about doing it for six [01:17:00] months and go back to work.

[01:17:22] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah, it's a pain in the butt for them, mom. It is,

[01:17:46] Right. But then she admitted to me that she absolutely loved it. She would shoot, you know, her and my son would make eye contact during breastfeeding. Uh, he would like, like pet her [01:18:00] breasts, it was mommy and me time. Ultimately, she it's the best. It's the best.

[01:18:30] Cause it's like, don't be selfish. You know, it hurts daddy's feelings when he can't breath, you know, like feed the child and all that. Right. And I just, I just turned to my wife. I said, okay, listen, you are not allowed to give a shit about my feelings. Okay. You do what's best for the kid. Yeah.

[01:18:51] Dr. David Shirazi: to take

[01:19:01] Dr. David Shirazi: to the, you know, gynecologist was saying and, and, uh, you know, I, I was just like, listen, I, I don't, I don't care about my feelings.

[01:19:12] Jeff Nesbitt: it is cool to be able to feed the kid. I loved doing that when the bottle feed and all that stuff, but yeah, you're right. It's not about.

[01:19:27] Jeff Nesbitt: It's a good experience, but yeah, it's a whole nother thing when it's food that you've created with your body and you're giving it to this child that you also created.

[01:19:51] Dr. David Shirazi: Okay. Okay. So there's four stages of sleep stage 1, 2, 3 in REM and Delta is stage three.

[01:20:17] Jeff Nesbitt: That's what I always tell my kids, except not as detailed,

[01:20:32] So let's say someone is, um,

[01:21:10] Um, you know, something like that and, or even palatal expansion. So there is something called a rebound where if you had been very deficient in Delta, your body will, uh, make extra Delta. So instead of 25% of your sleeping Delta, you'll have 40% of your sleep Delta for a short period and it'll taper off.

[01:22:04] And while they're in a headgear, which research now shows that this shoves the maxilla backwards. All right.

[01:22:16] Dr. David Shirazi: is the upper jaw. And, you know, there is an ideal location for it. They're just, they're just is okay. And, , when you're wearing a headgear and, and like in the old fashioned archaic backwards way of orthodontics of using.

[01:22:55] They have an Anchorage in there either in their neck or in the back of their skull. [01:23:00] So when you're wearing a C-PAP, you have to have a strap around your head to keep the C-PAP on your notes, because if it's not tight on the child's head, it'll leak. The air pressure will leak and it won't work.

[01:23:19] Jeff Nesbitt: Okay. And so how does that apply to kids?

[01:23:50] And now it's kind of like, okay, so you're growing, you're a growing child. I'm now going to inject 30 milligrams [01:24:00] of growth hormone in you while you've got a head gear wrapped around your head. Okay. The maxilla is going to go back faster. Okay. So the purpose of a C-PAP is not to shove the maxilla back. The purpose is to just hold the strap of the C-PAP is to hold it against the face. Right. Um, but they're getting a headgear effect in, from traditional orthodontics. , with that, with the strap that goes around their head.

[01:24:54] Yeah. So then

[01:24:57] Dr. David Shirazi: We expand, you do the [01:25:00] extreme span. Yeah, absolutely. It works. it works better than C-PAP and it works better than tonsil landlord, ectomy. , which is something we can't say in adults. Because TNA removal, tonsil I've noted removal.

[01:25:44] Hm.

[01:25:55] Dr. David Shirazi: generation that's right. That is the best book written on [01:26:00] nutrition or that will ever be written on.

[01:26:08] It's right. Yeah. Um, but it's, yeah, it's all about just like this guy. He went around the world and collected data on all these different tribes and societies and figuring out what they ate and kind of started making correlations between what they ate and how they lived. And then these. Disabilities or, or, or, you know, functional people too, but, um, really interesting stuff, but it seems like that's enough time for really to get a, uh, a change in the way that people view these kinds of holistic issues.

[01:26:59] [01:27:00] Like you have responsibilities to. You know, do one thing really well, and there's liabilities involved. If you're just, you know, free ball and, and just spit and whatever you think could be the truth or connections that aren't necessarily verified by research. So I understand that they're just kind of professional things again in the way, but that's why it seems like over years and years and years, this kind of thinking would kind of infiltrate and make its way into popular culture, but it doesn't seem like it really has.

[01:27:29] Dr. David Shirazi: like that at all? Yeah. So everything you said, I agree with, except for one where you said, well, you know, some of the things that may be fringe and there isn't a lot of research on it. There is a ton of research on it. There you go. They, this is, this is either intellectual stubbornness, um, gross neglect.

[01:27:52] Jeff Nesbitt: It's just that it's so much, there's so much more complexity when you consider all these things. It just at the same time.

[01:28:12] I did it for 10 years. It's great. I had a patient, she was in her eighties and she had crowded teeth and she goes, I really want to do, you know, get my teeth straight. You know, my whole life I've had these crooked teeth. I said, okay. So I sent her over to the orthodontist and the one who I knew does pass a certification and then she's got the braces on no wires.

[01:28:57] It'll be. I said, um, [01:29:00] the reason I sent it to you sent the patient to you was because you're going to use passive self-education and not minimize the space inside the mouth, if anything, you'll maximize it. Right. Yeah. Okay. If you want, if you want, yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. And I said, well, why wasn't it your first choice?

[01:29:43] Jeff Nesbitt: I thought you were going to say it was because she was an elderly patient.

[01:29:48] Dr. David Shirazi: but no,

[01:30:02] Dr. David Shirazi: It's right. Wow.

[01:30:35] Dr. David Shirazi: Um, do you

[01:30:47] Dr. David Shirazi: Well, I mean, it's a tough question to answer. Um, if we're mouth breathing, for example, um, that can actually [01:31:00] make us more anxious.

[01:31:22] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. That's kind of exactly where I was going.

[01:31:43] And I didn't think about it for most of my life and when I started considering those things and not just considering that they're happening, but considering the way that they're happening, it changed the way I functioned change the way I experience the world, because I suddenly felt like I had these tools at my disposal that I [01:32:00] could make adjustments.

[01:32:20] And so if I, then I take that and I'm like, all right, well, I know I have some physical control over these things. I'll pull the breath down into my diaphragm. I'll start trying to slow it down and deep in it and things like that. And then my experience will start to change

[01:32:37] Absolutely. Absolutely.

[01:32:44] Dr. David Shirazi: Yeah, I used to do it so much more. Um, but, uh, but yeah, but yeah, Medicare and especially in these times and these crazy crazy times, um, yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with meditation.

[01:33:02] Or do you kind of do your own thing? No.

[01:33:18] Jeff Nesbitt: that I, I got the mantra and pay the money is a legit PM.

[01:33:40] Jeff Nesbitt: that's what I love about this new age kind of synthesis of mysticism and science, where it's possible, where you can have more, uh, quantitative data and things that are backed up by experiments.

[01:34:08] more people practicing these things and taking full advantage of these abilities that they had all along is going to lead to some overall global changes. Hopefully.

[01:34:23] Jeff Nesbitt: right. Well, I. Reach all my questions and we have covered a great deal of information.

[01:34:35] Dr. David Shirazi: No, I, you know, you, you've been a great host, you've asked great engaging questions, which I really appreciate. And, um, you know, the two, I mean, it's been two hours, but almost, and it went by very quickly. It did

[01:34:50] It felt kind of like a mix between a doctor's appointment and a podcast. I really appreciate your guidance on some of this stuff. This is, [01:35:00] like I said before, these are things that everybody, everybody does every day. So it's almost an afterthought and people don't give it nearly the attention that it deserves, because it really can have a profound effect on how you feel.

[01:35:14] Jeff Nesbitt: Well, thank you so much for joining me on this episode thank you again. And , I'll talk to you later. Okay. All the