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Hi I’m Doctor Gunnerson of Gunnerson Dental and TMJ and sleep therapy of Utah and I am glad that you’re here and joining me here tonight for this Facebook live. Sorry I’m getting lots of little messages popping up okay but thanks for joining me we have a really interesting topic I wanted to cover tonight i’ve got this machine that’s sitting behind me if you’re wondering this weird mechanism is that’s behind me and I want to talk about some of the things that we can do with that tool that we have back here and kind of what’s been going on that’s new in our office. So we’ve actually had a great week two weeks since the last time we talked and I hope you had an opportunity to go back and view our previous videos previous Facebooks one of which was on insurance last time we were here and we had I had Katie here with me and we covered some great topics on your dental insurance and what it contributes how it helps you how it can keep you from actually getting the treatment you need to have done because it can limit you. So we never want that to happen but it was a great topic and it was great to have her here to help me go over some of what all the terms mean and all the different things that happened with dental insurance. So welcome to I hope that everyone is doing well it’s what we’re almost into a year of the pandemic if you can believe it or not I mean we’re starting march 1st and I believe it was sometime around that into march that things kind of went crazy, Utah went into lockdown the end of March, I think it was the second week I just got back from vacation with my family to find out that there was this pandemic out and then we were shutting down all the businesses in Utah including dental offices and we were shut down for six weeks. So we’re coming up on an anniversary so we’re kind of looking at things and saying has anything really changed and as far as businesses, we’ve learned how to live life in a mask and we’ve learned how to breathe through our mouths because that’s what we do when we’re wearing a mask, but overall I don’t know if much has really really changed too much as far as the way we’re treating this pandemic, other than we have been back in business and we’ve been having a lot of fun and helping patients. So tonight  let’s get into this I wanted to talk to you about a cold laser and what’s really kind of cool about this cold aser and every time you say the word cold laser people think that ooh I’m going to get this ice cold thing on me.

Let me say explain first there are some different types of lasers that are out there that we use in dentistry we use a diode laser in in our hygiene departments. That is used to go and clean out the area around your teeth if you’ve got bleeding gums to help destroy bacteria help cauterize tissues and help the healing process. We have a CO2 laser that we use in our office  that is used for cutting tissue and is what we call a term maybe a hot laser, because it cuts the tissues and so we use that to do things like cold sore removal frenectomies and we can use it to do biopsies, just some different things we can use it if we need to cut or remove tissues like gingivectomies things recontouring around your teeth. So that that’s those now what what I want to talk about tonight is called a cold laser and what we have here is an mls m it’s called an mls laser and what that means is that is a multi multi-phase laser it actually contains two different wavelengths in it it contains an 808 wavelength and a 905 wavelength and what’s really cool about this is you know as far as cold laser goes, it’s not cold to the skin it actually gets a little bit warm but it is a non-cutting laser. It is used for therapy alone and these were introduced they’ve been around for a while and what’s kind of interesting about this is it’s actually used in a lot of athletics and so you’ll see the the football player or whatever who gets injured gets a sprained ankle or whatever out on the field and he runs in and then he’s he’s got some bench time there because he’s hurt himself and they will actually take a cool laser to that ankle and they will work on him, a little bit there on the ankle and then he’ll be back out playing again, and it’s like what what happened how did they do that and this is it’s crazy but amazing new technology that we have in helping our patients and we kind of titled this topic as pain relief through cold laser therapy, because what we mainly use it for is pain relief in in our area. We also use it to help in healing and speeding up the healing of tissues. So let me explain a little bit it actually comes with the one that we use has has two heads.

The one that’s behind me we can actually aim at a specific area and it uses three has three heads and so it targets a bigger area and then what we have is we have this we have a smaller handheld unit laser, that we can actually use when we then we go along the tissues like in your neck in different areas. What’s what’s really cool about these these lasers is the success of what happens when we use them. We’ve we’ve over the last five years we’ve been doing some real intense studying on sleep apnea sleep therapy in our office as well as more recently temporal mandibular joint disorders and cranial facial pain because it’s found that a lot of people suffer from migraines from headaches there’s a lot of medications that people are put on for these items they suffer from neck pain shoulder pain back pain jaw pain even tooth pain can be treated with a cold laser to decrease sensitivity and help a tooth heal and feel better. Abscesses and infections, it can be used in treating tinnitus the ringing in your ears, it can be used to treat vertigo when a person feels dizzy and let me explain a little bit how it how it does all these things but it is it is really really really really cool. My daughter who does taekwondo  has twisted her ankle a couple of times  not necessarily doing the taekwondo but you know and doing other things and she’s a very active individual and by using the cold laser either through me or or through her her therapist who’s helped her, she’s able to I mean literally like the next day be jumping around and doing whatever she needs to do without a lot of discomfort  what we have found is as we’ve been treating  temporomandibular disorders in the joint where you people have a lot of pain through here. They’re all tied up in their jaw. They’re getting facial pain and  they they have these tension headaches or cluster headaches and even migraines and we found out that the reason why that people have those sorts of things are because a lot has to do with their posture and how they’re standing because when a person’s in discomfort you have a tendency to move away from pain. You want to get away from the pain and subconsciously your body is always moving a little bit and that causes a lot of tension in and through the neck and then through the back. We find that it has to do with nasal airway there’s just a myriad of of stuff that that we go through when we do exams on individuals to help define and refine where they’re having and why they’re having the pain that they’re having. So but what we have been doing is in all of our treatment we have the individuals come in like every week lately, we haven’t come in and even treating my office staff but coming in they we treat trigger points in through the neck in through the head down and through the jaw and through here down the sternocleidomastoid muscle right in here and when we treat those areas the success literally within 20 to 30 minutes, if you came in with a headache that headache would be gone and what we have found as we’ve been doing this is that that lasts sometimes up to three weeks where you’re no longer having a headache and we get people who oh my gosh I should come in here and like some of my my team members will complain of migraines and they get them once or twice or sometimes three or four times a week and we’ve been treating them with a laser and and literally it took like one treatment to get them out of pain initially and then a couple other treatments that has just literally improved their lives and I have to admit it’s a game changer. I don’t I don’t know how anybody can function in chronic pain right now I’m dealing with two torn tendons in my left shoulder and they’re more work related as a dentist we hold our arms up like this all the time but and I really shouldn’t I should be keeping it down close but habit you just you know trying to make things easier go faster and a little bit more comfortable for the patient but using the cold laser has helped in the healing and decreasing the pain of the shoulder. So what the cold laser does is by by using these two different wavelengths and there’s and they’re switching on and flashing as they’re going in and you’re working on areas of the body, and as we’re doing that it actually increases the blood flow and circulation of those areas and you have to remember there are areas in your body where blood circulation doesn’t occur in in high amounts like here then what’s really kind of funny is I went into my my orthopedic doctor about my shoulder and I was in there and he he told me that  we need to do some different therapies on it but he he says you have to remember the shoulder doesn’t get hardly any blood supply. I’m like oh man no matter no wonder it has a hard time healing.

You look at that you look at your knees you look at your ankles there are these areas where we have these joints that don’t get a lot of blood supply into that area and by using a cold laser therapy it increases the blood supply to that area the blood flow in and out of that area it also penetrates into cells and it opens those cells up so that they can receive receive nutrients from the blood supply that’s going in there to help them heal faster and so we’re finding is that people with these trigger points, that we’re working on they’re actually decreasing they’re getting smaller or the tension in their neck and in their in their shoulders are starting to go away completely and like I said it doesn’t always you know it’s not always an immediate thing. The the laser does give you some analgesic effect to it, where it numbs the the muscle tissue, that’s causing the issue and so you do get some comfort from that as well as like people with headaches. It’s just been amazing and I’m surprised that I didn’t learn about this earlier and didn’t know about this earlier and and in some ways I feel guilty when it comes to helping my patients that I didn’t know about this technology and but it is it has been really nice bringing into our office and seeing the changes in people’s lives because we’ve talked before in the past that we’re in chronic pain when we are in pain all the time when you’re having constant headaches, when you’re not getting the rest that you need at night these, these, things build up in your system and when they build up, you start getting more anxious you have panic attacks you have you’re more sensitive to temperatures, you’re more sensitive to things that go on around you sensitive to situations. So you have the possibility and ability to become more anxious more upset and we talked before about how that goes from just that chronic phase into your limbic system which is your emotional, you become more emotional with things and you don’t know why but you become frustrated depression. Dealing with pain is not an easy thing but what is awesome is being able to get out of pain to be able to doing something that is so non-invasive has no damaging effects has no side effects other than positive in helping you feel better and to get out of pain so that’s that’s the the the mls laser and that’s what we use in our office and it’s cold laser therapy and I’m sure if you’ve been to a physical therapist and they have it in their in in their thing they’re using cold laser therapy on you and if you’ve ever wondered why that’s what it does it increases blood flow increases nutrients to that area it helps the healing and it decreases the of that inflammation and it decreases the the pain and they’re amazing. So if you’ve got chronic migraines if you’ve got headaches this this is a game changer in your life. I see people like I said popping medications popping pills in order to get out of discomfort and out of pain and and when you can do something as simple as a cold laser therapy treatment, it is amazing. Now i’ve i’ve said too that in our office that we’re treating the temporal mandibular joint and that’s where we come into the craniofacial pain and and what can go on in there. It also treats I don’t know if people have known it can treat bell’s palsy it can help in the treatment of bell palsy it can do the treatment in trigeminal neuralgia I don’t know if you’ve heard of ticdelaru or trigeminal neuralgia and that’s where you have this constant throbbing pain through your face through it has to do with the fifth cranial nerve and it just pulses through your face, that’s trigeminal neuralgia. It has been found that there’s 18 and 90 percent decrease in in in the pain and discomfort from trigeminal neuralgia by using cold laser therapy  which we do in our office so even if we’re not treating your joint your jaw joint or I’m seeing you as a dentist I don’t I don’t you know if you’ve got a great dentist you want to go to that that’s great but if he doesn’t have a collage or therapy and you want to get rid of a migraine or a headache, I’m happy to see you. Come in, I’m happy to take a look and help you out  in that area but  like I said it’s been helping me with my shoulder it’s been great I love the mls laser. I just wanted to introduce that to you because this has been like the coolest thing that i’ve found in a long time because it has really really made a lot of changes and had a really big positive effect in the lives of a lot of people in our office, between my staff between my family members and between my patients. So thanks for joining me again. If you have questions about mls laser  i’ve seen on different websites where a lot of people have had questions about you know how many times do I have to get this done and and what does it exactly do. So I’m happy to answer questions just send us a Facebook question right along with this video and I will shoot you back a message and let you know the answer that question. I’m happy to look things up but really if you’ve had surgery this laser is amazing for that. I can only use it I’m a dentist and unfortunately I can only use it for the head in the neck area I am not authorized to use it anything below here like knees shoulders wrists hands but it does have a positive effect and and I you know what I’m out there to do is to change the lives of people so that we can have better living through our better health our better positivity, we’re going to be kinder neighbours, we’re going to be friendlier people and we’re going to be more productive in everything we do and that is my wish for you in this upcoming in the next two weeks before I get to see you again I just hope that things are going well for you. I hope that during this pandemic you’re safe I hope that  as far as you are at your employment and everything I hope that things are going good and thank you again for joining me. I really appreciate it this has been a lot of fun and i’ll be back in two weeks with something new. So it’ll be good.

Hey, I’m Doctor Gunnerson with Gunnersen dental and I’m glad that you’re joining me. Tonight and I’m glad you’re here with me. This is great I love doing these I love sharing information that I know and if you don’t know me that well I spent a lot of time with John Maxwell and the Maxwell team big leader in leadership and training in leadership and in motivation and so I love motivating people to to do positive things and I love being positive focused and positive minded and so that’s a big part of it and one thing that I recently learned was that opportunity is frequently missed because it comes in ways we don’t really realize it. In fact a lot of times opportunity comes as something that is more discouraging or as a trial in our life and that is actually opportunity knocking and a lot of us get so frustrated with that that we just finally give up and that was a big opportunity it was something that was available for us so that’s my thought for today and was on opportunities so if you’ve got something going on in your life that seems like a trial a stress period that’s probably an opportunity take advantage of that and find out what it is that you should be doing because that’s that’s awesome but also I wanted to share with you, we are in like our second week of our health challenge and that i’ve got the shirt on today here I can show you it’s the I am and we have our our people who join us in our health challenge writing down I am and it’s I am something and so we’ve got all these different words that go around here that say I am healthy I am you know whatever you want to be I’m creative, what are you what are you set yourself up as something you are something because you know what life is amazing and we’ve got this health challenge and this month or it has been a mental awareness month I don’t know if a lot of people know that but the month of may was set aside as mental awareness which oh my gosh there’s so much going on right now in society that it’s that it’s like we need to be more aware of what’s going on with us and our own mental ability and capabilities we have in coping with any given situations and so I wanted to share a couple things and the fact that mental awareness. Number one you are unique you are you and no one can tell you who or what you are and you got to believe that you can’t believe what the media is saying that what you are or what’s going on around you is the truth you are what you are and you are you and you are unique because to be honest with you do you know what it took to make you. Oh my gosh the the chance that you actually came into being as a human being and who you are is absolutely amazing and what’s really, really, cool about all of this is the fact that you have dreams. You have dreams you have desires you have goals in your life, don’t let anybody tell you what you can and cannot do and where you can go in life, because you have dreams and those dreams are your dreams and what you want to become and what you want to be, you can be spectacular you can be amazing, and that is what I try to do I want to be amazing at everything that I do and I spend the time studying I haven’t spent the time going to continue education courses because I want to help people but I want to know how I can help them.

I want to be amazing at what I do and I think that I am and so I am therefore I am and I am what I want to be, because I am amazing, okay, that’s that’s something on the mental challenge. Don’t let anybody tear you down don’t let anybody take your dreams and smash them okay they’re only jealous of what you have and what you want to do and where you want to be in life. So don’t let anybody tear you down. One of the things that I learned which is really kind of cool I had to really think about this because what dreams do you have that you haven’t brought to fulfillment yet, what goals do you have that you haven’t accomplished and it starts just one at a time you know one step at a time don’t think that you’re going to jump hurls right now you got to take one step at a time and dreams you know and your desires and what you have is very unique to you no one has those exact same aspiration and dreams nobody only you do and if you aren’t around if you choose to decide that you don’t want to be around anymore and you don’t want to be a part of this life those dreams die with you and those are spectacular dreams and you don’t know you really don’t know what an impact we’ve talked about ripples and ponds but what an impact your dreams and your desires can make on somebody else. Okay, so don’t give up never give up and don’t let anybody put you down for what you believe in and what you’re seeking towards because you are amazing. Okay, now  our topic tonight is on treating the whole body and not just symptoms, all right, and I kind of talked a little bit about this but symptoms I’m just amazed at how in in medicine and I think things are changing you know I have to admit I think that people are catching on to this, that we still treat symptoms, we really still treat symptoms, you know if a person comes to me for an example and they’ve got a toothache, it is a symptom it’s a symptom of something going on in the tooth and what do we do we fix the tooth. We do either a root canal a failing something, but we never look at what was the why what caused that to occur what is it that you know is it because you’re drinking mountain dew and that’s why you ended up with a deep cavity, I mean it’s possible. It could be your bite it could be a bite relation it could be your overall health in your body you know, it’s not just a very simple straightforward answer and I think that a lot of times in medicine and even in dental than in the dental care that a lot of dentists provide is the fact that they treat a symptom, a small little issue going on let’s just deal with that let’s take care of that and what do we do what have we learned up to learned how to do as we’ve grown up you know when you got a headache what do, you do you go take some Tylenol and that’s what everybody does, you get a migraine you go take the Excedrin migraine that’s what everybody does and that’s treating a symptom it’s a symptom of something else there’s something else going on and we really have to look at the whole picture of the whole body and how it all functions together because it’s actually amazing, what the body does to protect itself how the body heals how the body deals with things I had a wonderful just to give you a short little story a patient came in today and the fact that I was asking him how his wife is doing you know because I’m concerned I want to make sure people are are doing good and and she’s had some health issues and and I wanted to know, so how’s she doing what’s going on and you told me he said she’s actually doing really really good and I’m like that’s awesome you know and he says but she’s always tired in the afternoons and so I asked him I said so what the doctor’s doing about it and he told me he says well, the doctors are trying to figure out why she’s always tired in the afternoons and they just can’t figure it out. She’s just always worn out and so you know the the the the thing is is I I turned to him and I said did anybody ask her if she sleeps at night and has she had a sleep study and how is she sleeping at night and he said no and I said why not, I mean if I was tired every day and I was tired during the day wouldn’t that be one of the first things I’d want to look at, yeah so that I’m not tired during the day, am I getting the number of hours that I need to sleep so that I’m not tired in the day. I mean it seems pretty obvious to me but maybe it’s because I’m in that centre focus of of sleep and health and nutrition and everything else going on, and so he says I’m going to ask the doctors well later on we got conversing and I said you know we actually do home sleep studies to our office and I do these in connection with a doctor you know I don’t want to do this just standing out on my own because I believe that as a dental professional that I am that I need to be working in conjunction with the physicians with medical doctors and helping patients become healthier. If I see an issue that shows symptoms of diabetes, I’m going to be talking to their doctor and saying I see these signs in the person’s mouth. I have concerns I don’t know when the last time they were going to see you I suggest you take a look at this if we’re taking someone’s blood pressure when they come in our office and I see a high blood pressure I need I write a letter off to the doctor because I it’s I feel like it’s my responsibility then what’s really kind of cool is is this guy is going to get his wife taken care of because he said that is that is unique, we need to figure out why she’s tired all the time and it may be her sleep and it could be as simple as that she’s had some issues health issues going on for a long time in her life for the last three years and it could be just simply it could have been all along just sleep and I you know kind of frustrates me because always the first question you got high blood pressure on two medications now three medications for your blood pressure, does anyone ask you about how you’re sleeping at night. No why, why, do we feel like we’re in such a hurry to solve our problems, why do we feel like we need a quick fix to everything, you know, it’s interesting that people with chronic migraines that we treat in our office or chronic headaches and chronic pain have this thing that they’ve been doing for the last 20 30 30 years that they’ve got this migraines and these headaches and then I say we can take care of that well within the first week they’re coming back and like I still have my migraines yeah you still have migraines it took 20 to 30 years of you building up what’s going on in your body and it’s going on that’s causing these migraines, that no wonder you still have migraines. It’s going to take us some while to treat this and and so we need to give our bodies the time it takes to heal but as you do that I am the most impatient person in the absolute world, okay, to tell you the truth last year in April I ended up with some issue with my shoulder, some torn tendons in my shoulder and you know talk about impatience, I I go in and and the big thing is it’s like why, well torn tendons you know and so I got I got them treated but I’m such an impatient person I mean they’re things I want to do I they’re I want to live life I’m a crazy busy person and and I have too many things I want to do in life that I can’t sit back and just let my shoulder heal and so I understand completely that people want a quick fix to things but it doesn’t happen that way then what’s really cool I mean when you really think about it, how often do you go to your dentist now if you’re really up on your dental care and you’re taking care of yourself and and going to the dentist on a regular basis you’re seeing your dentist every six months.

What doctor or physician do you see every six months unless you’ve got some chronic condition going on whether you’re suffering from cancer treatments whether you’re going through a thyroid problems thyroid issues things like that how often are you seeing you know your physician and if you feel like you’re healthy person you don’t go very often. Dentists have the opportunity and this is what’s really cool we have the opportunity to actually see what’s going on in your body and help you out and point you in the right direction and I’m trying I’m really, really, trying to make this a whole approach through whether chiropractors and ent specialists and sleep specialists and regular physicians and regular doctors in helping people have better overall health. I I love doing a crown don’t get me wrong and I love doing veneers and I love giving people beautiful smiles and I love fixing these little things but the fact of the matter is is until you get to the why you’re not going to have success in what you do and so we’ve got to figure out why so we need to work together and not just treat symptoms not just treat these small things and I I do I get I get people who come in and they they’re like i’ve got these worn teeth i’ve got these chips and I’m going to tell you about something else but they got any of these chips on my front teeth and I want to get some veneers done. Well I start looking and investigating into this it’s their bite their bite relationship that’s what’s going on with the whole occlusion. Now I could jump in and I could just do veneers but the veneers are really not going to last and we want things to last I mean I’m I know I get that feeling from patience the fact that you know if I’m going to invest this money I want something to last and and and I know I want it to last too because you know as much as you want to look good I want to look good too and I love what I do and so  there are other issues that we need to take care of before we can actually do this and I know that sometimes it frustrates people because they want to jump in and just get this done but the long-term success of anything that we do in life has to do with starting with making sure that everything is functioning efficiently and doing what it’s supposed to before we can actually do it you know another example of that would be I’m obese you know and I want to lose weight well we’re so into these quick diet plans and it’s always I mean we noticed you go into facebook and there’s always a new diet plan here and there and here and there and everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon you know it’s I need to do this and I need to do this, then these little quick diet plans but if your body’s not functioning well, no matter what you do those diet plans are not going to work and just to be honest up front with you it’s not going to be a quick fix. It took you this long to gain the weight it’s going to take you this long to take care of the weight. I’ve learned that the hard way and and that’s just the way life is. So you know I understand like I said quick fixes, we all want quick fixes now, I want a quick fix to everything but it doesn’t always happen that way. Anything worth having takes the time to do it right and and working with physicians and symptoms and not just treating these symptoms but taking all these symptoms together, and finding out what’s going on in a person’s human body and how we can better make it function and function well, is kind of what the goal of all of the medical health profession should be. We live in the united states and it is one of the greatest nations and as far as medical care goes and advancements in medical care, I mean the things that we have that we can do like the mls laser that we use in our office the cold laser, those things you know wouldn’t be around if like in the united states we just have this this this plethora of of information, studies tests and and advanced care and with that advanced care we need to be doing more for our patients we need to be doing more to help each other out and we should be working with every aspect of every field, whether it’s me working with a urologist or a cardiologist and figuring out what we can do to help them out. I’m happy to do that I love doing that. I love being part of this larger group of helping people not just treat high blood pressure but figuring out why do you have high blood pressure. I’m not just treating kidney disease but why do you have kidney disease, not just treating diabetes but why do you have diabetes you know and I’m really talking the type 2 diabetes, that something that you can develop and and obesity why do you have the obesity, why aren’t you in good health what is the the issue what is the situation and i’ve always said it comes down to those three pillars, i’ve talked about the three pillars before it comes down to oxygen intake it talks to about sleep. If you’re not getting the right amount of sleep you’re you’re not healthy and nutrition you know i’ve been into this big exercising kick over I set this goal last spring of or last night it’s like January  of the year before that I was going to be  healthy I was going to change my life I was going to commit to myself to give some time to myself to become healthy because I have learned I can’t give to others if I don’t have and so I have to get in order to give and as long as I get I can give but I can’t if I don’t have and so my goal is to get healthier so that I can spend more time with my family, so that I can do more for other people, and I have stuck to that goal literally I have stuck to that goal and I know it drives my wife crazy, I mean she’ll probably say my husband disappears every night for two hours disappears every night for two hours because he goes and exercises for every every night for two hours and that was my goal and and I have not given up on that goal because that’s that’s what i’ve done it took and I realized and for me I’m 54 years old and for me I was getting into some really bad health issues, and I decided enough was enough, because i’ve got another 30 years or 40 years left on my life and I don’t want to be living that having a lot of health problems and if I’m going to fix it i’ve got to turn around and i’ve got to fix it now. So that I can continue to give to other people and that’s kind of where I’m at and so I’m just I’m telling you now make a commitment do something for yourself, we’ve got this health challenge going on join us for the health challenge my gosh it’s so exciting because if you’re not reporting to somebody and talking to somebody about what you’re doing, you’re less prone to actually follow through and do it. You need someone to check up with, you need someone to follow through with and we’re here for you for the next 90 days in the south challenge. Join us do it we’re excited for you we’ll post you we’ll we’ll post positive comments, keep going keep doing what you’re doing you’re awesome because that’s what we believe as a team in my office is that we need to share that awesomeness with other people. Anyway I hope that made some sense and we’re talking about symptoms. We’re talking about the fact that you can’t just address a small symptom like a headache, you need to find the cause and the reason why and we need to look beyond the simple answers of the reason why and and dig a little deeper, whether it’s sleep nutrition oxygen what is it that is causing the issue. It’s it usually comes back to one of those three that you’re either not breathing right through your nose and not getting oxygen you need you’re not eating correctly you know I I love fast foods and and they’re great when I need them but they’re not the most nutritionally valuable for you and sleep my gosh, we need our sleep and when we are stressed and high strung and worn out we’re not getting the the quality sleep that we need. So we need to work on that I am grateful for the opportunity I have to share my information with you I hope that what I have said tonight may motivate someone to change their life to get something taken care of is my hope that I have given some hope to someone who has struggled  with diagnosis from physicians or something that just hasn’t made sense to help them seek out answers and help to move forward with your lives your life is very precious you are important I don’t know you personally but you’re important to me everyone around me is important and I appreciate all the friendships that I have everyone that i’ve created a connection with in my life because they are now a part of me your uniqueness has contributed to my uniqueness..

Your amazingness has motivated me and inspired me to be more than what I am and to continue growing and becoming even more I’m grateful for each one of you please join us in the health challenge do something for yourself take care of yourself be safe, it’s crazy right now if you need to turn off that tv if you need to get off Facebook do it your mental your mental health is important because you are a dreamer you are a creator you are unique and you have places that you need to go and things you need to do don’t give up and don’t let anybody put you down.

I’m Doctor Gunnerson with Gunnerson Dental and I’m here today and I want to thank you first for joining me. It’s always fun to do these events. I love doing these and I love sharing information and knowledge that I have especially when it comes to improving our health and improving our dental care. So tonight I we kind of posted this along with what we call craniofacial, so I’m going to get into that but I want to share some things with you just to shout out to my team. I think I have an amazing amazing team and I don’t know if most of you have met them they do an amazing job they do a great job at everything that they do all the way from assistants who who help me to to provide the highest quality care that we possibly can and to my hygienist who worked so hard to to diagnose and co-diagnose with you and and help you figure out what might be going on and the ways we can help you out to to my front office team who works so hard to make sure that your schedule at a time that works for you to help you with your finances to make sure that we can find a financial plan that works well for you to help you get the quality care that you need to greeting you at the front desk and what amazing a job they do  greeting at the front desk is is just it’s it’s the first chance you have to meet me and meet my office and and it’s just a position in my office that the person there does a great job, I’m grateful for Rachel and what she does and then to our insurance specialist. Insurance is there are so many I don’t think people actually realize how many insurances there are out there and how involved working with insurance is and all the different plans and all the different variations that go along with every single one of them and and all of that when it’s when it comes down to insurance is done all the courtesy to help you receive the benefits that you possibly can and help you receive what you can from your insurance company and that’s not always easy and insurance companies always like to decide whether you can or can’t and no matter what they tell us they can always decide that that’s not a cover procedure or they put limitations on those coverage. So she does a phenomenal job at making sure that we have the information available to give you as much as we can possibly can and help you out to receive the benefits you can from your insurance company.

So I just I’m grateful for my team I want to give a shout out to them because of everything they do for me. So I can make this possible. So I can make all the learning that I do possible. So we can make all of the help that we give to our patients possible. So for this week I have been putting a lot of time and effort into studying craniofacial pain over the last year and first you start thinking about what does craniofacial mean in the first place. Well let me explain. Cranial facial pain where creating a facial has to do with the head and the face and sometimes down even into the neck and a little bit in the shoulders and people like to look at dentists and say well how can you treat that you just treat them out do you realize that we spend a very short time while we we in undergraduate as when we’re preparing to go to dental school, we spend time studying the human body and doing human human anatomy and physiology and we do some is for a whole entire year, we extensively study all the different systems in the body and then when we get to dental school, we end up actually redoing a lot of the the human body we spend time doing that but we spend a lot of time studying the head, you know and all the structures that are associated with that the nerves the arteries how everything functions, we spend time studying neuroanatomy, how those nerves all interact through the spinal cord and up into the brain. So don’t think that we as dentists can’t do that sort of thing and can’t help you out in pain because it falls within the scope of what we do as dentists in treating the face and and the head, especially when it comes to pain, because a lot of times pain that you have in your head can be associated with the way the oral cavity functions and then with the nasal airway passageways and so we work in conjunction with a lot of specialists such as ears nose and throat chiropractors, different other areas and expertise to help you receive the benefit that you need to get you out of pain. Anyway, so I hope that explains a little bit cranial facial we’re dealing with the structures here we’re dealing with all the structures back in here and down into the shoulders. In today’s society in today’s world, a lot of people are suffering from craniofacial pain. A lot of people it is mild to moderate and in some people it has become quite severe. So it can range from anywhere from mild discomfort in your jaw your face your cheeks your ears and across the top of your head to your neck to more severe pain like migraines, things that traumatize us and keep us from being functional and doing what we really want to do. You know I often say that life is short here, and when we have things like pain, it really keeps us from being as functional as productive as we possibly can be and enjoying those things that we have. In fact it makes us irritable and that affects everyone around us and so addressing cranial facial pain has become a big hobby of mine a big area of expertise that i’ve gotten into and I love doing it because seeing the results and seeing the fact that it has on people’s lives is absolutely amazing. I just spent any if you’ve seen my short video that I posted on Facebook while I was in Dallas Texas last weekend, we spent time learning how to and trigger points and give injections in in the areas of the back of the skull the face and down into the shoulders and you would think that dentists don’t give injections outside of the mouth, we absolutely do because a lot of that deals with the mouth. So migraines oh my gosh those things can be debilitating and like I was saying this makes us irritable it keeps us from not being productive and why do we have to put up with these things and there’s so much study that’s gone into the brain and how it functions the spinal column how it functions what inflammation in our body does to us and how it affects us overall and i’ve talked a lot about how sleep affects us. You know Advil and Tylenol we frequently take these for mild pain to moderate pain do you know statistically that currently 50 percent of those who are in the line or on the list for liver transplants it’s due to overdose of acetaminophen. Now acetaminophen Tylenol okay just to tell Tylenol the name brand, because of the abuse that it gets now the fact is we tend to fall on that whenever we feel any discomfort whatsoever you know there’s opposites in all things there’s positives and negatives there’s joy there’s sadness there’s happiness okay and to pain there’s pain and comfort and sometimes we feel like we need to alleviate any discomfort we have in our bodies, because otherwise you know we just don’t we don’t like it and and the funny thing is is that if you don’t have some discomfort sometime, then you can’t feel how good it is to not have that discomfort, and so we fall back to our tunnels and our evidence and we’re taking it on a regular basis. Well, there are other ways we can treat and finding the cause of what’s giving us all these problems is what I really love to do. I love to know the why and i’ve told you that before in our discussions, I like to know what is causing the issues that are creating the problems that we have in our bodies and in this study of cranial facial pain it’s just been fascinating. I learned some great things this weekend to help out my patients, some great things to help my patients benefit from treatments that we can do in our office from cold laser therapy, you know it’s amazing tool I should spend some time just talking about it but the things that it can do in triggering and hitting your your your trigger points in targeting your your pain areas that you have your muscle discomfort between your spine and your and your head and your neck, to joint inflammation issues and helping deal with those and i’ve had some people when i’ve posted about cold laser therapy, I said cold lasers have kind of an iffy you know history. The one that we use is, is an amazing tool it has two different wavelengths and it is very comfortable. It’s not you know we say cold laser but that doesn’t mean it’s cold, it just means it’s not going to be cutting the skin and when used properly when used with training, can have some amazing benefits because what it does is it decreases the inflammation in that area increases the blood supply and allows those healing elements that the body produces to be able to go in that spot and start healing that area. I’ve got staff members that we have, have, done some things on such as with migraines and, and, we have targeted a couple areas that we know that can lead to that we find those trigger points whether it’s in your spine up here in your neck whether it’s in the back of the neck here or in your shoulders and when we target those areas, like we have, I have staff members that haven’t had headaches in in weeks since it was targeted. So it’s just amazing when when people who who have this chronic issue going on can actually do that and in treating and make it feel so much better. I just love it, and and I’m really excited about it because of all the things we can do. Cranial facial pain caused by many different things. So let’s talk about pain and how it affects the body and what it does and you know long lasting what effects does it really have on us and what it’s doing in in affecting what we do. So the the first thing is acute pain. Now you realize that within the first six weeks that we can’t sit we consider pain as as an acute phase of pain and it hurts and our body wants to move away from it, I mean come on you touch a hot plate or you touch the the the you step on a nail or something your body moves immediately away from that and we don’t even realize what we’re doing because that’s all subconscious. It’s all controlled by our brain and we don’t have to think about it. Just like our heartbeat our breathing these things we don’t think about can you imagine having to think about you know stepping on a now and hurting your foot and think should I move it away or shouldn’t I move it away and then moving it away, okay, so these things are all subconscious we don’t realize that sometimes when we have pain in our head and throbbing that subconsciously that affects our posture in the way that we stand. That subconsciously affects the way that we’re acting but it but it does and so for those first six weeks we call that an acute pain and that is like the best time to create healing in the body is during that first six weeks.

So you twist your ankle you’re not going to wait you know three months to get that taken care of because then it becomes chronic you want to treat it and treat it in the acute phace so they can heal quickly and get taken care of so if we can address pain issues like my jaw also started popping or cracking and I have pain in my face if we can treat those immediately we get a lot better success and a lot faster success. After six weeks things become chronic now chronic means it’s been there for a while it’s ongoing hasn’t decreased and is always there and we deal with that and our body puts up with it and it still hurts and it still bugs us once it hits six months is a whole different story because up to this point our brain has been dealing with it through subconsciously just putting up with it then sometimes that pain we block it like when i’ve twisted or hurt my ankle when I broke my leg, I got to the point where I didn’t even feel it until someone brought up and said how’s your foot feeling it’s like thanks now it hurts because I my brain had learned to block that pain and discomfort because that’s what it wants to do it’s not for survival it wants to save you from from discomfort. So at six months it it goes to it after six months no longer is it a parasympathetic action your body’s just not dealing with it but it starts affecting your limbic system and this was really hit home to me during the lectures I was just at is that when it hits the limbic system. It now becomes emotional and you see people who can’t function anymore because the pain or they find life is hopeless because of the pain they act a certain way because of the pain they’re depressed because the pain and they don’t know it’s the pain they believe it’s what’s inside them that that I can say spiritually or mentally they’re depressed and what was kind of a home run to me in this whole thing or or hit home to me was the fact that i’ve been dealing with my my shoulder issue because i’ve had a little bit discomfort in my shoulders and it started last year and I hit the six month period and I keep telling my wife, I’m just emotionally drained you know life has just been emotionally draining me and I and I would think what’s wrong with me you know I’m crazy I’m the I’m the I’m the tough guy. I’m the strong part of the family and what takes care of everybody. I’m the person people go to for help and here I am being this wimp you know about this discomfort and pain in my shoulder and whip about life. So why is it the little things were starting to bother me why is it things were throwing me over the edge, why is it things were bringing me to a tipping point. So the limbic system was kicking in and once I realized that it gave me hope back that it’s not me that was going through this, it’s my physical body was just dealing with my shoulder issue and was now dealing with it emotionally and realizing that was just a huge breakthrough because then it gave me energy to get back and do what I was doing because like okay come on I can deal with this it’s just my body’s reacting and that was I don’t know that’s helping anybody that I’m talking to by sharing that but I want you to know there’s hope for you and that if you are depressed because of some injury that you’ve had that has been giving you chronic pain over a long period of time, you’re not mentally depressed. That’s just your body’s response to the pain. You’re actually a really good person and you have a lot of hope in you and you have a lot of drive in you. It’s just getting buried by your body’s reactions. That’s one of the neat things that I really love about treating this chronic craniofacial pain, is that we can help people break that cycle that we can help them start feeling really good and help them feeling positive and help them sleeping at night and feeling better and when you do that it not only changes their life, but it has a domino effect on everyone that they come encounter with, because no longer are they frustrated about little things occurring or frustrated about a bill that comes in the mouth and getting angry and understanding why they get so angry and frustrated. It’s because you get headaches all the time and you’re in pain all the time and it’s your body has now switched from that parasympathetic to limbic system and so that was that was really, really, cool. In pain like I said there’s some different modalities and some of the things that we learned are some older methods of of treating pain and craniofacial pain but it’s good things to know and good things that I can fall back on and to help people out. I love what I do and I always love to learn and lately it seems like everything i’ve been learning has been just bringing a lot of things that i’ve learned and known into focus and if you’re in pain, we can help you if if you know someone near you that you know has problems we can help them and there are people out there like me who want to do this working and want to help people. Contact my office I can point you you know if you’re from a different state I can point you in a direction to to say I know these people treat this because they’re learning from the same seminars I’m going to and i’ve met them and it’s it’s absolutely amazing. My goal is not to save the world my goal is not to you know become such an influence over everybody my goal is to help those one person at a time. I read a really cool story last night and I want to share that with you. It’s about this whole man who goes down to the ocean one morning and over the night there’d been kind of a heavy storm on the beach and there were all these starfish I don’t know if you’ve heard this story before but there were all these starfish that were all on the ground and down in a distance he saw a little boy and he was picking up a starfish and he’d fling it into the sea and they would pick another starfish up and fling it into the sea. The old man goes up to him and he says how come you know you’re doing that and he says well there’s all these starfish no man says yeah there’s all these starfish there’s no way you can get every single one of them it’s not going to make a difference, and the little boy holds up the starfish and he says but it does to this one then he throws it into the ocean. If I can make a difference in someone’s life, if I can make them feel better, if I can make them function better if I can help them to be a better person, that’s always my goal. That’s what I seek to do because like I said life is short. We only have our kids for so long. We only have our families for so long.

We need to be spending time with them instead of sitting on a couch because we’re too tired because we don’t sleep all night or not being able to function and haven’t even put on all kinds of medications that keep us from not functioning even more and fog up our that fog up our brains and we can’t think straight and there are things that we can do and that’s what I seek to do if it’s changing one person’s life, it’s a success for me, like I said I love what I do we are treating these people we’re seeing these people, I love doing it, I love helping people and I’m already seeing the changes that the ripple effect that I have in people’s lives and that’s where I find my joy you know you can’t expect life to bring you joy but in our lives, we can create joy. Life is a creative process and what we create is what we get. Create the good, create the positive, and, and, you can change the world. Those are my thoughts and thank you for letting me share with you a little bit of me and a little bit about what I do and in treating cranial facial pain. So if you see that title cranial facial pain you now know what it means. It means anything to do with the head and the face a little bit in the neck and some of the shoulders in treating chronic pain that occurs up in these areas because we want to help you get out of pain up in here, so that you can focus and enjoy what you do and enjoy your kids and, and, just have fun and thank you for joining me, I really appreciate it, if you have more questions or if you want to know about this and you want to come in for a consultation, I do consultations either by zoom or I do them you can come into the office and we can sit and talk about what’s going on and see if what I do is something that can help you. I appreciate it again, I appreciate my team who supports everything that I do. They’re loving doing this too because again you see those changes in people’s lives and no matter how hard your day was and no matter how many people might not lock you for whatever reason it all makes it worthwhile and you just love everything you do. So thank you again I appreciate you joining me. Someday I need to do a seminar on insurance because people think insurance is is the get all and the save all and the do all for you. It’s not and it’s just what it is but I appreciate everything that you do for me. I thank you for being friends with me on Facebook I thank you for sharing my video with others and if it brings hope to someone in their life from what I talked about with the limbic system, compared to the the parasympathetic system and the way that pain relates to us in our bodies and how it can start to affect us mentally. If that brings hope to one person. I’ve done my job so thank you for letting me share this with you.

Hi I’m Doctor Gunnersen with Gunnersen dental and I am here for our Facebook live tonight and I’m excited to be here and I am glad that you are joining us or if not you’re watching me some other time and watching this video. Thank you for watching this video that I’m doing and this Facebook live excuse me. I am excited to be here. Great topic tonight and we’ve been kind of talking about some different things about health and our general health of our bodies and so tonight I thought it would be really interesting to we’ve spent so much time on sleep that  that I would spend some time doing a little bit different so tonight what I wanted to do was to talk about there are basically three essential things that we need as human beings to actually survive or to live now these are physical so to survive physically and those three things are sleep and we’ve talked a lot about sleep and the importance of getting sleep and what’s really interesting with sleep is I get a lot of people who come in to see me and they’re like I think I have sleep apnea. I’m tired all the time and we send them home with a home sleep study and they come back and we find out well according to the scale you really don’t have sleep apnea but you do have problems sleeping. Now in most cases what’s been very interesting about this is that in most cases it’s not the fact that people are stopping breathing when they sleep in order to do that you have to sleep to some extent. So these people are falling asleep and then they stop breathing, these people that I’m talking about who don’t really you know they’ll go to a sleep specialist or sleep doctor and they don’t qualify for sleep what does qualify for sleep treatment, you know it’s because the government at one point as a body in the medical profession came out with something called an AHI scale and this AHI scale rates you depending on the number of events that you have a night that you stop breathing now in order to register all on that you have to have a certain AHI you have to have stopped breathing for 10 10 seconds or more now that’s not to say you didn’t almost stop breathing and that’s not to say that you were snoring all night it’s not to say that you were restless all night and so we really start looking at things as far as sleep goes at how many times you get woken up or slightly woken up so that you’re really asleep but you’re slightly working up okay. So it’s interesting i’ve just had a lot of people come in lately that have have not been really on that AHI scale as far as sleep apnea is concerned but they do have problems sleeping and we can still treat those problems these people still have problems. So  there are different things we can do. Now one what I wanted to talk tonight we talked about sleep okay that’s number one another one is nutrition and I would love to spend some time on here with you guys talking about nutrition. Why it’s important for us to eat well and it’s not just eat well eat those things that our body allows us to not gain inflammation and to actually absorb properly in our systems and so you know we can say well I ate this and I ate that and it was healthy food I had these greens and stuff that but a lot of us are allergic to different things and it’s amazing how we went from the 50s to the 60s and also into microwave food in the 70s and a lot of processed food in the 80s and gmos through the government of genetically altered a different like wheat for instance in order to produce more wheat and so we start getting these things and we’re finding that people are more allergic to a lot of these different things and this allergy it doesn’t really show up and manifest itself as I break out in hives and get a swollen face I can’t breathe my hands swell up, no it causes inflammation in your gut and when you have inflammation in your gut you have what is called leaky gut and that is where you do not absorb the nutrition that you actually need and so you’re not eating well so one sleep two nutrition okay and I would love to spend like I said time on nutrition and go over that because I think it would be a great topic to cover in here that would cover all the three areas that have to do with how to survive physically. The third one is breathing it is oxygen. Now oxygen is so essential to us surviving as a human race. We need oxygen you can’t go to a planet that doesn’t have oxygen and survive. We can’t go under water and expect to survive. Okay, oxygen and breathing is essential and so I wanted to cover some things about breathing and the importance of breathing and how it affects one, your oral cavity and tooth decay to how to fix your sleep three how it affects your overall well-being especially the way you stand the way you walk, all these things are important as far as keeping down chronic inflammation in our bodies. All right, so let’s start first with with breathing. Have you ever been told just take a breath. Now I talked to an employee today and she says well yeah, I tell myself that all the time just breathe you know for heaven’s sakes just breathe and we tell people when they’re upset god just take a breath let’s breathe a little bit and we did that exercise once on one of my Facebook slides where I said hey everybody stressful day come on let’s all take a breath and just relax a little bit because breathing does that it helps us relax it brings oxygen to all of the muscles to the organs to all the tissues in the body into the brain. These are essential things in fact when we do CPR when we are saving lives it is more important for oxygen to be getting to the brain than it is to be getting to the heart you know we’re circulating that blood through your system by by manually pressing on your heart in order to get oxygen to the brain. So that the brain doesn’t die because oxygen is so essential and I watch these people when they get sleep studies back and we find out that their oxygen levels are so low during sleep or their flow rate is decreased because of constrictions in their throat and their tongue and their oral cavity. They just don’t have that room to get the proper breathing to be going on when they’re sleeping at night and so their levels of oxygen decrease and that affects us. So oxygen is very very important. It’s an important aspect of survival and breathing breathing is very important and that brings up one or a couple essential facts and we’re finding this more and more in individuals and that is we’re seeing that more people are mouth breathers. In fact if I was to do a survey today to find out about breathing through your mouth, I bet you would say that you breathe through your mouth more than you breathe through your nose and why do you say that because right now the government has instituted the fact that we have to wear face masks. Now when we wear face masks we breathe through our mouths not through our nose why because subconsciously, we don’t feel like we’re getting enough air because you’re breathing through the material of the mask and then trying to get into your nose and so you are habitually breathing through your mouth.

All right, so what does that do let me tell you this much when you breathe through your mouth your jaw drops just a little bit and we have a tendency to lean forward it is a subconscious thing. When we’re talking about posture and the way that we stand and everyone says stand up straight sit up straight you can’t purposely make yourself stand up straight come on teachers, we can’t do that in class you can’t stand up straight because it is a subconscious autonomic reaction that our body knows that gravity is here pulling us down, we need to stay in this stance to stand upright. It’s just like the way our heart beats the way that we breathe on a congenital basis it is all autonomic we don’t control our posture okay and when we have a hard time breathing the body’s posture changes and we start leaving our mouths open and we are leaning forward. When you lean forward you put so much weight on your spinal column the amount of tension and the weight from your head as it’s pulled forward triples doubles quadruples as it just moves forward just a little bit and that puts a lot of weight on your spine you know when you hear people complain, I get headaches and I get it from my spine, you know more than likely your mouth breather, and you hear people I have tension through my shoulders and a patient in the other day says I’m going in for carpal tunnel surgery and she also complained a neck pain and I’m like did they talk to you about your neck pain before they address the problem in your carpal and I’m not saying that people don’t have carpal tunnel issues what I’m saying here is that a lot of times that is masked and and driven by the point that the fact that we are breathing forward we are leaning forward and and we are pinching nerves in our in our in our spinal column and our neck here those nerves radiate down through our arms into our wrists into our hands and down in here you start feeling pain and we think we have carpal tunnel when it’s actually something up here which is actually the way we breathe, okay, fascinating stuff but it is coming to like more and more medical journals that breathing and the way that we breathe is affecting our all our whole overall body and our inflammation and what goes on with us. Remember I talked a little bit about inflammation last time we we talked about how the fact that that when we have chronic inflammation, we get central sensitization and that is the fact we’re just like this heightened sensitivity and our bodies in this chronic state and that’s why sometimes you put on a jacket, it’s like I can’t stand this material or we get too hot we get too cold or the light is too bright and you just can’t stand that bright light. These are all areas where you probably have something chronically going on with inflammation in your body because it’s heightened and the way that we breathe and the way that we hold our posture has a lot to do with that and so what we find out is that in our office we take this image called a CBCT. It’s a cone beam cat scan of of your head and oral cavities and your throat here and it allows us to see what do we have as far as breathing goes. So when I’m in here treating chronic pain maximal facial pain things that have to do with your head and in these areas than in your jaw one of the important things that we look at is your airway because we can solve a lot of the pain issues that deal with your jaw and stuff but it may not be your primary issue your primary issue may just be in fact the way that you’re breathing you’re breathing through your mouth, you’re leaving your head forward you’re getting pain up through your through your your your neck okay and so that’s that’s important. It’s really kind of cool so we look at this image and it shows us your sinus areas in here and the sinus area in here we’re finding out a lot of times it’s very constricted and one thing I didn’t know is that your your your brain, okay, when you’re breathing switches from side to side every two hours do you know that you breathe out the left side for twice then you breathe out on the right side for charges then you breathe on the left side for two hours. It’s interesting because you think you talk to people like yeah every now and then I get stuff and then every now and then I’m just fine and then every now and then I’m stuffy because it’s like you know going back and forth. I didn’t know that and I thought that was fascinating to learn but the the fact of the matter is is that when we see deviated septums blocking areas into your sinus area, it’s just simply you know I look at this thing and I think if we could just take care of your sinuses your back pain would go away, your carpal tunnel issues would go away your ankle issues would go away because remember when you’re leaning forward, you’re twisting you’re not supporting everything properly you’re you’re walking a little bit differently. That can affect your whole overall body it all starts up here and then goes down to here it’s kind of like a tumbling effect here, in how it works. So that’s that’s one area that I see is fascinating about breathing is that we are breathing through our mouths. One thing about breathing through your mouth is the fact that when we breathe through our nose we get a lot of humidity in it and it humidifies the air that goes in into your throat and into your lungs and your lungs and throat like that humid air. They don’t like the dry air that comes through the mouth when we breathe through our mouths all it is is constant dry air coming in well at least in the state of Utah it is maybe if I lived in Florida be a lot of humidity coming in if. I was at Disney world having a lot of fun instead of helping people here but I do have a lot of fun here too, but the thing is is that we’re breathing a lot of dry air into our mouths it’s not getting humidified and going in properly into our lungs and one thing is too is you see kids with tonsils that are swollen adenoids that are swollen and these these things have to do with the fact as you breathe through your mouth your tonsils and your adenoids get swollen because they’re irritated with that dry air and so we go in and we’re like doctor doctor you know he’s got swollen in it and the doctor says oh we got to remove those and so they go in and they take these out well that’s not a good thing because people need their tonsils they need their adenoids you know they wouldn’t be there if there wasn’t a reason for them. So we get those removed and then you know problems later on with sleep apnea and other issues, but  all it is is the fact that breathing through our noses one more thing that breathing through our noses does for us is the fact that there is a chemical that’s created that is in our maxillary sinuses called nitric acid I probably mentioned that before in in the last time we talked about this but  it actually kills viruses and it kills bacteria oh my gosh what is the number one approach to fighting the virus, what did we say about the coronavirus the number one way of fighting is just being healthy. Number one, just be healthy number two breathe through your nose for heaven’s sakes you’ve got built-in abilities to kill viruses and diseases that comes with your body if you’re healthy. Okay, so let’s get healthy as a nation let’s get healthy we did our 90-day challenge back over the spring right after the coronavirus says come on let’s get a more healthy nation and see if we can’t fight this virus that way a little bit more. One thing I did want to talk about it’s not just that dry air we did talk about dry air coming in through the throat and through the mouth and when we get that dry air coming in through our mouth, it dries the oral cavity out and I look at people and I and I start to feel really bad because because i’ve been doing dentistry now for what did we decide it’s been like 28 years that i’ve been fixing teeth and the thing is the things that we were taught in dental school are things that they were learning in the 60s learning in the 50s you know you come out of dental school and yeah you have new kind of procedures you have new materials that are out there we have white fillings we have all ceramic crowns things like that and so techniques have changed just a little bit but the basics behind it all is always taught just pretty much the same it’s all based on 1960s and 50s but the fact is is I I look back and I think how I wish I would have known all of this back when I started.

What a difference I would have made in people’s lives and what a difference we’re making now people’s lives I’m having so much fun doing it but the air comes in through your mouth and it dries out your oral cavity and there’s been times that i’ve had two kids from the same family come in the office. I get like Mary sue and jimmy come in and and Mary sue doesn’t ever brush her teeth okay jimmy brushes his teeth all the time. He’s he’s a habitual brusher he just loves to brush his teeth and and we do an exam we take the x-rays we do an exam we take a look at their teeth we check things out and Mary sue doesn’t have any cavities but she never brushes her teeth and jimmy has a mouth full of cavities and the mom will say why jimmy doesn’t brush his teeth and Mary’s who’s upset you know or jimmy’s, jimmy’s.yeah Mary never has cavities and jimmy’s upset because mary sue never has cavities and jimmy has a mouth full of cavities and and and and jimmy brushes his teeth and mom wants to know why because he brushes his teeth and then we take these images that we take and we scan their head and we take a look at their sinuses and we find out that jimmy breathes through his mouth and jimmy brews through his mouth all the time that’s the only way he can breathe  Mary sue we do the imaging find out Mary sue breaths through her nose and you start putting this correlation together the fact is air is coming in it’s not humidified it’s dry it’s drying the plaque that has been forming on the teeth throughout the day it’s creating an acidic environment in the patient’s mouth and jimmy’s getting cavities Mary sue breathes through her nose the saliva isn’t getting dried out in her mouth the saliva is remineralizing her teeth and Mary sue doesn’t get cavities it’s interesting isn’t it and that was one of the things I wanted to bring up because again if we can fix sinuses and breathing and it’s not just a matter of going in and opening and removing every bone in your nose and and creating one big huge hole it’s not the purpose behind it that’s not what we’re looking at here we’re looking at just creating a little bit more airflow through your nose doing non-invasive procedures that you go into the office in the morning and you’re back to doing what you wanted to in the afternoon. Things that can open those airways up and so now I look at patients who come in my office and they have had a mouthful of crowns done over since they were 20 years old and now they’re 60 years old and we’re redoing all of these crowns and they’re on medications which dry out the mouth and their mouth breathing and and I think what would it have been like in their 20s, if someone would have said your mouth breather. Let’s fix your sinuses you can breath through your nose what a difference in the life of that individual that would be or even those people who have ended up in dentures because they were mouth breathers. Now I can’t say 100 percent that that you know is going to solve everything we’ve got diet involved in this we’ve got you know I’m not saying breathe through your nose and go drink as much soda pop as you want eat all the candy you want. I mean definitely there’s other things that play into here, but if we can find one thing that would actually help clear up the sinuses let’s start breathing better you know and so just to kind of like go through this again really quick you start breathing through your nose you start standing up straight you start standing up straight you stop having headaches you stop having neck pain you stop having back pain you stop having knee pain you stop having ankle pain you stop having wrist pain you sleep better at night.

You have a lot happier outlook on life come on how many people today have depression and anxiety because of the fact that maybe they’re mouth breathers and they’re just not getting the oxygen the nutrition and the sleep that they need. It’s a big impact and in today’s world of modern medicine, I’m sorry, it’s go in take this medication go in take this medication go into this medication. Our goal should always be as health professionals to find out the why and the reason behind what’s going on and to not just treat a symptom to just treat a symptom, I think in my opinion is neglect a symptom like tooth decay that can be solved by clearing up a sinuses, and sleeping better and proper nutrition and if we could look at those things and if doctors would just figure out where is this actually coming from and treat things from that position we’d be a lot healthier as individuals. I am so grateful for the health industry that we have. I love the doctors that we have but what my plea is is to let’s just not because you’re not sleeping at night stick you on Ambien. Let’s find out why you’re not sleeping at night. Okay, and if you’re having problems I’d love to see you if you’ve got pain in your head pain in your joint popping clicking if you’re not sleeping at night I’d love to help I’d love to find out ways we can help if I need to refer you out to an ears nose and throat specialist who can deal with your sinuses, if I need to send you out to a chiropractor who can deal with helping the muscle release so that we can get you back into comfort and get you out of issues like fibromyalgia chronic stress syndromes you know I have to kind of laugh in a way and I don’t mean to deviate but when I was growing up they they coded this thing as chronic stress syndrome and that’s where people are having all these aches and they said it’s the fluorescent lights and the offices because that’s what fluorescence lights became became very popular and and then computers were at everybody’s desk once the computer’s flashing it’s making everybody ache all over and then we we returned that as fibromyalgia and fibromyalgia the a color where the body’s a color. Why? Can we just take a moment and figure out why and I bet you figure out that it is in one of those three areas. They’re not breathing, they’re not sleeping and poor nutrition. Guys we can be a lot healthier. We’ve got the technology to do it, we’ve got the ability to do it, we’ve got the ability to find out the whys and it’s my plea that we do that you know and I’m grateful that I am in this profession I’m grateful for the opportunities I have to learn these things and I’m grateful that you have joined me here so that I can share it with you and I hope you stay safe I know that the coronavirus the coronavirus is kind of going up a little bit in different areas and people are getting a little bit more stressed let’s breathe let’s sleep and let’s eat well and be safe thanks.

I’m Doctor Gunnerson with Gunnersen dental and I’m here tonight with our Facebook live and I’m really excited about this topic. It’s a lot of new stuff that i’ve been learning and like I said I love to learn I love to learn anything that’s going to benefit and help my patients out a lot and so we decided tonight that we were going to do something on pain and that’s not just pain but chronic pain, what leads to chronic pain how can I deal with pain and so we sent out the questionnaire, they just actually if you’ve got questions send them in and we’d be happy to answer them. So I’m actually going to go through the questions that were sent to me and I’m going to list them all out and then I will answer what paint is and hopefully I’m able to answer those questions hopefully you know it’ll answer it no I know all the time that I’m discussing things, you know and thank you for being here tonight. I love doing this I love  going live I love being able to discuss these things these are non-rehearsed you know so it’s a little bit unnerving to me just a little bit to to talk just off the cuff and to talk about the things that are important to us today and I know that we live in a very stressful time there’s a lot going on right now and definitely if you’re not sleeping at night I’m not sleeping at night a lot of people are sleeping at night but these things are going to resolve themselves they will all pan out.

We just need to have patience and again like I always say we need to smile more we need to be nicer to others because it really starts with us and who we are and it, it, that affects the overall body and we’ll get into that a little bit but, but, there’s enough  antagonism going on in the world today that that we just need to work harder being nicer to our friends nicer to a family and definitely nicer to those we come in contact with so there’s my little spill for tonight about, about, being nice and and friendly and courteous and sharing and giving hope because everybody needs a little bit more hope in their lives, especially this time. So let me read through these questions that we got on the pain issue here. One of it was how do I know if my pain is chronic. Could chronic pain be causing my depression, another one I can’t figure out my chronic neck pain do you have any suggestions? I definitely have some good suggestions and can chronic pain be causing my fatigue, are you kidding me of course but we’ll get into that too. Where would chronic facial pain be? That’s a good question and depending on where it is is depending on what’s going on but we’ll get to that one too and can chronic pain be cured or just made less interesting what if we could cure chronic pain? What if we had a way to get rid of your pain what if we had a way to deal with these issues that these people have listed and change your life, because you know literally I had to sit back because we’ve been doing some some great things in our office and helping people with pain especially in jaw pain, joint pain facial pain and sleep and of course you’ve heard me talk multiple times about sleep but literally when you sit down and think about it, we saw three patients the other day in the office started them on some therapies and I really have to think about it and say, what’s amazing to me and when you really think about it is we have actually saved people’s lives and we have changed people’s lives. Now that’s what really touches me because that’s what I’m here for that’s what I work towards that’s why I learn what I learn is to save and change people’s lives. Anyway another one I have chronic migraines does that count as chronic pain? You know I learned some interesting stuff this a few weeks ago about that and I will share what I know and why does inflammation happen? Okay so those are the questions that people are presented to me and I hope that through my explanations on this, that I’m able to answer those questions if not i’ll go back through them just to make sure that I got those questions answered this may take us longer than 15 minutes I mean i’ve already spent five but let me talk a little bit about inflammation and pain. Pain always starts with inflammation, okay, and when we talk about inflammation we’re talking about swelling irritation something like that some causative agent that causes inflammation and with that inflammation will come pain.  Pain manifests itself in different ways and for everybody it’s different you know and and when we talk about is you’re too sensitive you know then what is sensitive. Teeth only feel one thing and they feel discomfort and is it discomfort is it pain what do we call it and so definitely you have to kind of look at these things and to everybody we all have different degrees of of pain that go on with our bodies and whether it’s chronic or acute. Let me explain those two terms one of first is acute pain. Well if I trip and fall outside and I twist my ankle I have acute pain acute meaning it is that at that time that that that initial response that sharp stabbing pain that I’m going to get my ankle which later is followed by a achy pain. Now if this pain was to go on for days and days and days and days that then becomes chronic pain and sometimes we look at people with issues with chronic pain that have been going on since they were kids and and this is what’s amazing to me is to be able to take those people and and solve the problems and you know diverting just a little bit from the subject, I talked to someone earlier today and she’s had a lot of decay going on in her mouth. Now what was really interesting is is that I learned that dry mouth causes a lot of decay in our mouth and we can do this on another discussion but what was fascinating was we never realized and why you know why why why am I going to dry mouth but we don’t ever get to that but but the why is what’s the most important but the fact that the dry mouth led to the cavities that led to the loss of the teeth that led to all the problems that they’ve had since and it’s like boom, you know I wish I knew all this stuff years ago, when I started practicing dentistry. That how the whole body plays into everything that goes on in your mouth and how much better clinician, I would have been back then and again boom you know learning that now is just really changing my perspective on things and the way I do things in my office.

So let’s get back to that, so that’s the difference between acute pain and chronic pain and how do I know if my pain is chronic, if it’s been going on for a long time chronic pain has been going on for a long long time. Okay now when we are in chronic pain let me explain a little bit what goes on with your body your body deals with situations and we and we talk a lot about anxiety and we talk a lot about stress and the wear and tear that has on our body and where does this all come from okay but but when we’re talking about chronic pain what it does to our bodies it wears you out I mean admittedly do you see people with what they’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or this chronic pain has been going on their entire life and then they look older, they’re tired they’re worn out  chronic pain is devastating to the body but why you know why what is it doing to your body. So we know that if we’re off in the forest and we’re off wandering around and and and a bear comes up what happens. Well your body has this response, it’s called the fight or flight and that is where all your blood circulation all changes it’s no longer digesting food okay and your body is going to try and isolate things so that you can run faster so your legs go faster you know in your arms so that you can defend yourself that’s a fight or flight and it causes this kind of a stress this anxiety this rush of of chemicals that are released from the brain to help you deal with that fight or flight. When we’re in chronic pain that’s a lot like fight or flight, okay, what happens is is with the body being in this chronic pain it is continually trying to deal with something that it is considering damaging to the body and so by trying to deal with it it’s releasing these constant chemicals into your body and so can chronic pain cause depression. Let’s talk about this a little bit more, in your brain as the sun is setting the end of the day and it triggers you know the sun setting triggers certain chemicals released in our brain that say hey yo sun setting time to call it good put the tools down time to go to bed and what it does is it releases a chemical GABA Gaba okay and this cabba has receptors in your brain and it drops out trickles down lands on these receptors and it says ah time to sleep and that’s why it helps our body relax but when we have been caught in chronic conditions of chronic pain those Gaba receptors have become affected and when those Gaba receptors become affected that that chemical that’s released from the brain that says relax breathe life is wonderful, you can go to bed you can sleep you can stop thinking about everything that’s going on today. When we’re in chronic pain that is blocked and so we’re not able to relax and so that really affects our sleep. Now I could go into sleep you guys know this I mean i’ve been on here talking about sleep month after month after month and how important our sleep is to our whole body and on all of our systems. Can it cause my chronic depression oh my gosh if you’re not getting adequate sleep because your brain can’t relax and go to sleep at night of course it’s causing your depression, of course you’re having depression, you know you’re not able to ever relax the the the thoughts aren’t able to be transferred to your long-term memory you’re never going into stage three of sleep which is which is rem sleep when you can’t go into rem sleep your body’s not healing things aren’t going well and so that does affect your depression and you know the the human body is fascinating and and I love I love studying the human body. What’s really really interesting about it is that it is built to deal with lots of situations and sometimes our chronic pain gets the point that our body no longer recognizes it. Okay so point in fact story here slipped and fell out on our on our parking lot to my office, ten somewhat years ago sometime foul landed on my ankle broke my my my leg in two places, broke the fibula completely in half broke the tibia and and so I had to go through surgery well I went through the surgery still had problems done some things going on found out that the ankle wasn’t addressed went in addressed the ankle went through surgery again, back into a boot wearing the boot around but to make a story short it got to the point in my life where my mind had begun ignoring the chronic pain that was going on in my leg and my ankle, because I was still having pain but it got to the point that it was annoying and it never ever bothered me until someone brought up how’s your leg you know and I’m like thanks you know it hurts you know but so our body deals with this as best it can to shut down mechanisms so that we don’t have to deal with chronic pain all the time but literally that’s still playing in there and that causes you know these chemicals and these problems and these issues that are going on then definitely can lead you to to things like depression, chronic pain and what’s fascinating is from what I’m learning is that in dealing with this chronic pain depending on where it’s coming from you know I learned something and I’m not going to put anybody down in this but I’m a dentist and I’m always working with my hands my wrists you know my arms and I hear so many people that get that get carpal tunnel syndrome. Well you know carpal tunnel is caused you know because of the pinching of the nerves since you’re getting numbness in your fingers, what if that nerve was being pinched higher, what if that nerve was actually being pinched up here in your neck and it’s causing this pain down your arm and you go to the doctor and he says oh you got carpal tunnel you know definitely got carpal tunnel, not that I don’t have inflammation going on my wrist well of course I do because I work all day and that’s you know I’m always using my hands and manipulating and you know creating beautiful smiles but but the fact is that pain is coming down here it’s coming from my neck, why it may not have anything to do with my carpal tunnel at all it may have to do with chronic pain someplace else it could be my gut, you know there’s a lot being said nowadays about leaky gut about proper nutrition maybe I’m not getting the proper nutrition i’ve got inflammation in my gut my inflammation in my gut is causing pinching in my neck care which is causing pain down into my arm how do I know it’s not my leg from when I slipped and fell out in the in the on the ice and that slip and fall makes me walk funny that walking funny tilts me funny and that tilting funny keeps my neck funny kicking my neck funny pinches the nerve that actually leads down my arm. So let’s start looking at things I’m trying to talk to everybody let’s start looking at things when you question I got pain on my shoulder I got pain in my neck is that really where it’s coming from frequently, frequently, and even in dentistry today we address a symptom. Oh I got a tooth pain you know my toothaches and and and I have learned you know we a few years ago got what we call a CBCT and it’s a cat scan and it scans your whole whole head and it actually what’s really kind of cool about is it scans through your sinuses here and I can see if people have this chronic inflammation in their sinuses and what’s neat about that is that a lot of times tooth pain isn’t a toothache and I see people come in like yeah they did a root canal and I’m still in pain yeah they did root canal on the tooth next door then I’m still in pain yeah they did root canal and the one next door to that and I’m still in pain well guess what it was a sinus infection. It was inflammation in the sinuses the sinuses aren’t clearing themselves properlym who would have known clear up the sinuses the pain all goes away, it was pretty cool, so just I mean that’s kind of beside the fact so  I can’t figure out my chronic neck pain do I have any suggest do you have any suggestions chronic neck pain you know we used to think that it’s sitting at a desk all the time but chronic neck pain can be from the way that you’re walking, it could be from an accident you had as a kid on a bicycle for all you know and it and and then that started you walking in a certain way in a certain way has you tilting your head forward and tilting your head forward is causing chronic pain now I’m going to you know like really blow your minds here just a little bit but but that that can be that can be the issue it can be the fact that just the way you’re walking is causing your chronic neck pain but who looks at that? We start talking about fused you know we got a fuse there this and we got to deal with that how many times do people come back and say my neck is still killing me. You know I’d rather not jump into surgery if something can be solved some other way if we can really find the true cause and not treat just the symptom but find the true true cause of the inflammation in your body that true true cause that causes that chronic pain that maybe your brain has forgotten but is actually affecting you in ways you don’t know like a migraine you know how do you know that migraine isn’t caused by something else that’s been going on for years and years and years and it’s just built up to the point that you’re getting these migraines and is it a true migraine see migraines occur actually because of swelling of the meninges in the brain in the head you know your brain doesn’t have nerves necessarily in it it doesn’t feel pain it senses and stimulates and you know and you get the the information the data and your body says oh yeah you got pain in your foot because it was processed through the brain the brain itself doesn’t necessarily have stimuli but it’s the meninges that that coat the the skull lining and when you get inflammation in there you get a migraine now that’s a true migraine. Now a lot of times we think oh I got this migraine because it’s just killing me right here in my head. A lot of times it’s a muscle issue and that has to do with nerve endings that are actually coming from your spine back here and that issue back here is is what’s causing the problem and why you know why are you having an issue up here in your neck what is that stemming from and that could actually be the way you walk that could actually be something that’s going on with your jaws that could be something that’s going on with your wrists with your shoulders you know some other issue that you’ve had all your life and your body’s just like you know shielded itself from it now  can chronic pain be causing my fatigue absolutely we talked about that how your body is in this fight or flight it affects the Gaba inhibitor that Gaba receptors in your brain and those Gaba receptors aren’t able to collect that you’re not able to sleep well at night of course you’re going to be tired you know there’s other things that are definitely you’d want to look at as far as your fatigue you know how is your sleep period, are you breathing you know properly do you do you have your airways open so that you can actually breathe are you getting the oxygen that you need can your body actually recuperate you know people complain of muscle soreness weeks and weeks and weeks on end, then is that just because at night we’re not sleeping in a way that oxygen gets gets to those muscles to actually heal and chemicals to heal aren’t being released in the body to heal that area, so yes absolutely, where would chronic facial pain facial pain be, now facial pain usually is associated either between here and all the way down here because you have to remember or if you don’t know there is a muscle attachment right here and this is your chewing muscle that attaches down here and comes all the way up into here and so when people say they got a headache it could be something with their jaw okay you know just by way of information but you know people wake up in the morning oh my face is so tight, that’s you know you get that chronic facial pain,. Now there is something else called  Ticdolaroo it’s a chronic pain that occurs and it’s sporadic you get sharp pains that come through the nerves now remember and and here’s another kind of brain blowing thing if you’ve got chronic pain that’s been lasting a long period of time and it’s a dull achy pain there’s probably more muscle pain coming from a muscle. If it is a sharp stabbing pain pulsing stabbing pain that comes from a nerve. So those are two different things and need to be addressed in two different ways. Can chronic pain be cured or just made less. Absolutely you find what is causing the inflammation in your body that is causing that additional inflammation somewhere else in your body and that inflammation leads to pain you solve that issue we can get rid of your chronic pain.

It’s so cool now. I have chronic migraines does that count as chronic pain absolutely I’m sorry you know migraines coming and going on all the time that’s as I said you really have to look at it I think that sometimes we jump into the fact that we have a migraine where we say we have a migraine because our mind is just our head is pounding and it can get really really intense. That doesn’t necessarily categorize it as a true migraine. There are actually 400 types of headaches that a person can have 400 different types of pain that you can have called a headache and in different ways that’s that’s from the the the specialist that deal with migraines but the thing is is to find out is it actually a migraine is it or is it a pinched nerve in your neck that’s causing pain up and through here and why do you have a pinched nerve in your neck or why is that nerve responding to something why is that nerve being stimulated in your neck that leads up to here that nerve that leads up to here being stimulated is it something else going on in your body it could be your nutrition that’s stimulating that nerve and causing that nerve to cause that that that migraine. Is some really really big things to think about I know I’m just like the tip of the iceberg guys, this is just the tip just the very top and I’m just being very simple in the way that I’m trying to explain this so that everyone can understand but you know why does inflammation happen I can’t explain it inflammation occurs when there’s damage. Whenever anything is damaged you get inflammation it’s the body’s response and we’ve talked about gum disease and periodontal disease and gum disease starts with inflammation because the gums are irritated by something, okay, they’re irritated by either bacteria by calculus build up by the lack of cleaning your teeth by plaque build-up causes that inflammation. It’s the body’s response to deal with the situation of what’s going on and sometimes that gets out of control. Such as like in periodontal disease where we start destroying our own bones supporting our teeth. So we just got to watch these things. Inflammation can actually cause a lot of damage when it becomes chronic and it is ongoing ongoing ongoing and that’s why we start looking at things my knee always hurts me you know and and also you have arthritis well what’s going on with arthritis, chronic inflammation that has actually started destroying that joint and then you end up with arthritis bone on bone things going on that really aren’t supposed to be functioning that way. So I hope I hope guys I hope that this was like eye-opening and fascinating and interesting. There is so much to this it’s just like way cool. Our the human physiology the body is just amazing and i’ve always said that when it comes to sleep is that we can heal ourselves if the body is given that opportunity. If we go to sleep on time and get up on time we get the adequate amount of sleep and not just adequate amount of sleep the adequate amount of oxygen the adequate amount of air flow through your body to make sure that it can heal so that your brain functions properly so the next day you’re clear that you don’t have a foggy brain you know and not only does this pain and this inflammation cause issues with just you know what’s going on there and with the anxiety and the stress, it affects all the hormones in your body, and we always talk about you know these hormones are like traffic police in your body, guiding and directing everything that’s supposed to occur and happen in your body, and that’s how your body communicates and tells it it needs to be doing something here and something there it’s through your hormones. If your hormones aren’t functioning properly, you got an issue and you got a problem. Now there was one other thing I wanted to mention I was like right on the to my tongue and then I got into that other that other discussion but I I would love to talk more about all of this and get into more detail on what we can do but you know airflow into our body we got to have air to live and I can almost promise you this when you have a kink neck and you have neck pain and and you were to take a picture of you sideways and you can see that you’re leaning forward you’re leaning forward your your head’s tilted forward because you’re unable to breathe properly you’re you’re clogged somewhere. The airflow isn’t adequate you’re leaning forward and that’s causing a lot of chronic pain. That’s just one area there’s just one area of things that can be causing some issues and and and I find this all just fascinating that we can actually treat these things and if we start looking at not just symptoms but true causes the why you know symptom of heartburn. I have heartburn here’s just an example of heartburn you go to the doctor doctor I got heartburn. She’s killing me, there’s usually not a discussion of why do you have heartburn I mean of course they want to find out if you have too much chemical release or something in your stomach but what do they usually do they put you on an antacid pill and so you end up on prefecit the rest of your life. Well do you know that I can trace back to my fact that when I fell down and broke my leg made my bone my my bones were brittle because I’d been on prefecit for 10 15 years, you know for every positive that comes with a medication there’s a negative and you know that’s that usually in those commercials that quick little and can cause it and can cause duty to do at the end guys can we try to solve things by healing the body, can we look at things beyond just a symptom that’s going on to an actual problem that exists. Why do you have heartburn, a lot of it leads back to sleep apnea I’m sorry but it does. Thanks for joining me. If you had questions about anything I discussed and like I said I hope I answer those questions adequately and getting into what chronic pain is and how it affects our overall body and the chemicals that are going on and and the fact that gal, there’s so many things we can do to solve these problems and get people out of pain, if they just would not be looking straight at a symptom and I know I get people who come in all the time and I’m the same way. I’ve got this too thick i’ve got this headache i’ve got this thing then we start treating a symptom take a Tylenol take an Advil guys that’s not the that’s not the problem the headache isn’t the problem the problem is coming from some other place and we’ve got to locate we’ve got to find that place you saw that problem no more headaches, no more migraines sleeping online no more jaw pain you know it’s fantastic science is fantastic and the things we’ve learned, god like I said boom, I wish I knew these things 15 years ago when I was starting dentistry. How differently I’d be treating you know doing a crown on somebody when they break a tooth, why did you break a tooth well a big silver filling why do you have a big silver filling, you know how did you get a crack in your tooth, how did you end up with decay why did you get so much decay as a child, was it the soda pop the diet well absolutely that’s part of it, what contributed to it you know when you have that crown and how can I make that crown better towards you aren’t going to have problems in the future because the fact is that when a person comes with a broken tooth ninety percent of the time they’re going to get back with a broken crown because we didn’t deal with the actual problem we dealt with a symptom, a broken tooth and that’s what people want to address they don’t want to have to deal with the problems they just want a quick solution to the symptoms. So think about it. We can save lives we can save people. We can change lives. I love doing this thank you for joining me tonight.

Hi I’m Doctor Gunnersen with Gundersen dental and I am glad to be here with you tonight for another Facebook live like I said I love doing these because I love sharing information that I may have either recently learned or stuff that’s going on in the world of dentistry and also in the world of overall health and so I’m glad to join with you tonight and we have a great topic before I get that topic I just wanted to say again thank you for joining me to all those and everybody who’s i’ve always said it’s a crazy world and and there are a lot of crazy people out there but we’re all people we all have fun we need to smile more we need to share our smiles with everybody and show a little bit more kindness a little bit more love a little bit more caring because we live in some stressful times right now and everybody has anxiety everybody has stress and I kind of want to talk a little bit about that tonight but, I’m really here to talk about wonderful experience I had this weekend I actually had the opportunity to go to San Diego and spend four great days with Doctor Almos and the TMJ and sleep therapy centers international he is the head of of that that international center for treating people with TMJ disorders and with sleep  and with sleep disorders and it was a great opportunity to spend four days with him in San Diego learning from him and  to learn about this area of what’s kind of going on as far as health goes and it was great it was very enlightening he’s a he’s a great guy and he’s special he’s a specialist in this field he’s done a lot of years of studying it and implementing those things that he has learned to help thousands of people internationally so just let me tell you a little bit about it  we went down to San Diego and spent four days in called many residencies studying what kind of goes on with the human body and we had the opportunity to learn from him the neural pathways the neurology some anatomy musculature things that go on in the head and in the face because what we’re finding out is that not only to sleep and i’ve talked a lot about sleep but not only does sleep play a very important role in the way our human body functions, I mean you have to remember that if we’re not sleeping at night, if we’re not getting to that stage of rem which literally happens you know at least it takes between three and four hours before you really hit that stage of rem that N3 stage and that is when our body is able to transfer memories over into our brain and when our body recovers when the brain actually releases those chemicals into our body that help us heal that help the body recover and recuperate helps the the heart regenerate and so if we’re not ever hitting that rem state of sleep, it just damages our bodies, we are at greater risk of cancer heart disease kidney disease and all these issues and so we spent some time going over that with him and going over the musculature of the face and and why what sleep does to us but we also had opportunity to learn and spend some time with him about the jaw joint and not just about the joint but how it plays its role in the overall physical well-being of our bodies, you know and you wouldn’t think that it does but you know one thing I didn’t realize is that chronic pain, chronic pain gets to a point in your body that you just don’t recognize it anymore and yet what chronic pain does throughout your body like you know I to tell you I I broke my leg probably about ten years ago and and for years it ached and ached and egg tonight and you know never really really bothered me unless someone said how’s your leg doing and then it brought back to my attention what my leg was doing and my leg was aching and it’s like well gee thanks I was past that now it’s aching again the thing is because your mind has a great capacity to be able to shut down those things that are causing us a lot of pain and to work through things but the thing of it is it does that but when we have chronic pain throughout our body, it brings us to it heightens our senses it heightens our and they have a name for it but it heightens up the the the the chronic pain that that goes on brings us to a more sensitive point I’m not going to say it heightens because that height that’s like way I want to be I want to have better senses and it’s not that it makes us more sensitive you know I don’t know if you’ve met anybody who says don’t touch me, you know because there’s their skin is literally sensitive or those or those people who who I mean they just they they complain about these little things but is because or the thing is or go outside in the light, you know I need my sunglasses they always need sunglasses and light why do they need these sunglasses always in the light. Well it’s because they are more sensitive and why are they more sensitive because their body is constantly in pain and they don’t realize it anymore, okay, that pain they’ve gotten so accustomed to that pain they don’t even realize it anymore and that and yet that is heightened so you can detect from these people it’s like okay you’ve got something going on and we got to help you out here because pain is not good pain releases other chemicals in your body that just keeps you unhealthy, okay, it’s just like having an infection going on somewhere in your body if you had an infection going on your body is constantly fighting that infection, do you think that you’re in a healthy state you’re not in a healthy state we’ve talked about gum disease and what gum disease does you’ve got that infection going on in your gums and it’s a big major infection that’s going on and how your body’s constantly constantly constantly finding that and if you don’t get it taken care of and your teeth cleaned your teeth cleaned up then your body’s immune system is just hammered it’s constantly trying to fight something to battle something and then some disease like the coronavirus comes along and you just you get nailed I mean it just it just hits you and your body has no defence against it because your immune system has been fighting this bacterial infection throughout your body, that’s just going crazy. So it was kind of beside the point but what I’m really getting to is that chronic aches and pains can make us more anxious cause anxiety to be higher can lead us to depression all these other things that we that that doctors and physicians look at and say okay we’re going to treat your depression we’re going to put you on some medication, not realizing that this this constant ache that’s going on their body just needs to be taken care of and then they come out of the depression. So tonight I really wanted to talk about your your specifically your jaw joint do you have any clicking or popping going on I mean just literally open and close, then what does it sound like I mean do you snap over here every time you open and close, does it sound like sand is going on through this joint over here every time you open and close there are different things going on in your joints and you know if you think that’s normal that is not normal. You shouldn’t be clicking and popping you shouldn’t be having that sandy sound going on in your joint because if you do you have pathology going on and by pathology I mean you’ve got inflammation. You have disease you have things going on in your in your joint so I’m here to talk to you a little bit about that, specifically you know about how that affects us overall but with the judgement clicking and popping you don’t realize that when you actually when it snaps when you open, that’s actually your joint returning back to the correct position. Well you’re open, because that disc you know you have to you have to know that in in your joint you’ve got this this kind of area where you’re where your jaw fits into and and this is a unique joint.

The temporomandibular joint is is very unique because it’s a sliding joint okay it doesn’t stay in a socket like your shoulders or your knees. It moves it’s a moving joint it moves through that area out and so as you open you can actually feel it slide up and back up and back between that piece of bone at the end of your of your mandible here your lower jaw, there’s a disc that fits in there and it fits right in there and it sits and it separates you from that other bone. Well we know that in all of our joints it’s that’s kind of what we have otherwise you’d be pounding bone against bone constantly and so you know we have this area and that that little disc is held together by some little ligaments on either side of it, but what’s happened why I’m saying that you’re you’re actually you’ve got a dislocated jaw if you’re popping all the time and when you’re holding your mouth closed it’s actually dislocated and when you’re opening and popping that’s actually putting it back into the location because what happens is you slide forward here your disc is out here it’s never sitting back here you’ve dislocated it it’s sitting out here and as you come across like this it actually snaps and goes back where it belongs, that disc does it slides back and rides on top of that and you come back up into here and then your your jaw comes back like this and it gets caught out here again and you slide back into dislocation, you’ve got a dislocated joint. To think of it this way how many of us would go out and shovel and dig a hole in the ground with a dislocated shoulder. I mean don’t you think that’s painful well when our joints dislocated it was painful and sometimes it is still painful but you have a lot of inflammation going on up there and you have to remember inflammation contributes to inflammation throughout your whole entire body and whether you have pain or you don’t have pain that’s dislocated and we got to get that back into into place. You need to get that back into being comfortable and if you’ve got chronic pain throughout your body it can be simple as your joint is out of alignment because you know what I’m going to tell you something else too because not only is your joint out of alignment but what it does is it throws your your neck forward you know you’re walking odd and that causes hip pains, it causes knee pains causes ankle pains. All because of some inflammation that’s going on up in here it ends up you end up tilting your head you know have you ever seen anybody who like just doing this all the time it’s because they’re out of joint okay there’s another thing associated with this and and you tell me if you don’t think the breathing is important and we’ve talked about sleep apnea. We’ve talked about not being able to breathe at night actually your entire tongue going back there and your soft palate dropping down and it’s like swallowing a big huge tennis ball into your throat and then saying I can breathe, I don’t actually batman you know it goes down there and you’re sucking in your sucking sucking and you wake up in the morning with heartburn. It’s just killing you because you you know you’re you’re just sucking your diaphragm’s being sucked up you’re trying trying to breathe sorry and you know i’ve got patients who who who do that up to 90 seconds you know I want you to lay down on a couch and have someone come and put a pillow over your face for 90 seconds and see if you can breathe you know and see if you can make it without gasping for air at some point in there but people actually do it for 90 seconds here I’m not condoning putting pillows over people’s faces, please don’t do that, but it’s just an example people are breathing. Air is very important your oxygen is very important you need that throughout your whole entire body for all your organs to function and if you’re not getting oxygen your tissues aren’t healing that leads to cancer you know that leads to heart disease your heart is in there just pumping like crazy trying to get oxygen back to that brain keep that brain alive pulling in you know from your periphery and collapsing those blood vessels because it actually puts you in a fight or flight, you know as it’s trying to survive it pulls in all the blood that possibly can so it can function and get in there and then you take that breath the sleep apnea and you wake up and you’re doing this your body is actually in this panic and you’re not really awake you know people say I don’t wake up and my sleep will you know you do you just don’t know it and unless you have a sleep study you don’t know it unless we send you home with some stuff to wear at night to help figure these things out so oxygen is very very important that’s what I was really getting at oxygen in your body and we would like to see the oxygen level between 96 and 98 to 100 percent oxygen saturation into your blood. A lot of people that drops at night okay and a lot of people during the day they’re really not getting the oxygen in fact here’s a couple things, I want to tell you because breathing is so important. If you’re not breathing through your sinuses and you’re a mouth breather you’re not breathing right that’s an unhealthy breathing to be breathing through your mouth all the time and that has a lot to do with your joint but you need to be breathing through your nose. When you breathe through your nose you actually stand up straighter did you know that and when you stand up straighter it affects your spine here it’s actually going back where it really needs to be that affects your shoulders you know I hear people I got chronic pain in my arm and they go to the doctor and the doctor treats something in the arm or carpal tunnel or some other issue that’s going on to find out six months later, I still have this ache I sell this pain it hasn’t resolved I can’t get rid of it or you go to the chiropractor or whatever and I love chiropractors. I think getting adjusted and having things in proper line is absolutely necessary but what we’re dealing with is an oxygen issue and the fact that the way we’re holding our head and the way we’re leaning forward which changes our gait and the way that we walk and when we walk Wampus it affects our hips and our knees and then later on in life you’re looking at knee replacements hip replacements why? Because all along you just haven’t been breathing right. We got to get people breathing right and through treatment through TMD I mean guys it’s just wearing an appliance for 10 weeks to get you breathing better and to get rid of that inflammation in your joint you know. I love reading about this stuff and I love studying all this stuff because I think it’s great to share this information and and like I was saying oxygen is is very very important to our bodies and we want to make sure that we’re getting it all through our systems and and that really helps the way that we walk and where we stand and who would have thought that something as as menial as the fact that you can breathe through your nose than the effects it can have on your body and the way that you walk and where you stand your neck your back aches your shoulders your arms your hands you know numbness tingling in your hands, is it always carpal tunnel is it always a shoulder issue, is it a neck issue it could be a jaw issue, it could be that you’re not breathing, right, these are things you should be really investigating you want to be healthy you want to cut medical costs, these are ways to cut medical costs get healthy, you know find the simple way to get healthy and you’ll cut your medical costs. So we were talking about airway and we’re and we’re talking about breathing and I talked a little bit about mouth breathing, you know mouth breathing does, you know I thought this was really interesting because I have families who come into the office and it’s like i’ve got sister and i’ve got brother you know same diet they eat the same things you know this one’s not getting into more candy or drinking soda and how quick we are to judge a person to say you’re not brushing you’re not flossing because you have cavities. Sister doesn’t have cavities brother has cavities you know what the reason why he has cavities is because he’s a mouth breather.

He has cavities because he’s constantly breathing in and drying his mouth out. The saliva is not remineralizing his teeth the air is feeding the acidity in his mouth feeding the bacteria keeping it alive, to destroy his teeth. Who would have thought something is he seeing justified to your mouth breather is causing cavities. I see people who come in my office you know and and crowns on everything oh yeah my family always has soft teeth you know what there’s nothing there’s no truth behind soft teeth. There’s no soft teeth. Enamel’s enamel then it’s dentin you know soft teeth happens because you know diet feeding the acidity in your mouth and mouth breathing. So you you solve the child’s mouth by doing fillings and what do they do they come back six months they have cavities again and mom comes in oh we’ve been brushing we’ve been doing so good and little johnny he does more than his sister does my sister doesn’t have cavities again but johnny has cavities why does johnny have cavities all the time, johnny has cavities because johnny’s not breathing through his nose. He’s breathing through his mouth, and when he breathes through his mouth he’s creating more cavities. So fix the breathing that’s what we really should be doing you know breathing is essential if you don’t think it is hold your breath for as long as you possibly can and see what happens, you know what is it when people die I mean they’re not breathing anymore you know people go into cardiac arrest they stop breathing why do we do CPR half a you know majority you know you’re you’re pumping someone’s chest but you’re also breathing into them to help them breathe to get oxygen into the system to get it to the brain before the brain dies, very essential. So I’m just saying these these are all you know and there are so many studies on this you know don’t just take my word for you want to look it up look it up on the internet but or whatever there are so many journal studies through the journal of medicine the journal of paediatrics the journal of orthodontics the journal of dentistry they talk about facial pain and the causes of facial pain and they talk about proper air flow. Now these things all lead to the rest of our bodies but so I mean this is this is a great topic and I’d love to cover more of it with you if you let me. Because I you know I was just fascinated this started pulling to things and and you know you start once you get the breathing right and you’re starting to heal that inflammation throughout your body it’s great you’re you’re healing that inflammation throughout your body then you start looking at diet, what are we doing that’s another thing what are you doing to have a proper diet, are you eating enough whole grains are you eating enough vegetables are eating things that aren’t that that aren’t good for you that are toxic prepared foods and admittedly hey I love twinkies, I love twinkies and I love my coke but you know what I try and eat as healthy as I can that’s my treat on the site for being as healthy as I possibly can be you know if you have questions about this if if you have jaw issues that are going on pain in your jaw and even though you have pain in your jaw if you hear that clicking and you’re popping, in your jaw let’s take a look let’s see what’s going on I mean don’t you want a healthy body don’t you want to you know to not have the medical bills don’t you want to be able to fight bugs and viruses that are out there, don’t you want your body working as efficiently as it possibly can of course you do you want to be healthy. Let’s get off our couches let’s get going let’s figure out what these things are let’s get you healthy come and see me I’d love to see you I’d love to talk about your joint I’d love to figure out what’s going on if you’re not in our town. I suggest and I know these people really well I know some of the doctors already involved in this in the in the TMJ and sleep therapy centres international look them up. They’re a great company they’re out to help as many people as they can because they know that they can solve so many issues just by getting proper breathing and getting your jaws comfortable get rid of the inflammation in your jaw getting you to sleep properly at night. Oh my gosh let’s get people out of type 2 diabetes. Let’s heal heart disease before it even starts. Let’s heal arthritis before it even begins let’s make it all happen we can do it. And I love you guys thanks for joining me tonight and and I’d love like I said I can bring you some more information we’ll talk a little bit more about this in two weeks when I do this again and let you know some statistics some ideas and some different things and maybe we’ll talk about nutrition. I’d love to share as much as I can as much as I know with all of you get the word out and if you need help contact me love to help you okay thanks be safe.

Hi I’m Doctor Gunnerson with Gunnerson dental and I’m here tonight for our Facebook live. This this topic tonight is on your immune system especially with like the pandemic that we’ve recently had and with of course cold season and everything is going to be coming up and who knows what’s going to happen this fall, I mean we don’t know  what’s going to happen with the coronavirus and everything that’s involved there. So I thought I’d spend some time and talk to you about your immune system and more specifically how we can boost our system by getting by getting better sleep. I have had some questions that have come to me and I’m I’m going to answer those on here too. So I hope that that really helps I want to thank you all for joining me and for watching my videos I love doing these I I love giving out the information and I love answering questions and it’s just so much fun to do these these Facebook lives. So thank you for being here and joining me. I do want to say i’ve got a couple notes I’m going to probably be reading off of just so I keep my thoughts straight you know when I get on here sometimes I like to ramble and I don’t know it’s Facebook live it’s lots of fun. So  let me let me explain a little bit about sleep now you guys know that I I work a lot in treating sleep now I can’t diagnose sleep apnea issues. I can definitely look at different target and and systems and things that are going on in your in your body. I can look at signs of things that we see in the oral cavity that say that you’re not getting good night’s sleep or that you’re grinding your teeth or that your airway is being blocked while you’re sleeping at night and so definitely I can help with that and then of course we get into this treating people for their for their sleep apnea which is which is great. We are seeing so many people in and working with them and getting them into a sleep appliance to which they are getting better sleep at night. It’s so much fun to see them back after they’re our first initial visits typically when people come in they’re exhausted they’re tired they just don’t feel like their lives are getting anywhere. They’re waking up in the morning tired groggy and not accomplishing as much as they’d like to during the day, especially parents with children they want to be spending more time with their kids and it’s great to see them come in after we’ve begun the treatment after we’ve put them in an appliance and see the big changes that are going on in their life. I I that’s what I love and I love helping people. So it’s great to see that some things that we look at when we’re when we’re targeting sleep apnea is we look at the oral cavity whether you have scalping on your tongue that has a tendency to mean that you’re pushing your tongue up to the front of your mouth and while you’re trying to sleep and that to keep it from falling back in your throat another thing that we look at is whether you’re clenching and grinding your teeth. So you get a lot of wear. Another thing we look at is we see a lot of people that have really really bad heartburn and believe it or not, I I can I can see in a person’s teeth that they’ve got heartburn because we get a lot of acid erosion as people are sleeping at night if they’re not breathing well, they start choking up a lot of stomach acids that can come up and start to destroy your teeth. So if you’re highly prone to cavities and get a lot of cavities but you’re saying I’m brushing my teeth I’m eating healthy I just can’t keep from getting cavities all the time, why are my teeth always sensitive these can all be things that and and I have heartburn these these things can all because of that heart can be because of that heartburn and leading to acid problems on your on your teeth.

Now we also know and just to let you know that when a person comes in and they’re on heart medications diabetic diabetes medications they’re on anti-anxiety antidepressants, those things also are very noticeable in the mouth and specifically when a person has disease you wouldn’t believe it but dentists, we can when you become aware of these symptoms and signs in the oral cavity, we can pre-diagnose  that you have these issues going on and maybe you ought to see your doctor and have them looked at so it’s it’s great that where this this big help and a screening process to help people with different diseases but our our main objective is wouldn’t we all want to be healthier in life, wouldn’t we want to all have a lot more energy and we know that 50 percent of the population in the US has sleep apnea in some degree or another and are not getting adequate sleep at night and we know that out of those 50 percent that have been diagnosed they’re not even wearing their CPAP. So there’s there’s a large number of our population that aren’t as healthy as they really could be and boosting our immune system is going to be something that we can do through sleep. So let me just tell you a couple things during sleep your immune system releases proteins called the cytokines and some of which help promote your sleep okay. Now certain cytokines need to increase when you have an infection or inflammation or when you’re under stress and sleep deprivation when you’re not getting the sleep that you are at night, may decrease production of these protective cytokines. So your cytokines are going down you’re not producing those and so you’re not protecting your body against that inflammation. So studies show that people who don’t get quality sleep or enough sleep are more likely to get sick after being exposed to virus such as the common cold. Now lack of sleep can also affect how fast you recover from getting sick and that’s something to think about is that did you realize how important sleep is and your sleep is on a daily basis. So a lot of people ask how much sleep is quality sleep for an adult. Well if it’s quality sleep seven hours minimum of seven hours every night is what’s needed to improve your health and well-being. That’s quality sleep okay that sleep without interruption, that sleep without gasping for air because you can’t breathe, that’s quality sleep. In 2016 the CDC and prevention concluded that more than a third of Americans aren’t getting enough sleep. That’s a statistic from 2016. Now I bet that in today’s world with the anxiety that we have going on and everything that goes on in our lives, all the electronics that we have that that number has increased. Now Kimberly Hardin MD is the director of sleep medicine  and a fellowship program at the university of California Davis and she says that many people take good sleep for granted she said that people underestimate the importance of sleep and less than seven hours per night on a regular basis has negative effects. It essentially creates a fight-or-flight state you guys know what the fight-or-flight state is. So when we panic we get nervous we get scared that is our fight-or-flight kicks in and what that does is it increases stress hormones and the increase of on release of adrenaline into our systems. Now sleep is like anything else in the body it’s a natural state and has to be taken care of to be healthy. This is what Doctor Hardin said sleep should leave you feeling refreshed not groggy and struggling realistic expectations are essential and sleep changes as you age. So you and as adults may not feel as rested as you did when you were younger. Less than five hours of sleep per night on a regular basis is associated with higher mortality and having less than seven hours of sleep for three nights in a row has the same effect on the body as missing one full night of sleep. Did you know that, and the effects on your immune system is devastating, poor sleep can have both short-term and long-term health consequences. Now Doctor Stevens said that bad sleep can result in long-term problems with mood memory blood sugar among other things okay now Doctor Stevens is a sleep neurologist at the university of kansas health system she said that short-term consequences of bad sleep may include sleepiness poor judgment car accidents moodiness memory problems workplace mistakes and more chronic poor sleep affects not only ability to function well the next day but the sleep deficit builds up the longer sleep isn’t good. Okay, now that’s just these out things things on on sleep not necessarily about your immune system let me get into that here poor sleep can increase inflammation, blood pressure, insulin resistance, cortisol weight gain and cardiovascular disease and we’ve talked about all these before as well as decreased blood sugar regulation. Okay, a good night’s sleep is also thought to be protective against heart disease. Let me tell you a little bit about the mechanisms that your immune system plays in your body. Okay, now we know that t cells and the production of T cells are very important and when we’re getting our proper sleep at night we’re getting our our full rest and so we’re saying more than five hours of sleep.

So you need to get six seven seven at the at the least is is the best and it needs to be quality sleep okay for your immune system be built up and be strong. We’re talking about what’s coming up this fall you know I don’t I don’t know what’s coming up I don’t have a crystal ball and I wish I did I have so many patients who come in and say can that feeling last for the next six months before I get it fixed you know where this cavity. I wish I had a crystal ball so I could tell but I don’t so you know but I don’t know what’s coming up in the future and wouldn’t we rather be prepared and and be a healthier nation. We talked about this we talked about our 90-day health challenge and how important that is, and we did our 90-day health challenge we ended that last week and thank you for all those who participated in that. That was definitely a lot of fun. It was an awesome experience to see people in the community change their lives and people in my office be more conscientious about what they’re eating and what they’re doing on a daily basis so T cells play a very important part in the body’s immune system okay and when these cells in the bodies they regulate they recognize a virally infected cell okay when cell when cells in the body recognize a viral infection cell they active and they activate these things called the the integrands okay and they are a sticky type of protein and what they do is they allow these t cells to latch on to the virus cells a lot easier and a lot quicker, all right and kill these infected cells. So researchers compared T cells from healthy volunteers who either slept or stayed awake all night. They found that in the study participants who slept, their T cells showed higher levels of that stickiness higher levels of that ability to attach to a virus and attack that virus than those who stayed awake and the these findings indicate that sleep has them potential to improve our T cell function T cells are so important to our music system okay and for people who get poor sleep stress hormones actually inhibit the ability of T cells to function properly I mean you guys know that you know in the fitness industry these people know that that sleep is is is very essential because we know that when a person is trying to lose weight and weight definitely affects a person with sleep apnea you know if you’re having difficulty sleeping already and and you’re gaining weight, it’s it’s the lack of sleep and and the lack of sleep because hormones are stress hormones are released this cortisol is released in your body which makes you gain that weight and you just can’t seem to lose it and frankly we get you on a good night’s sleep and get you sleeping well a few months into it you start losing weight and you just naturally start losing weight because your body is burning that fat that it’s been storing up because it was stressed it had cortisol releasing building up fat constantly you know you just got to get a nice sleep. So stress hormones actually dip while the body is asleep. High levels of these substances may decrease the efficiency of T cell immune response to kill pathogens so it’s important sleep guys I don’t know how much more I can emphasize the importance of sleep that we have in our lives it’s the time for our body to recover it’s our time for our body to heal and anybody like I said in that that is in fitness or in help they know the body needs time to rest to reset itself your brain needs time to transfer the the short-term memory that you’ve had during the day those events that have occurred in the long term, that happens when you hit rem and without rem that doesn’t happen and that and without good sleep you don’t have rem immune system is great but we’ve got to take care of ourselves. Someone asked the question that’s one of the questions they asked I I know I get a lot of patients from a lot of different medications and I get asked frequently if I get better sleep can I go off my medications. I can’t tell you to go off medications. Those are things that your doctor has found a need to treat you with to treat a condition that you currently have. I do know that with improved sleep with getting better sleep at night that those conditions can improve. I do know that you have the potential of going off those medications but it has to be worked through with your physician. I can’t be the one to tell you that and that’s usually my response to these individuals. I would love to see people get off medications if you ever listen to a medication commercial, I I think those things are like really kind of funny to listen to I mean they always talk about this beetle they always have a kind of dream you’ve ever noticed that the  drug commercials are always dreamy and and make life so beautiful and wonderful and then at the end really fast that and when taking these pills it may guys these are side effects for every positive there’s a negative and as much as we love the fact that we have modern medicine which can cure us and help us the more we can use these medications as a short-term solution to things and improve our health then that’s how much better off we’re going to be because every time we take a pill, it has a negative effect somewhere in our body that is my goal that number one people are going to get better sleep at night if they’re not on medications let’s see how long we can go without them needing medications and two that if you’re on heavy doses long-term medications, you’ve been on them for a long time what can we do to improve your health by getting better sleep that you can either reduce or completely go off medication wouldn’t that be fantastic I mean just think of the billions of dollars that go through the pharmacies in purchasing medications for us that our insurances are paying out for medications.

It would be great if we were in great health. Okay, I love my pharmacy I love what they do for me and I’m glad that they’re available to get medications to me when I need them but also I love being off of things because I just feel better all around and I feel like sometimes you get stuck in this loop of medicating this which leads to this then you need pills for this which then leads to this which means an additional pill for this which then leads to this. Would it be great if we could just stop this cycle, would it be great if come you know another outbreak of a virus that it affects us all less in the US because we’re better health-wise because we’re taking care of ourselves wouldn’t that just be awesome that’s my goal I want everybody to be healthier and if I can help people who come in my office to pre-diagnose conditions that may be going on and especially help them get better night’s sleep, that’s my goal that’s why I’m here because I love to help people if you have questions about anything i’ve said tonight please absolutely send them to me. I would love to answer them i’ll answer anything you sent to me, concerning oral health or anything that we talked about sleep definitely the ways that I treat sleep because I want to help out as many people as I possibly can. You guys are great thank you for joining me tonight. I hope that I was able to like get you thinking about your health to get you thinking about those medications that you’re on and is there a possibility of of can I get off these medications because they make me feel this way you know and that’s not always a better way. Work with your doctor work with your physician work with a sleep doctor work with somebody get better night sleep, boost your immune system guys fall is coming. We know that that’s outbreak of flu virus that’s outbreak of more coronavirus who knows and colds you know and we need to be prepared so we can function and carry on our lives guys time is important the older I get the more I realize how important time really is and I get so frustrated when I have to spend extra time on something or or life comes along and then hits me with a virus and I’m down you know it’s like there’s so much I want to get done so little time to do it. So it’s my goal if I can help you as best I can please send something to me I would love to help you and I thank you for joining me tonight. I hope that you guys stay healthy that everyone watching this stays healthy I hope that your families are doing well and I hope that god is blessing you in any way you possibly can I love you all thanks.

Hey I’m Doctor Gunnerson with Gunnersen dental and TMG and sleep therapies of Utah anyway I’m Doctor Gunnerson. I’m here with you  tonight to talk about a couple things  I was saying earlier that  from  gutters dental and from tmj and sleep therapy of utah we have some fun stuff to talk about tonight and it’s really cool because I want to tell you a story about how this all came about and my interest in this and what kind of happened and I got asked to post my question about our post about what we’re doing about this and and so I reached out to somebody’s of mine to figure out if they had some information about this and I got pointed to more different studies that were being done by by doctors and physicians to figure out this sort of thing. So it’s actually pretty cool and you know the human body is always amazing because everybody is different and everything goes on with you is different and I and I thought about that a little bit because I thought you know even when a person tells you a symptom something that they’re feeling i’ve had this problem going on with my shoulder and and the doctor will say well what does it feel like you know what type of pain is it and I always have these pain scales and want to tan you know and where are your other pain and I’m always like a 10 at night you know because it keeps me up I’m like but they’ll say well can you describe the pain well the the description of the pain is very very subjective. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but you know the way I sense or I perceive pain is going to be different than the way that you perceive pain and the way that you feel something. It’s not going to be the same.

So I could say I have like this burning sensation in my shoulder that feels like someone’s taking a knife into it and twisting it around. Not that i’ve ever felt that before of course but you know how does that come across the individual, what does he think a burning sensation would feel like or knife twisting around inside of his shoulder. So you know the human body is fascinating because everything is so subjective and then how the body responds to things is so different one person could respond this way and another person could respond that way and so I think it’s fascinating we’ve kind of seen that along with what’s going on with like covid you know out there the the fact that some people got sick and some people got sick for no reason and there were other people who didn’t get sick at all and and and and families who didn’t get sick but maybe one person got sick and who knows how that got transmitted and it’s just the human body is fascinating. You can’t go by a set of rules and so it’s really interesting that science and medicine have taken on this little this little thing of trying to cookbook everything and categorize everything into one category and and you really can’t. In my in my practice of 25 years of practicing dentistry I can’t categorize every single person that I do this exact same thing on this person that I did on that person I’m going to the exact same results and that’s not necessarily true because everybody is different and and we know that and I think that when you respect that, you see better results and and you have better success when you realize that not everybody’s the same and you can’t treat everybody the same and you can’t do everything cookbook. It doesn’t happen that way. So I’m here tonight to share some some insight on a topic called vertigo and I wanted to share  kind of and the reason why I was explaining that was just to say that everybody’s different. I can never guarantee that what treatment and the process that i’ve been taught is to do is going to work for every every every single person and get them 100 percent better there is no guarantees. It is a human body. The human body does not function on 100  percent guarantees and that’s why science and medicine came out to the fact that if you have 40 percent success or 40 percent resolution of symptoms, okay, so say like with my shoulder it gets 40 percent better and they’d ask me so do can you say that it’s 40 percent better 80 percent better 60 percent better 40 percent better they consider that a success and when it comes down to physical therapy or anything else you’re like okay you’re good you’re good to go you’ve reached the level of success 40 percent in in medicine and to me that’s setting the bar a little bit too low and I understand because you kind of have to do that because there definitely is no guarantee that you’re going to get to 100 percent and so when we get to 40 percent we have to be able to celebrate that and say look we’ve been what we’ve been able to accomplish and so I can I can see why we set that at that level but then again, I push for the 80 to 100 percent. That’s always my goal I don’t want to see you settle for 40.

If there’s something else we could be doing to helping you out we’re going to move you to the 80 to 100 percent we want to see you go up to the 80 to 100 percent. So all right questions popping up on the screen have you ever experienced vertigo. So that’s my cue Jessica’s telling me quit talking and move on to vertigo. So vertigo and I mean you don’t even know what it is, my first experience with vertigo was watching a movie called vertigo by Hitchcock already I believe it was Alfred Hitchcock who wrote who wrote that he wrote the birds vertigo anyway that was my first first experience and not even knowing what vertigo really is but vertigo is where you experience the movement of the world in a in a non what was the best way to say it I mean I’d say that things are spinning but I can’t really say that it necessarily spins because not everybody feels a spinning sensation. You feel uneasiness like it could be the feeling of stepping onto a houseboat you know just the fact that you’re feeling that that wave of of change where your body feels like it isn’t in alignment with what’s going on all of a sudden the world can be tilting on you or changing direction on you and that’s what vertigo is. So it can be a spinning sort of sensation it could be the dizziness kind of like when you get off of a ride where you’ve been spinning for a long period of time you get off and it’s like whoa the world is still because your ear and the inner ear canals are still the fluid is spinning a certain direction it hasn’t slowed down yet and so it’s still your body even though it’s standing still thinks that it’s moving that direction. So you get this weird vertigo sensation you kind of feel like you’re being pulled in one direction. That’s vertigo, for some people vertigo can be a chronic issue for most people when it happens it’s an acute problem meaning that it is short-lasting and doesn’t occur for a long period of time however there are chronic issues with vertigo and one such issue they have actually created a disease or syndrome is called Meniere’s. Meniere’s disease is is a a combination of symptoms like I said every disease is a combination of symptoms that put you in a specific category that can say you have this disease, does that make sense, you can have upset stomach dizziness nausea unable to inability to stand up straight can’t get up fast from a chair. Some different things that all cause this and and ends up into Meniere’s and Meniere’s is something that is long lasting and someone asked a question can what we do in my office help them with Meniere’s disease. Let me tell you a story. First back when I started teaching started treating tmj and sleep apnea when we started looking at the temporal mandibular joint and we saw issues with popping cracking neck pain upper spinal pain headache pain craniofacial pain sinus congestion all these things that are going on all up in this area that aren’t in harmony with what they should be and creating discomfort and pain so you’ve got craniofacial pain that can be up through the head and down through the spine and then and I never realized something but let me let me get into this. We had a patient come in and we were seeing her to treat her jaw. Her jaw was the main symptom she had headaches and we wanted to treat her jaw joint to help with her headaches which we found out to be her primary cause of her headaches. The fact that she had inflammation in the joint and that inflammation was causing nerve issues which was causing craniofacial pain. So in the process of treating her, we’re into this about three or four weeks we see him every week and we’re reviewing with her. So how’s this going how’s this going how’s this going and she stopped. So she says you know Doctor Gunnerson this is really weird and I said what’s weird and she says well I never thought that my jaw could be the cause of some other things that are going on with me like well what do you mean well like tingling in my fingers and the numbness, that it could have to do with my knee because ever since we started treating my jaw my knee has isn’t bothering me as much and she then said something that I had no idea or consequent that we could ever treat and I hadn’t done research into this I looked in this she said, and when I used to look up she said to reach something off of a covered shelf even just a little bit, I would get vertigo and the room would start to spin. She said to me I can now look up high before that even starts just a little bit and I can now get things off of shelves in my kitchen where I couldn’t before and so I took that information and I thought that that is amazing because that was not our sole intent and i’ve i’ve heard some different reasons why that the inflammation could be impeded upon the circulation to the ear cavity that the inflammation could be causing pressure into the ear cavity just some different things and by us decompressing that that joint, that relieved that pressure in that area and created better blood supply and so therefore her vertigo started to go. So I started doing some research into this because I really, really, wanted to know what was it we had done that might be and, and, there there’s some good research and then there’s some that are just kind of you know where they had monkeying around a little bit and my one of my main questions was because we know that every time a patient comes in and we’re treating them for temporal mandibular disorder that we are using our mls or cold laser on this jaw joint up in here and coming down through the jaw we also use it along the spinal area and across your trapezius muscles. The reason for that is to break up trigger points areas where you can feel down and it’s like I have a knot right here. We break up those areas we increase the blood supply to those areas we help those areas heal help the cells open up and that healing elements in and we do it all the way down through here up into the ear area and down across through here. So my question was is could any of this have anything to do with helping her vertigo. So  I did some research and absolutely. The use of a light laser  the research I was able to find and I went back even into like 2008, so we’re talking what is that 12 13 years ago that the researchers that I was able to see went back to and they were treating  and part of it was I wanted you know recently I want to know Meniere’s disease but  they were showing that in studies that they were able to affect the liquid in the ear where the crystals and then this all starts to get really anatomically scientific, where the crystals are located in the alignment of the crystals and by the using the light laser it’s able to re liquefy that area and let those crystals realign themselves, so that therefore the vertigo goes away. That’s all the scientific side of it but then I wanted to know more I’m like well how does this compare to medication and people taking medications for vertigo what does this do and so there was one study that I read that actually says there wasn’t any difference in the results of using a laser compared to using medication. Okay, if any of you have studied pharmacology, you tell me which would you prefer. Taking appeal or using a light laser to heal the area. If you understand pharmacokinetics and pharmacology, you understand that for every positive effect that a drug has on your body there’s a negative side effect, that there is something else that’s going on, and it puts a lot on our body to use the bio chemical reactions that occur through the liver and the kidneys in helping to remove those chemicals and break them down from our body.

Okay, so if you were if you were to ask me nowadays which I would prefer and one was which they used this medication and they used the laser and they found out that they got the same results from both now the medication was quicker I’m going to be honest the medication was quicker it got into the system it healed, it took care of that vertigo situation as long as the person was taking the medications. Now they did the laser also they did these both for a certain amount of time. Now we do know that the chemical did not cure the issue, they stopped using the laser because they only did this for a certain amount of time to determine whether there was any effect of the laser compared to medicine on treating Meniere’s disease. They found out that they had the same effect but they stopped it before they could find out if by treating with a laser could you have any permanent change in Meniere’s disease. From other research that i’ve read yes and like I said I got a question from a friend or from someone on Facebook who had asked about Meniere’s disease can you stop Meniere’s disease can you cure Meniere’s disease there is evidence I don’t know how many papers have been written upon this but I reached out to a friend and he said yes we have had positive results in our office of treating people with vertigo and Meniere’s disease to where they have had a change. That is hopeful remember, going back to the human body everybody is different not everybody is going to experience the same results that’s one thing number two 40 percent of a reduction in symptoms can be measured as a success. I have had two or three people come into my office they’re regular patients I’m not seeing them to treat them for TMD I’m not treating their jaw issues I’m not treating the vertigo I’m not treating their craniofacial pain who have a hard time laying back in the chair and having work on them because they get vertigo really really bad and I have explained to them what can be done from the research to help them with their vertigo and they basically told me no. The problem is is that a lot of times people have lived with this issue in their lives for so long that they’ve learned to accommodate and for some people it has become an excuse for not doing some things and for some people has become a reason to ask for help when they don’t necessarily need it or comfort or sympathy and we can get stuck in that chronic situation to where we feel that comfortable having people help us all the time so we always want to have that vertigo and if you cure it they’re not going to need to help me anymore and the fact doesn’t mean that they love you any less but good heavens you know set them free. The thing is the thing is is there are ways we can treat this there are opportunities I charge for us to do this laser we do charge a one-time fee coming in. If we’re treating TMD that sort of thing it’s it’s a therapy process we use the the cold laser in order to help us through the treatments of TMD that’s it right here this is called the Charlie head this is this is the the portion of the coal laser that we actually use to to aim and point specifically on in the tissue area. It has an area of about like this that it treats gets down into the tissues we and we run it along the muscles and tissues areas. Fully trained staff in this they know what they’re doing in helping you with with this laser therapy. It’s amazing technology is amazing and why not use it why not use it over taking medications for either your migraines for your vertigo you know i’ve, i’ve, used it to to treat like leg cramps on my legs or or when my stomach was upset i’ve used it to treat my stomach when I was upset and then I can’t do that in my office for all of you but there are things that this can do that it’s just amazing and why not do these more natural ways and let the body heal itself you guys know I’m all about that we’ve talked about sleep and oxygen and nutrition and let the body heal itself and get the adequate sleep that you need because that’s what’s really going to heal the body and in my opinion your vertigo is setting you back from being and living the life that you really ought to be living. Now is the time to make the decision to change that and live the life that you should be living and not living a life of being held down and captive by something like Meniere’s disease. Okay, if there’s a solution and a way to help you out come try it out, you know I’m willing to try it out for free for one treatment on you and see if that decreases your symptoms, if it does multiple treatments are going to make you feel even better and I’m good with that because I want people to be able to heal and I want them to be happy and I want people to live the lives that god sent them here to live, to not be held down captive by diseases and discomfort and other things that are going on, okay, thank you for joining me I hope that answered some questions about vertigo it is pretty cool and I didn’t know that it did it until that patient told me and then I started doing research I’m like yeah I got really excited we can help you with your vertigo that’s what’s cool there’s a winning opportunity there there’s hope and thank you for joining me I love being here it’s going to be two weeks till you get to see you again and at that point I think we have something like health challenge coming up it’s going to be a lot of fun remember I’m all about health getting healthy I want you to join us in our health challenge. We’re going to have community things involvement there so join us love you all be safe be kind to each other show kindness love I appreciate you thank you.

I’m Doctor Gunnerson with Gunnerson Dental and TMJ and sleep therapy of Utah and I’m here for our facebook live for this week and I’m really excited because we have done a lot of continuing education and a lot of learning over the past three months and I wanted to share some of that with you tonight on some exciting things we’re able to do in our office and things that we have learned and if you are not near us and you need some of this then you can get it from someone who’s near you. So, you just need to know what it is so I’m here to talk about that tonight but I want to talk about if you’re not involved in our health challenge, please get involved. Last month or this entire month of may has been our mental health.

So, we’ve been targeting mental health reading good books spending time with family laughter has been this week so take pictures of you laughing with your family laughing with friends and post them and tag us. Then we will enter in for drawing we gave away a great bundle of prizes to a mom and a pet and it was really exciting to see her get that and for the pet to have those toys. So, we do have exciting prizes we like to give away we like to do giveaways we like to have fun and we like to be involved in the community. So join us and get involved  because it’s a lot of fun it’s exciting and we know that our health is very very important and not much has been said about that on the government end of things when it comes to the COVID virus and and medical and insurance and all those things that have been come such a  a big debate you know on how things could be better in America and and yet none of us really well I’m not going to say none of us because a lot of us do but look at our health and trying to improve our health so  we’ve been doing this health challenge we did last year for the 90 days it was my idea let’s throw in a health challenge my gosh we’re here in the middle of covid let’s store this health challenge and get people healthier because we know that with a strong immune system we can fight diseases that come our way and we can live healthier lives.  So join our challenge we’re going to be coming up on physical is what’s going to be our next challenge, that’s coming up and I will post stuff about that on our facebook. So watch our facebook for postings on the physical challenges and things we’re going to be doing for physical so it’s going to be exciting. Anyway tonight I wanted to kind of revisit I know that I spent a few minutes on one of our facebook lives talking about the MLS laser it is a multi-functioning laser it actually contains two different laser types in it two different wavelengths  for its purpose  is in order to penetrate the tissues to a certain depth and be able to do what it needs to do.

So I I actually I have this is the handheld section of it this is this is the MLS laser this is what we use on our on our patients. The handheld section of it and I wanted to go over kind of the the benefits of the things that we’ve already been seeing and talk that up talk about what’s been going on because this is like better than sliced bread. This has been the new thing out there has been out for a while but we are discovering new ways that this can be used to improve the lives of of us and others and so this is this is really really really cool I’m going to put this back so talk about a couple things so we all know that that my office has has been expanding our knowledge and growing in the areas of TMD and sleep therapy and so we’ve been looking at temporal mandibular joint disorder that’s the jaw here and chronic and facial pain as well as sleep disorders it’s like sleep apnea that are keeping people awake and keeping them not getting healthy. I’ve talked about the three pillars i’ve talked about sleep being an essential part of it nutrition another one and oxygen being the other one all those those three combined are the pillars of our health and we need those and and associated with that we can’t have good sleep if we either have sleep apnea or we’re in chronic pain and we can’t the nutrition we’ve got to be eating well and you can’t do that if your teeth aren’t healthy. So we’ve got to make sure that the mouth the teeth oral cavity is healthy so that we get the nutrition as far as suction goes we talked about nasal airway that’s not something that I can perform surgeries that I can do to help you breathe better through your nose because the nasal airway is the most important airway in getting oxygen and getting the air into our bodies but it is something that we can look at we can diagnose we can talk about and refer out. So let’s talk a little bit about the MLS laser which is like the coolest thing. It’s it’s been a lot of fun i’ve been to two seminars  recently since we started using the MLS laser I have spent time in offices studying what has been done with the MLS laser I have spent time talking to physicians to neurosurgeons to physical therapists to chiropractors to massage therapists on what can be done with our laser in in helping us have better health. So all of that combined has created this big plethora of knowledge that we have and that we’re able to use in in our office and treating our patients because I’m always out to learn new things and ways that we can better improve not only the things we do our standard of care as far as taking care of bacteria and decay in the mouth but also in the area of improving health through facial pain and and other things. So let me tell you a few things that the laser does number one, basically I get a sheet here it kind of goes over this so there are three different types of treatments that can occur with the MLS laser if you’re wanting to know  let me just say this one thing there are basically three different laser types that are or four different laser types that are used in a dental office four.

There is one the mls laser if they have an mls laser this can be used  and i’ll go over the different things that that does. There is the diode laser that is used in our hygiene department for killing bacteria and cauterizing tissues in the area around your gums around your teeth when you have diseased areas. There is the CO2 laser that I use  that laser is used for cutting tissue we use that for doing biopsies we also use that for doing phrenectomies that’s removing attachments in the mouth that are either holding your tongue down or your lip in the wrong positions and creating spaces in between your front teeth. So there is that laser the CO2 there is also the erbium yag which can be used to do fillings. I choose not to because of the time required to get the tooth numb with the laser itself and then also to perform the procedures. It just wasn’t proving to be something that was very effective patients didn’t appreciate the amount of time that they needed to spend in the chair in order to get that taken care of so we do have that available but we don’t use it quite as frequently as we used to. So those are four types of lasers. Now the reason the reason why is they all perform different things like I was saying that erbinuyag will cut hard tissue that is for like doing fillings the CO2 cut soft tissue the diode laser that the hygienist user used for cauterizing to destroy bacteria doesn’t cut tissue it can at different levels  and then of course we have the mls laser now the mls laser does not cut tissue at all. The MLS laser is it’s a different wavelength and its purpose is for healing it’s not for cutting and so people often think of a laser as star wars laser guns laser fighting or you look at lasers as laser pointers that’s a different type of a laser that is not this type of laser. Everything has a different wavelength and so this laser is to penetrate the tissues and create and promote healing without cutting into tissue. So it doesn’t cut it doesn’t hurt it it’s not painful. In fact it’s actually very relaxing and can be very comforting. This laser can be used in acupuncture sites that normally acupuncturists use the trigger points those areas that they use for acupuncture in creating a sense of well-being in the body and creating the proper energy flow throughout the body. It’s a little bit different aspect but they can that can be used to target those areas in the same way as acupuncture is done. So there are three different types or four four here treatment areas. One is is treatment areas in injury sites. Okay, so if you’ve had injuries like a sports injury these are things that I can’t necessarily do but this laser is actually used by many sports sports teams sports therapy because it heals the injured site. So it can relax the muscles you can do tissue repair it can increase the blood flow to that area it can decrease the inflammation it can decrease the swelling and it can decrease the pain. So talking outside of the scope of dentistry and outside of what can do we can treat anything from the neck up or the shoulders up and so I have been treating my shoulder with the mls laser. I can do that on myself I can’t do that on others.  I’ve been treating it to help heal the torn tendons that I have in the back of my shoulder so i’ve got some torn tendons back here and by using the laser every day i’ve been able to actually heal that area because like it said it increases the blood flow to the area decreases the inflammation in the area and it decreases swelling and it has some analgesic effect when it creates a little bit of a decrease in pain and so by doing that the shoulder has healed up so much better. It’s amazing and it’s held up fast and I have not gone in and had surgery done on my shoulder. I didn’t have complete tears which is a big positive but i’ll be able to use a laser on there to heal up those areas. So another thing is the use of the laser in trigger points. Trigger points are those areas of tension that you have if you palpate across your shoulders and there’s a real tender spot and you know that if you go to a massage therapist, they’ll go in there and they’re like you’ve got a knot here these are those knots and they’ll go and they’ll work that knot really really good. I’ve got a great massage therapist. He’s he’s quite aggressive which I need because I get these knots and I get stuff in my in my back from working and he takes what he calls his brass knuckles in there and he like really grinds that area to break up that tissue increase the blood flow into that area. So by using the laser it does that exact same thing. So it relax it relaxes those muscle spasms and it lessens the referred pain. So frequently when we have trigger points, we’ll get refrain pain either down through the arm up through the neck up into the head and so when we’re treating cranial facial pain, a lot of the headaches that are out there aren’t true migraines.

Migraines are caused by a swelling and the meninges,. In your in your actually inside of the skull itself. What a lot of people have are are headaches that come from trigger points whether they’re in the neck in the face or they’re or they’re in the shoulders. Those areas of blockage of blood flow nerve energy flow and so we get in then we target those trigger points to break up those areas and lessen the referred pain. So it lessens the headaches and and stuff in there. So it’s actually pretty cool. Nerves, it can be used on nerves to create the analgesia like I said in my shoulder it created some sense of numbing just a little bit and then also in the lymph nodes. So if you’ve got swelling in your lymph nodes either because you have an infection somewhere and so you get the swelling it decreases the inflammation, the edema. Okay, so those are things that these lasers can be used for as far as just in generalities. I’m going to get into some specifics of things that we can do in our office like I said we can work from the shoulders up and i’ll talk about the things that we do here and the benefits that we have actually seen from what we’ve done it has been amazing over the last three or four months in treating our tmj therapy patients and chronic migraine patients in decreasing the amount of pain and the fact that they’re getting off of things like ibuprofen and Tylenol, it’s just amazing because those drugs are having to be broken down by your liver and by your kidneys and that puts a lot of stress and strain upon those organs and if you don’t need to take them, god I mean it’s just how much better and healthier are those organs going to be.  The the same thing so we’ve been working with with the migraines we get rid of all that and they don’t have to take these pills and and sleep in the same way they’re not having to take their sleep pills in order to go to bed so we can treat pain that is associated with those areas and a lot of times we find and we’ve had a lot of success in treating that pain to see these people go off of these medications it’s just been amazing and so I’m really excited about what we can do with the laser now we learned recently some other items that we can do and so I’m going to go through a list of what we can treat one was migraines and headaches now recently since the outbreak of covid and with the vaccination, we’ve noticed that there’s been an increase in bell’s palsy. Now I don’t know that there’s been a lot of announcement that that there is a relationship between the the Covid virus and the vaccine and having the vaccination and having bell’s palsy and if you don’t know what bell’s palsy is it’s when your  your facial muscles all of sudden become relaxed on one whole side it’s similar to the symptoms of a stroke a stroke will be a little bit different because you get the forehead on one side and the face on the other this is just that whole entire side so you get the droopy eye you get the droopy lip and and you you can’t blink at the same rate as your other eye does and so you get this bright light and irritation that can go into the eye and so when we treat bell’s palsy we actually have you wear an eye patch for two weeks while we’re treating it but we can actually treat the bell’s palsy and within 14 days you can be pretty much back to normal and that is just amazing. I know a lot of times when people get bell’s palsy they put them on a steroid I don’t know why they put them on a steroid but they put them on like prednisone they put them on a steroid and that’s probably just to decrease the symptoms of the bell’s palsy but for the most part it is a virus and that’s what caused the bell’s palsy and so we go in and we treat the nerve and we go in and we treat the muscles on that whole side on both sides of the face actually we treat it and you start to see one of the big signs is the fact that a person can’t whistle when they have bell’s palsy well when we treat this within a week they’re able to start whistling again. So it’s actually pretty cool now you have to catch up at the onset this isn’t talking about people who have bell’s palsy their whole entire life, I have yet to try that on a person to see if it does have any benefit but I do know that if we can catch at the initial onset within a week or two that we can go in and heal those areas to get them taken care of so that is like way way cool that is one aspect that we learned about. Another one is trigeminal neuralgia now trigeminal neuralgia you have to remember that the face and this gives kind of detail the face is the trigeminal nerve actually takes care of the majority of your face and and your tongue and your teeth and and that’s the one that we numb up parts of it but the trigeminal nerve and you get trigeminal neuralgia what that is is you get this this weird shock of pain through your face.

I’m sorry are you talking it gets really dry here in Utah, but the trigeminal neuralgia affects your face and then you get the sporadic shocks of pain we can actually treat trigeminal neuralgia and make it go away then that’s something that is really really cool we can do lasers trigeminal neuralgia. Sinusitis so you know people get these headaches and they get the sinus headaches something through here when they have a cold and they get the sinus headaches down come here their face hurts  it can even cause your teeth your upper teeth to hurt because you have these sinuses that are up in here that fill with fluid and infection and we can go in and treat those areas and you will you will start to see immediate results from us treating those sinusitis areas so for an example I had a lady come in this week to a wonderful patient of mine and she had a front tooth that was just killing her and she had had this cold and the sinusitis and she doesn’t normally get sick and so she was feeling kind of miserable and and so I sat her down and I said well here’s what I would do if it was me I would be treated for sinusitis with a with a mls laser and of course most people are kind of sceptical because it’s not used so much in the medical profession it is used by physical therapists it is used by chiropractors it is used by dentists  that is used by craniofacial pain and by neurologists. So I went in and I’m like okay this isn’t this isn’t alternative medicine this is actually true medicine done through science through the study of lasers and what the lasers can actually do in helping treat sinusitis and so what we did was we treated her with sinusitis. We this was just yesterday we went in and we and we lasered in through here up through here and across through here now with her tooth that was giving her problems too we went in and we did the laser up near the end of the tooth to decrease inflammation the irritation that was going along with the tooth and she sent me this text today which is actually pretty cool and I hope she doesn’t mind me reading it because I think it’s it’s pretty cool and I was impressed she said oh my goodness you’re my hero this week, my tooth is 100 percent better I’m a believer in that cool laser deal. It’s awesome thank you so much I actually wondered what was going on when she started the treatment on that right side and within 30 seconds I had a tickle in my throat and it continued the whole time that the light was on. Sinus is draining right there it didn’t happen on her left side but she said it was amazing okay sorry to ramble just I’m so glad that you knew what to do. She’s out of pain. It’s incredible the things that we can do to help our patients. The tooth feels better her face feels better it got those sinuses to start draining and for the sinuses to start healing. There’s a process I told her this is just like a one treatment thing that we’re doing here. If we want to clear up the sinuses completely it is a it is an entire process and a system that we actually do. So I mean if we wanted to continue that we definitely could, but that was just really cool and thank you for that comment on here and made my day. That was just awesome. We can treat tinnitus if you don’t know what tinnitus is tinnitus is ringing of the ears and for a lot of people that can be debilitating that ringing gets to be constant  you find people who will turn on the radio the tv listen to these things all the time because they need some alternative noise to not hear that ringing constantly going on in their. Head and so we can treat that tinnitus we can actually make that ring and go away again there’s a system for that. Cankers how many of you get these big huge atlas ulcers like when you bite your tongue, chew your cheek something happens  we can treat those canker areas and those canker areas will go away it’s really cool vertigo you guys know what vertigo is vertigo is when you have a sense of the room spinning. That can be very debilitating especially when walking upstairs. Now we can treat that vertigo because it has to do with the ears and I talked a little bit about last time how the crystals in the ears become misaligned and that by using the laser it resets those and realigns those crystals in your ear and so then that vertigo goes away. Vertigo is really really cool. Hematomas so you can get some bruising  it will actually clear up those hematomas really fast again like I said it increases blood flow and so those bruises will go away and will heal much much faster. Now also you know I kind of joked the other day I’m like okay you’re getting married next week you get hit in the face bar fight whatever maybe you went off to the to the  bachelor party and you know ended up in a tough I don’t know but and so now you got this bruise well all we got to do is treat that bruise with a laser and it will heal up within a few days and be completely gone. Tonsillitis I had a staff member come in today because her tonsils were starting to swell on one side. Tonsillitis can be treated with the laser. By the time the day went by she tweeted this morning and by the time that it got to the end of the day that tonsillitis had had gone down and their tonsils had shrunk down. So we can actually shrink the tonsils that have become swollen and infected. Xerostomia I don’t know how many people that come into the dental office suffer from xerostomia. Xerostomy is a dry mouth, and there are so many medications out there and I’m trying to get people off as many medications by being healthy by sleeping by eating well and help them with these medications but there are so many medications out there that that are doing their job in in affecting either high blood pressure or whatever but create a very very dry mouth and we know that dry mouth leads to cavities. You can get these canker sores so you can get sores on the mouth it can cause periodontal disease. It leads and progresses and and makes those things so much worse. I had a lady in today who is on an inhaler and she has to because she has some lung disorder going on and so she uses this inhaler all the time well this inhaler is a steroid and of course it’s just making those tissues in her mouth raw is all get out and soar like crazy I recommend it I mean if it was me go into the laser and she says well if it was you would you do this and I said absolutely I would do that would be my first thing I would do was use the laser almost tissues then get those t-shirts that tissues that inflammation that soreness and swelling to actually go down but we can use it for xerostomia to actually improve the saliva flow in your mouth and get rid of dry mouth. It’s way cool. Orthodontics I mean we all went through them as kids and it’s a miserable experience you get food stuck in them all over the place and you know we end up with these beautiful straight teeth when we’re all the way done but it can be miserable during it. We can speed up the process of orthodontics by going in and using the laser around the teeth that are being worked on and rotated and moved and and and put into the correct positions, if we use a laser in those areas it actually  weakens or let’s just say weaken but it loosens up the periodontal ligament the parallel argument is what holds the tooth in its place inside the bone. So you actually you actually it attack it it increases the blood flow to the area and so those those become a little bit more relaxed so that that tooth can shift a little bit better the one thing it also does is it affects the bone. Okay, so when we’re moving teeth and orthodontics we’re moving teeth through bone and what it does is it takes bone away from one side and lays bone down on the other and that’s how you effectively move a tooth across and you have to move it at a certain rate so that that doesn’t just destroy bone.

Now we use the laser in there that laser will enhance the cells of laying down new bone and so you can have that new bone laying down that much quicker and you can speed it up the process. It’ll keep the inflammation down increase the blood flow and help that bone heal much faster through there and create a greater stability too I mean I don’t know how many of you have braces as a kid now you’re going through braces as an adult. So create that stability and keep that tooth where it’s supposed to be. That’s orthodontics. Extractions and implants anytime we do an extraction now we go in with a laser we help that area we increase the blood flow to the area we increase the healing properties the atp production in the tissues so that those cells heal that much faster. One of the cool things that we learned too was in whiplash I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a car accident you got whiplash up and through your neck, we can help heal. That we can get rid of your whiplash.  Burns burns are kind of cool so it can actually be used to treat burns, you wouldn’t think that a laser that goes in and affects the tissues in that way would be used for burns because we’re increasing blood flow and that sort of a thing but you can actually treat a second and third degree burns with the laser  and that will help that area heal up much faster. I told you it has some analgesia effects will actually numb the area. So if you get burned  we can actually help you heal that area faster. Acne is another one. We know that a lot of acne is caused by bacteria that is on the face and so if we use the laser to treat the acne it actually destroys the bacteria increases the blood flow again especially with people with chronic like acne just everywhere on the face you can go through and you can target all those areas and decrease that acne I mean just think of a healthy way to do it than lotions creams pills things that you have to take in order to clear up your acne try and dry up your skin affect your hormones or whatever. The laser will actually go in and it helps heal those tissues that much faster keeps the scarring from occurring and gets rid of those even not just just the regular acne but even cystic acne. They can help heal those areas up. So those are kind of the things and we’re discovering more and more different ways that we can use this we can use it in springs you can use it in ligament tears and ligament issues with the knees. We can help heal the knees up meniscus tears we can get all those things can occur and can be done with mls laser and again I can’t do that I can’t treat that because I only tweet from here up, but those are the things that we’re discovering and mostly just doing like I said it’s used by sports teams out there when a player goes out on field he gets a sprained ankle they bring him back in they use the mls laser on his ankle. They ice it they send him right back out again why because that’s how fast this thing can help in healing those areas. So  I just want you know it’s really really cool.  The mls laser has been out for a while we do use it in our office to treat things. If you’ve got a migraine you get chronic headaches now you have jaw pain those issues sinusitis vertigo tinnitus, if you’ve got  bell’s palsy the trigeminal nerve these things are going on right now  remember bell’s positive we got to pick it up at the onset right at the very beginning in order to treat it effectively and get it taken care of we can help you get through these things that much faster is from the neck up and I can work with you in getting these things to heal. It is fascinating it is amazing it is painless it’s just great and I’m excited because I just love this and my staff love it because I mean there’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I have a staff member using it somewhere on their shoulders to help with any discomfort pain or getting rid of a headache somewhere  it’s just it’s just been a great success in our practice and what we’ve been doing and I wanted to share what we’re able to do because again, we’re talking about health this is our health challenge month for the next 90 days which is more than a month 90 days. We’re going to be doing this health challenge we want you healthy we want you out of pain we want you sleeping well we want you breathing well we want you sleeping and eating well these are all of these things come on we can we can do this together we can do this as a community we can be healthier we can rely less upon medicine because we are healthier we don’t need to be going  because of of of chronic emergencies and and things are constantly going up. We just learn to take care of ourselves and we can definitely do that and the mls laser is one way that we can help you feel better and have better health. So thank you for joining me thank you for letting me share this with you because again this has been just an eye-opener for me in helping treat my patients and helping my patients have a better life and helping them and I read that testimonial from our patient. It was just amazing and all our patients were treated with it I don’t think anyone has said I’m worse or I’m miserable and that doesn’t help me at all. Everyone it has helped in some degree or another sometimes it needs multiple treatments it’s not a miracle cure that’s going to happen overnight in some cases it does in other cases it doesn’t it just depends on the individual. I’m grateful for this opportunity I have to spend with you. Here’s to good health here’s to staying healthy here’s to staying safe and I hope you all enjoy your wonderful memorial day weekend that is coming up. It is our time to celebrate those veterans those individuals who sacrifice their lives for our freedoms and our country and that’s important right now especially what’s going on in the world and then going on in this nation. So, god bless you be with you and have a great weekend you.