How to Breathe to Boost Nitric Oxide & Mitochondrial Energy

well hello and thank you for joining us today uh we've got a very special conversation with you that you know affects every living organized organism on the planet and that's how we breathe and how it affects not only our health but the inner workings of our body to talk about this really important topic with me today is dr scott simonetti scott thank you so much for joining me thanks for having me very excited thank you we first met and talked on this topic it was coming on over five years ago now in in new york and you know we really kind of uh you really blew my mind actually on how deep we can go with this breathing work and before we kind of jump into that era i wanted to take people back a little bit too you know can you tell us a little bit before you you were brought into this whole area you know you're you're a dental surgeon what what was your kind of stepping into thinking about how breathing you know affects the human organism well i really have my wife to thank for that um you know i'm thin and tall and small next size as you can see and we were taught that the only people who are obese with large neck sizes have breathing disorders or can snore or could have sleep apnea um you know my ribs can attest to my wife complaining to my snoring as i got elbowed many many times and that led me to think twice about what i was taught or what we thought about disordered breathing and um that one thing led to another and i started really wanted to learn and try to think about why i was snoring if i was snoring then i thought most people could have the same problem and so one thing led to another i was really lucky to be a dentist and be in a field where airway and breathing and sleep apnea is in the scope of our license so not only was it going to help me personally and my wife so she didn't have to go on the couch anymore it would help our relationship but it would also allow me to learn and and treat my patients and really have an impact in my practice so uh one thing led to another another and i just really started to absorb everything i could learn and find and read and you know i had some great information really really early on i saw i stumbled upon for instance john lundberg nitric oxide and man and and realized wow this this gas that they once thought was poisonous and harmful is not and our bodies are producing it and not only are they producing it our sinuses are producing it at tremendous levels and tremendous amounts and so i wanted to learn about our sinuses and i started looking at cone beams and so i then i stumbled upon orthotropics and john mew and michael mew and i started seeing that there's other people who in the world who believe that the shape of our faces and our skulls and our upper air in our airways could be influenced by my moving them and so not only that was i interested in things going on there my my father dr joseph siminetti was um an early whitsic follower way back in the 70s and 80s and they were he was one of the first ones with john woodsick to be on on move moving the mouth and moving the air and moving the upper and lower mandibles really had an influence and unfortunately for them at that time they didn't know the great influence they were making on their patients and that was the airway they didn't have cone beams they didn't have a way to look at the airway so they had amazing influence on the airway for the patients that they helped but they weren't able to really show or advance the cause and it kind of had a stumbling block and and you know it wasn't always working in people's hands so you know but that information is really actually about airways been around since the 1800s and uh certain people have been been able to find certain orthodontists very lucky enough to find this information that's been out there that says the shape of our skulls means a lot and it's not only what we look like but it really has to do with the way we breathe and even from the 1800s there's literature out there it says when you can expand the arch the upper the upper airway the upper uh teeth you're expanding the airway the that's the floor of the nasal cavity so expanding the face has been known to be beneficial from for many many years and it's just not really well known really in the general public and um unfortunately it's it's it's missed by a lot of people and we really um so my research kind of led one thing to another and um i came up with a word and the word was facialdontics and i really wanted a way to influence the face through the teeth to expand the airway and make our bodies healthier is what i thought was possible and my aunt susette narcisso her husband um mark rhoden many years ago he's passed but he was the first one to help me work on an invention i had an idea that i wanted to be able to it was actually a mask that people wore when you had orthodontics to help at night expand the upper part of the face because i was so in tuned with the importance of expanding the upper airway expanding the sphenoid the frontal bone just making more room for breathing and so obviously that didn't really pan out the way the way i thought it would but one thing led to another and that was able to um to start start advanced special dynamics and um go on from have certain appliances that really we try to focus on um airway and tongue position and uh the position of of of how big the airway is so um you know not only have i in the last couple years came up with certain appliances but i really wanted to understand what the appliances were doing and not just have an appliances oh it seems to work for these certain things i wanted to have an understanding of the biology of the mechanisms so it led me down deep down to the level of the mitochondria down to oxidative phosphorylation electron transport chain really deep things that that my being a clinician showed me that this was happening so the fact that i had patients having changes in front of my eyes i knew that it was real and i test myself to figure it out and over time i i believe i have and i've been able to figure out what what influence a dentist for instance especially can have on someone's health and the impact on their lives it's such a great sentiment and really you know so one that you connected to personally through your own personal story which a lot of people have experienced you know the elbow and the rib because of this they're snoring right and like how that's kind of a lot of the um you know the foot in the door that people have into this whole world but then walking back through the um you know kind of the formative literature on all this stuff which is interesting because i've seen you write on this um and talk about this fair bit the the earlier pioneers that were talking about this stuff and um can you go through that a little bit in terms of um what they were saying in the 1800s and then what john whitsett was saying in the 70s because it's an interesting kind of um progression as to you know how we're starting to um to to see these things today and then obviously we're plugging in the modern technology of cpct's and then the deeper biology which we'll go into uh later well i think one of my biggest influencers for that and for the topic fell in between that was weston price and when i fell upon his book nutrition and physical degeneration the science that i was learning on pubmed and modern research supported what he found in the 1930s when he left the united states and traveled the world looking for cultures that had perfect occlusion that didn't have cavities that had uh well-formed faces but and then as you know you know he found faces of beauty and those faces of beauty were healthy and so when i found that book it really had a very strong influence on me to be able to connect some of the dots and i call him the father of modern nutrition although you know he's not really known for that but he really was one of the first to discover the importance of food not only in the source of the food and the nutritional value but also what i believe that he didn't really know about at the time was say stem cells and the way chewing forces can influence bone growth but what he witnessed especially he has documented in his book in black and white pictures was dramatic rapid changes in one generation from people who were perfect who never had a cavity had their third molars in didn't have impacted teeth didn't need orthodontics were healthy were beautiful and then their children or even themselves as soon as they switched to the saw food processed food that wasn't natural to their environment they made rapid rapid deterioration rapid changes as you're familiar with so um those those changes that price document that a lot of them were food based and what they were consuming was from the land and it wasn't processed but i think that a piece of the puzzle that price didn't hit on that i think that if you look back on his research and add this piece of knowledge is the fact that the chewing forces weren't enough and forcing forces of chewing are extremely important our ancestors only ten thousand years ago neolithic man chewed probably 90 percent more according to david lieberman from harvard uh who's a paleontologist who studies the human skull and in his book uh the evolution of the human skull which has taught me so much over the years also he's really documented in pictures and skulls in science why our skulls have changed its forces it's the forces placed upon the skulls and it makes so much sense when we think of it as a you know a mechanical joint you know you go to the gym to lift um you know your um your bones move your fascia and muscles and things change um you know and it's strange we've had that disconnection to the jaw isn't it um but so yeah this link between how our jaw develops and how we sleep and breathe is something that a lot of people you know that they haven't really been told this you know a when they were growing and developing but then b their their parents now they're seeing it in their kids how did you experience this you know with your own snoring in terms of you know obviously what were your obviously besides the symptoms of your um your wife telling you you were snoring how are you experiencing this um this poor breathing during sleep how is it affecting you and how have you seen that mirror in your patients well looking back at it i definitely had uars upper arrow restrictive syndrome i had a stuffed nose all the time i was blowing my nose my wife always complained about the tissues laying inside of the bed that i would wake up i guess in the middle nine blow my nose um i had radar syndrome i had to drive to work in the winters the tips of my fingers turned white so i used to have the heat on high and um just to keep my fingers from turning white i had terrible heartburn all the time i had heartburn my wife we used to carry thankfully um little uh antacids everywhere we went if we were on vacation she always kept them a little package for me and um i i needed them all the time so those looking back and the snoring that's uars upper air restrictive syndrome i had constriction of my nose and my tongue was falling back and it was causing fatigue and um and heartburn no symptoms and but looking back when i was able to treat myself with an appliance that actually made more room for my tongue um that's when i realized that the tongue was key having having the tongue in a different position at night was what most modern people need we all have faces that are smaller than they should be we all have been eating sorts of foods our parents have our grandparents have since the industrial revolution it's been a rapid change in the size of our faces it's and it's all because of the softness of the food so my my third bones are impacted i have i had a tooth pulled my father before i went to college pulled out a tooth it was so crowded that um i didn't have room so that's why my tongue didn't have room in my mouth my tongue is scalp like a lot of people has um little edges you know it's marked on the side my tongue was never happy in my mouth and that caused a lot of my symptoms so when i realized that if you can improve the position of the tongue at night then it can do a lot of a lot of amazing things actually and since i've first worn an appliance i've gone through different transitions in different types but i've now settled on one that i've been wearing from probably four or five years that i frank will never stop wearing and when we go on vacation on vacation my wife remembers she doesn't need the tums anymore i don't need tums and my fingers are fine and i barely need tissues uh but she remembers my appliance because that's what what my body craves and that's what what i wear and um because it repositions my tongue at night and therefore because my face is smaller and it's that's why i was born and that's way a lot of people have issues with modern people we all have our faces that aren't really optimal size we need a little mechanical help and we need to open the airway and by opening it up not only wire you know vertical wise but sometimes even if you wanted to expand it in some people is important but for me it was just opening my vertical dimension to allow my tongue a better position in my throat which was not in my throat and how do you see this um because obviously you're talking about how people posture you know posture their jaws and their tongue and and breathing in general how that connects to the skeletal uh the way they um you know even their head position and things like this sitting position how do you see this impatient now in terms of you know the the sleep symptoms are often kind of you know they're the ones that can come up um you know a little easier you know where they either not sleep while not breathing well or a partner will tell them that they're snoring but what are some of the craniofacial symptoms that you see are there pain or tmj issues well first the first the main symptom is actually fatigue it's fatigue that's the symptom that people will recognize and that's disrupted disorder sleep before somebody even transitions to sleep apnea obstructive sleep apnea which is well advanced into the disease process they have a fragmented sleep well before that a younger person i had that in my 20s looking back at it and probably in my teens and so when people have smaller faces and our teeth are not wide enough and our vertical dimension is not wide enough then we're bound to have disordered breathing and it happens to so many many people now so really the key is to have children have their arches expanded and not have this problem early on but unfortunately it's not recognized by everyone and people slip through the cracks the lucky few have their arches expanded as young children have all their teeth in place no extractions enough enough room for their tongue for breathing and they're healthy happy adults but that's not the majority of people walking among us and unfortunately the majority of adults or older people miss that and they need something they need some kind of help and the help is because their faces and their occlusion and their arches are too narrow and too small their tongue is not happy it falls back in their throat so the simple quickest answer is to get their tongue out of the throat when they sleep so by using an appliance that opens up the vertical dimension and allows their tongue to come forward without blocking the tongue allows a lot of things to happen and a lot of a lot of issues with people having not necessarily sleep apnea but having this uars there it causes what's called somatic syndromes it causes a stress response to the body because there's a a pressure that's built up in the thorax in your chest when your nose is stuffed you can try it yourself pinch your nose and breathe in you feel that pressure in your chest that's the back pressure that people have every night all night long from congestion of the nose or from poor tongue posture anywhere you have a constriction in the airway you can get this resistance to breathing and those physics majors will know bernoulli effect where you can have a constriction up where in the airway in the tube whether that be the nose or the tongue area and that's going to cause a collapse of the airway the the airway the air goes quicker and it causes a quicker and it causes it more likely a collapse of the airway and that's one of the problems that go on to eventually develop sleep apnea and and pauses of breathing sleep apnea is 10 seconds of not breathing that's a person who's very very sick but that person if you roll back the clock 10 20 30 years maybe they weren't pausing for 10 seconds their bodies were were healthier and their bodies didn't let them stop breathing for 10 seconds their bodies woke them up with either clenching running their jaw moving their position you know a micro arousal so they were healthy enough to actually wake up and not let themselves choke but eventually unfortunately the body gives up in providing that extra effort that that clenching the client whatever effort they need and then the body says okay i'll just choke for 10 seconds or more 20 seconds 30 seconds and then you know you can listen to sleep apnea tapes and people it's scary they they can stop breathing for 30 seconds so how's that person still alive yeah it's really scary isn't it um doctor similarly there's a question just popped up here that's uh quite relevant to what we're talking about now in terms of how people can find that if this is them natasha asks will a sleep study help diagnose restrictive airways how accurate are sleep studies that's a great question well obviously sleep study is very important for someone if if stabilizing their jaw with a tmj or treating that basic issue if that's not effective then most people do need to have their sleep analyzed um thankfully especially here in the states home sleep tests are now available and affordable and it's very easy for someone to get to get one obviously the gold standard is the psg uh that's overnight um [Music] at a center and that's going to give him so much detail and so much information the problem is not every patient will agree to that or or go for it for different reasons so thankfully now there's an easier simple way that's a home sleep test but to answer the question a lot of people who go for a sleep test because their spouse requests it or their doctor tells them to and they know that they're not feeling well they have fatigue anxiety they're snoring some people fall under the criteria of obstructive sleep apnea in the united states there's a line that's been drawn which is i won't go into who drew that line and eventually how it happened but um and that has an interesting story in itself but the line of five say you have to stop breathing five times an hour 10 seconds in order to be diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea so the problem is a lot of people aren't at that stage yet they're not that sick enough to be scored it's called ahi obstruct um a hypotenuse index they don't have that score of a five yet so they may be a four or three so that person though probably has uars the reason they went for a sleep test and agreed to it and agreed to be plugged to all these wires and be watched by people and videotaped and analyzed because they don't feel well and they want to address their health which is a great idea but some people don't have the obstructions that the sleep test is trying to identify and then treat which is obstructive sleep apnea they may have under underneath that which is uars or even less than just fragmented sleep they can't sleep they keep waking up they have arousal they fight or flight they're sympathetic so but but the report could show yes if someone is not necessarily having obstructive apnea maybe they're having this fragmented sleep that they're having arousal one after the other they're not actually they're not hitting deep sleep deep slow wave sleep stage three which is takes a while an hour so to get into they're not hitting that and they're in stage one stage two and they may have been in bed for ten hours and you wake up and you're still tired and you're fatigued and you're looking for a nap or you need a lot of coffee to get going or there's some other people that are kind of addicted to exercise in the morning they have to do an hour of exercise in the morning that's because they had a poor night of sleep that involved a fight or flight response because of a constriction somewhere that measured um resistance and they had all this stress hormones in their blood epinephrine cortisol so they had to work it off and exercise yeah it makes sense doesn't it and the um the symptoms really match kind of what what what's what you could describe as really stressful sleep and we're not breathing right our body really doesn't get to go through all the processes you know you mentioned the deeper stages of non-rem sleep but a lot of people don't get these and can you connect some of these symptoms that so i mean that for instance that you had to how the body breathes during sleep and and what's actually happening when we breathe properly during sleep to regulate all these um all these processes that the body should be doing great question so it comes to kind of a couple of molecules and and a lot of people familiar with oxygen but one of the problems with not breathing correctly through the nose and having blockage somewhere where people are forced to then breathe through their mouth because their nose and stuff so they have to take an air when they're sleeping like this because their nose is stuffed excuse me the problem with that not only is the part of the sleep apnea and the snoring and bothering the spouse but the main problem with that is that it's not utilizing nitric oxide and nitric oxide is really one of the keys to health and nitric oxide is found mainly in our sinuses as john lundberg in nitric oxide and man has published in believe 1999 so if you don't breathe through the nose then you're not utilizing the nitric oxide that's being copiously produced in our sinuses here there's a tremendous amount of nitric oxide being produced and so when you breathe through the nose not only does the the oxygen the in the air that you breathe get warm dehumidified it's warmed up a little bit through the turbinates in your nose but it also mixes with nitric oxide and that's the key as it goes into the lungs with oxygen and nitric oxide it's able to do so many things that are important for health it's amazing that um you know this wasn't that long ago it's 20 years ago and lundberg's paper was really kind of the breakthrough into to show that there's a lot of nuances uh happening with respiratory gas exchanges um and then you know kind of the you know really the um the journey from there was to really understand what was happening uh what nitric oxide was doing in the body now why would why would we stack this this molecule in our in our sinuses whereas you know almost the the most accessible area that you're going you know where you're breathing through what you're supposed to breathe through you know for the for the most part of your day you know what are we doing with this molecule throughout the rest of the body and um just can you just describe what what how nitric oxide assists in in better respiratory transfer and obviously we'll go through the deeper layers so the main reason oxygen is important for breathing is because well first not only does it kind of sterilize the air we breathe nitric oxide is made in such high levels in the sinuses that we utilize in a nasal breath the levels are so high that they're about 10 or even 100 times higher that's what's used in in a clinical lab in a petri dish to kill viruses and bacteria so the intensity is such a high level so that's one of our first lines of defense so it's not only our skin but it's but it's our it's our nasal breathing that's our first line of defense for invaders so not only does the nitric oxide itself have the ability to kill and disable invaders but the nitric oxide stimulates the cilia the little hairs the microscopic hairs in our nose the mucosa and those cilia very very important for filtering uh the air we're breathing so so breathing through the nose and nitric oxide utilization through the sinuses it gets drawn into the the nasal breath so far is cleaning the air and it's making sure that invaders are not making it deeper into the lungs so so the first thing it does is it protects the passengers the the oxygen that's the goal to get the oxygen to the lungs protect protecting the passenger and it's keeping the air clean but then once you're able to utilize the breath of the of the nasal breath like that then the nitric oxide travels with the oxygen into the into the lungs and it gets to the capillaries and nitric oxide is a bronchodilator so it's able to in increase the size of the arteries in our lungs that means more blood gets to the lungs and more oxygen is able to be transported to our blood to the red blood cells that are that are waiting that are being brought brought to that position so when you don't have nitric oxide you will have a breath that's not only a dirty breath that can bring in invaders and pathogens or dust or whatever you're not utilizing the nitric oxide so the oxygen not only is going to have a dirty trip into the lungs it's also not going to make its deep descent that it's necessary to get proper oxygen and onto into the blood into the bloodstream through oxygen saturation so what we can measure in a lot of easy ways is the oxygen levels and what that's really measuring is what how well our lungs our are functioning to get the oxygen onto the red blood cells so then they can travel where they're needed throughout the arteries to get to the cells to get to the mitochondria but it's really the nitric oxide that facilitates that early trip into the deep parts of the capillaries that allow the the optimum optimum oxygen transfer to the red blood cells this effect on the cardiovascular system increasing blood flow has also been linked to um reversing atherosclerotic plaques too right so it seems that nitric oxide has this this effect through the body where it makes the cardiovascular system run and one of the better known applications of it is the drug viagra right which is the application um for better circulation throughout the body and it's interesting that we've kind of used it that way you know to to help our our circular circuitry system run but that there there are many systems that benefit benefit from nitric oxide isn't it yeah that's so so when before uh nitric oxide was thought of it was poisonous but in 1999 it was considered the molecule of the year was called and was written in articles and and actually in 1998 i believe it was um the nobel prize was awarded to three separate laboratories they came up with the finding uh basically at the same time that nitric oxide was the molecule in our arteries that dilated that open them and then for people who didn't who went to school before 1999 you would know that molecule as endothelial derived relaxation factor e d r f so what that's that's what i learned so i learned this things edrf was this magical thing that was able to do things inside the arteries and lo and behold that edrf was nitric oxide so that lo and behold nitric oxide was then awarded the nobel prize for their their findings in that um and that's why it actually unfortunately is one of the the uses the main uses that people know of is is for for um viagra knows things but it's really doing so much more because uh its use in yardage is extremely extremely important because without nitric oxide being utilized correctly in the arteries are actually more more correctly said the endothelium the endothelium that's actually the organ the largest organ in our bodies that nobody really hears about much um it's an amazing organ it's one cell thick and it travels and every artery and it protects every one of our arteries from from leakage so it's there to protect things from coming out of our bloodstream that are not supposed to and it's meant to keep our arteries healthy and the main thing it's meant to do is keep arteries flexible because when our heart beats the the arteries have to be ready for that a static artery cannot deal with a flexing of a heart a static artery will burst so the arteries actually create nitric oxide in a pulsating manner that is corresponds with our heart rate and that goes throughout our whole system and our bodies amazingly do that and so it knows so when our heart pumps and it's pushing the blood through the arteries trying to get to the capillaries deep within inside our bodies trying to reach each one of our cells it's nitric oxide that lets that happen and amazingly our bodies do that without us thinking about it and that system that's in place unfortunately is being misused by modern people for different reasons whether it be from poor nutrition whether it be from poor physical activity or whether it be from disrupted sleep that affects this endothelial dysfunction and um if you search uh any um search engine and you put in endothelial dysfunction you'll get tens of thousands of articles about how endothelial dysfunction connects with most modern disease heart disease organ disease liver disease kidney disease uh neurodegeneration you know so it's there out there to look for to find that that information is is kind of almost obvious in the in the in certain research communities that this endothelial dysfunction once it happens and it's not halted because it could be reversed that's a beautiful thing but if it's not halted then that it leads to death essentially quite remarkable when you when you really kind of tap into the um you know some of the finer mechanisms especially in the cardiovascular system that you know how influential the mole molecule is um scott we're going to dive into these mechanisms a little bit deeper but before we do this just a question that's come up here because there are people that are trying to improve their connection to their breathing during sleep and they've they've gone through a number of different um you know approaches or tried certain things and so jenny says that i've been taping my mouth for months now it has been life-changing is there something i can buy to do this without tape what would be my next next step what would you say to a patient like this well it's very interesting mouth taping because it's something that is been having a lot of steam and it's something years ago that i didn't necessarily believe or understand but a few people uh dr tom colquitt um he was one of the first ones to he's a dentist and he was one of the first ones to be able to utilize that in his practice successfully and he was the first ones to push me to try it myself and um i do i mouth hate myself and um i think it's a great simple solution for people um because what happens with when you tape your mouth and um i also wear my appliance in addition to taping my mouth because i believe it does make more uh space this way for my tongue but the simplest thing is is taping your mouth because um what that's doing is when people get into a deep stage of sleep which is a good thing one of the things that happens is their muscles um are totally relaxed and their body stops being able to utilize their muscles that stops someone from acting out deep dreams and and hurting themselves but what happens when the muscles are paralyzed essentially is that someone can go like this because these muscles the masseter in a healthy person who doesn't have tmj you can open very wide so you have the flexibility for that muscle is done in hypertonus it's not in contraction so so then when i go into a deep sleep i need a little bit of help to keep my my mouth and my body from going like this although mostly the majority of night i would have no problem breathing through my nose as i still don't you need to help a little bit of time so i believe that's why mouth-having helps people because what it'll do is it'll reinforce nasal breathing it reinforces nasal breathing and when your body has nasal breathing reinforced it's happy and it wants to continue that way so one of my fears of taping my my own mouth forever recommended to any patient i tested on myself like i've done all my appliances i wanted this i was fearful of oh what if i need to you know throw up or i can't i can't wake up or what if i can't get it off and that's but never happens i never had a fear in the middle of the night oh my goodness i have to rip off with all my tape i can't breathe it never happened once and it always and once you it's used you use it to lose it so once you start using your nasal passages and you're and you stimulate the little factor and your sense of smell gets better your body loves that and so it doesn't really fight the tape and that's why i think a lot of people have success um obviously don't try it if you have terrible nasal congestion but you know if you have some and also maybe try it out during the day first if you're gonna actually you know do it but um you know it's something that you know you should talk to an ent about also because a really good ent not only would be familiar with with tmj but they you know they can have maybe some advice on maybe taping taping the mouth to stimulate nasal breathing sorry and the other good point you brought up earlier was that um the the tongue posture and the position is is crucial to supporting the airway so people getting connected to how they use the muscles to support this the oropharyngeal area of the airway too may be a long-term way to help support the airway on top of taping yeah i i found the only downside i've found to taping i struggled with it at first when i sneezed with the tape on that's kind of like a whole disaster because it's like the tape's gonna come off quickly but otherwise i love tate yama i tape myself as well um yeah but it's always kind of an individual thing and as you say people should always talk to their practitioner scott the the benefits of of nasal breathing you know especially during sleep is connected to this molecule of nitric oxide you mentioned that in the nasal sinuses um it is a powerful immune regulator this is you know something that are really people really thinking about say how is this immune connection because the lungs are one of the more significant immune organs in our body we don't really consider it that way how does nitric oxide play into this defense system that we have against against pathogens well obviously the you know if you talk about viruses or bacteria or any pathogen you want you hopefully the breath you take that goes into your lungs has nitric oxide not only with it but also it's traveled through the the nasal mucosa where the cilia because the cilia because they they will trap these pathogens um so then so that's one of the the main reasons for using nitric oxide because as it goes travels with it into the lungs it helps to be antiviral it's been shown to be antiviral when you breathe nitric oxide through your lungs it has an antiviral effect so it only could be positive in fighting any type of viruses we're concerned about so when you breathe through the nose of underneath the mouse mouth excuse me you bypass that so therefore whatever is in the air wherever you are in the world these days you're giving entry quickly and easily into your lungs so therefore what happens next is that instead of trapping these pathogens in the nasal system and that's what kind of mucus is and that's why people actually swallow healthily six or seven cups of mucus a day it's basically your body just clearing out what it's catching in a healthy person in the sick person it gets stuck but the the nitric oxide um that gets broke that gets brought in uh with the uh with with the oxygen will really help to stop the the spread of the um virus inside the lungs but otherwise what happens is the body has to launch another its own immune response and has to use energy and it has to not only use the innate immune response which causes inflammation with macrophages and tumor necrosis factor and nfkb these things are very dangerous in what's known as sars severe acute respiratory syndrome uh which is which is a very dangerous breathing disorder that um can happen in these days from viruses but um the nitric oxide kind of helps to corral that corral that from happening and it allows the body to be use the first line of defense instead of having to then rely on an immune response which starts as innate and then we'll go to a cell mediated and humoral immune response which is then again more taxing more energy expending expending on the body and then obviously more inflammation so then the person can have a minor lung infection or maybe a minor sinus infection and they're requesting antibiotics and this could be a cycle that a lot of people get stuck on especially those who are familiar with sinusitis they're in that cycle of having congestion stuffed nose pain headaches asking the doctor for antibiotics um maybe having uh respiratory or the susceptible to the flu viruses but it's a cycle they're on because they're not utilizing the nitric oxide and it's stuck in their sinuses in the perinatal cells and it's it's not meant to be stuck it's meant to be flowing in with the breath then get resistance out of a breath resistant in with the breath out and breath back and forth it's not meant to be stuck when things are stuck in the sinuses bad things happen that's when people get um fluid buildup and they get congestion and they get pain and they ask for the antibiotic but that's just the band-aid if you don't address the etiology then you're stuck in a cycle of band-aids just on that scott are you familiar with how the body formulates nitric oxide in the sinuses is it locally produced or does it do yeah how that happens it's produced by a um enzyme called nos nitric oxide synthase n-o-s and actually uh the one that's being produced in the sinuses is something called inos this is it's different iso forms of that enzyme so the body utilizes nitric oxide in different parts of the body actually not in different but every part of the body every cell can make and utilizes nitric oxide but that's that's you know a deeper story but um the nitric oxide that's made in the sinuses is made from something called uh inos it's uh inducible that's part of our immune system so a lot of you have heard of the respiratory burst that's when our white blood cells will attack a pathogen they actually will use nitric oxide in engulfing and then spraying it with nitric oxide and a couple other things that create superoxide proximity but then it uses that to kill kill the pathogens and then get them under control not let them replicate not let them spread so the nitric oxide is used not only in the first line in preventing the entry into the lungs but but the nitric oxide inos which is being which is what manufactures the nitric oxide so copiously it just happens to also be the isoform i nos nitric oxide synthase that's utilized by our white blood cells so we're finding that this you know it's a critical mediator of respiration breathing um the circulatory system uh you know the the immune system that it really and there's all these different subtypes isn't there of of nitric oxide that all these different cells use um in order to for all these different functions how have you found you mentioned the term energy um earlier and so have you found that nitric oxide works as a deeper into the body because you know we've talked about some pretty you know fundamental ways that that the body operates what happens you know further and deeper into these cells because if every cell is producing it obviously there's a lot going on with this molecule that's a great question because then now it goes into the the deeper job the deeper aspect of what nitric oxide is doing inside of us so um so people familiar with nitric oxide in the sinuses and how it could protect you know protect the air but then the interesting part what happens next is once oxygen is transported to the red blood cells oxygen nitric oxide goes along for the ride it attaches to the red blood cell and it goes for the ride along the into the arteries because the oxygen needs to get to the deepest parts of the body remember the capillary so the not only do the arteries themselves have the ability to make nitric oxide through the remember endothelium where they release it and and open up the arteries for the transport of oxygen deeper down so all our cells get the oxygen but the red blood cells then have the ability to release ox nitric oxide when it's needed to make sure that they get to the capillary beds deep inside so then when the oxygen is finally released it's able to be shared with the most amount of cells it's all about sharing the oxygen after it's released you know the lungs and we they talk about the the release and you know the bohr effect and and you can talk about carbon dioxide and different things but those could be sometimes confusing to what's actually happening and what's controlling the oxygen after it's released from the red blood cells where does it go how does it get there and it's nitric oxide that determines it and this information is i learned from some people in some labs um some some labs uh juan ponderosa maria carreras maria franco they're from the um the lab the oxygen laboratory of the lab of oxygen metabolism in buenos aires argentina their lab has taught me so much um in the last 10 years and it's deep research but it goes down to the way oxygen is shared and the reason and mito and oxygen and nitric oxide is actually used to be robin hood it's like a robin hood it wants to share it wants to spread the oxygen it wants to take it from the rich area where it's released from the capillary bed and the gradient is high and it wants to share it with everybody it wants to share it with the poorest cell far away from the capillary bed where it takes a really long trip for the oxygen to make it there and the only way the oxygen makes it there without creating what's called pockets of anoxia pockets of where there's no oxygen which could cause damage to cells and disease the only way the oxygen makes it all the way down to the outskirts of town is by utilizing nitric oxide and the nitric oxide is utilized inside each cell by the mitochondria mitochondria will utilize nitric oxide when it wants at the most brilliant times it actually is why where mammals are so dominant on the earth is because mammals have harnessed nitric oxide and enables us to live on any latitude mammals live on any latitude on the planet we can live in any oxygen that's given to us by our local environment and it's thankful to nitric oxide that makes that adjustment in the mammals for them to live healthy successful lives in levels of the earth that don't have the same levels of oxygen just like people from say the andes mountains the aborigines from the andes mountains the locals they have high levels of health they don't suffer from from from mountain sickness from when people will travel quickly to high altitudes they have problems with oxygen problems with their red blood cells delivering the oxygen properly their bodies aren't accustomed to it so there's people who have been living for thousands of thousands of years on the planet earth that have adapted their cells for oxygen delivery when the oxygen isn't as readily available as to us at sea level and it's not really this is a really interesting point because mitochondrial um you know health and you know in terms of how it connects to energy is a very topical conversation at the moment what you're saying is nitric oxide is absolutely critical to the function of mitochondria is there a type of nitric oxide that the mitochondrial cells use how does this work well nitric oxide being the boss and being the most important molecule to direct the traffic to the to direct the oxygen to its final destination which is the mitochondria it's the factories that create the atp the currency of life everything that keeps ourselves healthy and what they require especially if we're in fight or flight and we're running our hearts need this extra atp grabs extra it grabs the ability to make more it fluctuates inside each cell that's necessary and uses nitric oxide and this is how it does it the the one of the isoforms of nitric oxide is called e the other two that i didn't mention enos and nnos then for endothelial and neuronal one is more is used in the brain uh the other one the enos that's the one that was used in the endothelial endothelium but what happens is the nnos which is available a lot of neurons and nerves and it's actually what's responsible for a lot of our memories our active brain activities things like that but the the mitochondria and the cells amazingly transport this one isoform and nos into the mitochondria and it attaches get this it attaches to the electron transport chain it attaches to a complex on the electro transport chain complex four and it attaches this protein it's a protein nos it's an enzyme that makes things happen it creates the nitric oxide but it attaches onto the complex electron transport chain complex four where it can be utilized beautifully ingeniously by our bodies to what it's doing is it's replacing and lowering the use of oxygen so it's sharing it's sharing oxygen so the nitric oxide actually will reduce what's called oxidative phosphorylation that's the electron transport chain rolling and rolling and creating atp and oxygen and that's the only job it has as one job to be the final acceptor of electrons in the electron transport chain only one job nitric oxide has hundreds so when oxygen finally reaches each destination thanks to nitric oxide and it accepts these electrons and energy can be created but what happens is when the body senses or when a cell senses that it has a lot of oxygen it shares it and it says we don't need this much we want to share it for the other cells mitochondria are selfless they care about the whole entire body they don't care about themselves they'll kill themselves called about apoptosis they care about the bigger being and so what they do is they're sharers they share they're altruistic they care about everyone else not themselves and what they do is they disperse the available oxygen so it it can tr it could travel deep further away so the poorest cell furthers the way it gets it and it uses what's called once it's transported inside the cell in the cells that will do this it's called mitochondrial nos mt nos that's the fourth isoform that's not known by many and it's not really if you search an os right now on on the web that one won't come up now once a deeper um concept that's going on right now that some people call debatable i don't because all the science i've learned it's totally supports that this mechanism is happening there's something in the labs that learned it um really put down the science that supports this this enzyme nos having an isoform used by the mitochondria to share the oxygen because they want every cell not only every cell amazingly the the mitochondria shared within each cell so when a cell is really close to the capillary bed and it's close to the high gradient of oxygen and it doesn't want too much oxygen because remember oxygen can be very damaging it could be oxidative the body doesn't want too much too much is damaging you want to control the use it's use it at your own risk so the cells know that and then so so in each cell that's closer to the capillary bed it will want to push away the oxygen not allow it to go into the mitochondria because if oxygen goes into a mitochondria when it's not needed or the mitochondria is saying no no no really bad things happen really bad things that's oxidative damage that's mitochondrial dysfunction that's another another episode but that's when really cells start to die and that's when you can connect at the cellular level what's happening for imbalance of oxygen and nitric oxide and things aren't being shared properly that's what leads to really modern disease and you know the symptoms and presentations that we talked about at the start um it really does start to make sense when you talk about those deeper mechanisms that you know we are we've got these these amazing um helper molecules mitochondria that actually um you know they say that you know maybe we um you know deep into our evolutionary history we were kind of joined as separate um biological entities but but they're actually helping us in this way where they're pushing the um the uh respiration cycle it's absolutely fascinating and a lot of people now are trying to improve their mitochondrial health and it seems that breathing in connection to nitric oxide at this um this mt nos really might be one of the the most critical ways they can do it right how do you how do you think that um the people you know besides improving their sleep breathing how can they improve nitric oxide levels in their body great question again stephen really the the obviously the most the simplest answer is to really optimize your nasal breathing because once that's the first step of nitric oxide having a balance with oxygen at the cellular level it starts with nasal breathing and that's because when things start properly through the through the nasal passage and into the lungs and the transport of oxygen is optimal then proper things happen along the lines especially when nitric oxide jumps on board with the red blood cells and the endothelium is working properly and the red blood cells can make it to their deepest darkest destinations and and then the mitochondria could share it with all their friends but when you when you when it starts off with and that could be you know when you're snoring and you have sleep apnea obviously your mouth breathing and you're not getting the ox the nitric oxide mixed with the oxygen and that's starting the chain of events so the first thing that people can do is ensure that they can nasal breathe and then you know it's simple simple said that done that just okay snap fingers and stuff he knows but one of the things people could do is optimize their tongue position the tongue is the key not only is the tongue the key to the access and then the access point to our major most important nerve in our body the vagus nerve but it also is able to calm our fight or flight and sympathetic so that makes a big influence i believe in what what's happening in our sinuses in our nose is because the majority of people i see patients i see who are on fight or flight who have disrupted sleep disordered sleep fragmented sleep headaches draw pain their tongue isn't their tongue is choking them and and then once you could create a way to allow their tongue to take a better position then a lot of things fall into place for their health not only is their vagus nerve potentially stimulated because it has the ability to come forward and that's due to the key muscle the pal glasses muscle that's the muscle that's the only muscle in the tongue that's innervated by the vagus nerve and that elevates and lifts the tongue so when someone has so someone has the ability to put their tongue out like say michael jordan and make a game-winning shot when michael jordan stuck his tongue out he was stimulating his vagus nerve he was calming his fight or flight calming his nerves calming his mind getting his reflexes ready to hit the game-winning shot the vegas calms the fight-or-flight so that's kind of the key entry into people starting to quickly and easily feel better you try to you know vagus nerve stimulation is pretty hot right now because it's considered a way to calm what's called the and the um cytokine storm which is happening now in in sars and different breathing disorders but so so so um vagus nerve stimulation is is a hot topic right now and easier said than done but if you can provide say eight hours of a posit of a position through something that's called oral mechanotherapy and provide a position for the tongue to take a new spot that it hasn't been able to take in that week that day that month that year that decade that 30 years of a person who may be suffering from poor tongue posture from headaches migraines sinusitis fatigue just awful and then go into the central sensitization syndrome fibromyalgia fatigue syndrome those other things ibs but it's all about the tongue make the tongue happy either by making sure a child has enough space from rapid power expansion make sure there's more room for their tongue as they grow up or if they miss that stage and you have an adult who's 10 20 30 40 50s whatever their age it's not too late it's not too late for someone to start to feel better to wake up with more energy not being relying on coffee not needing the alarm to wake them up humans where mammals were supposed to we're supposed to go to bed when it gets dark and wake up when the sun comes up i don't personally use an alarm i wake up when the sun shoots through my window and i don't have coffee my staff will tell you my first sip of coffee is about 10 30 when my stomach starts to growl and i have a little energy bar granola bar and i have about this much coffee and that's about the only coffee i'll drink maybe the whole entire day because i believe i've i've been able to optimize my tongue position and my sleep when i sleep and my wife my up and my my ribs feel amazing they don't get elbowed anymore and your mitochondria is running on on it's it's nitric oxide that is meant to write dr simonetti it's it's such a great story you know we're gonna have to follow this down deep at another point because there's so many there's so many more topics there to talk about but you know thank you very much for sharing these deeper um you know the deeper ways that the breathing in nitric oxide really affects our energy and health and obviously how the day-to-day placement of our tongue can help us access these modalities that really our body has and for your own story so thank you very much it was great talking if people uh want to learn more about you or hear about your work where can they find you they can go to advanced facialdontics advanced facial dontix to find out a little about the appliances um or a simple one that i use is discover the pod but um i wanted to stephen thank you for having me and um if anyone who hasn't had a chance to read steven's book amazing dental diet so great job with that and spreading the word um i know this is uh friday morning uh by you it's thursday uh dinner time by me i'm about to grab something to eat so really my hat's off for you the amazing work you're doing and the way um you're spreading the word and the importance of breathing and the impact the dentist you and i that us that we can have on patients lives so thank you for for everything you've done appreciate dr sebanetti and yeah the you know the um the conversations like these are really you know that's really what's driving me you know i love hearing you know about people like yourself that have really kind of pushed the envelope and what we can understand about the body so i'll let you get some dinner thank you very much again for sharing an hour with us and we'll have to do this again soon thanks again for having me stephen be well

Channel: Dr Steven Lin

Views: 2,075

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Id: RD36G_vccGk

Length: 64min 7sec (3847 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021