Preventing Sleep Apnea Using a Holistic Approach (Podcast)

John McDougall: Hi, I am John McDougall and I’m here today with Dr. Nammy Patel of Green Dentistry in San Francisco. Welcome, Nammy.

Dr. Nammy: Hi. Thank you for having me, John.

What are the Types of Sleep Apnea?

John: Yeah, absolutely. We’re going to be talking about sleep apnea, which is so critical it can change your life if you correct it. So what are the types of sleep apnea and how do you know which one you have?

Dr. Nammy: I’m so glad you bring up this topic, John, because it is the number one overlooked topic in medicine and sleep apnea is actually life-threatening. So, I’m really happy that we’re talking about this today because awareness around this is lacking and sleep apnea can be several kinds. Sometimes patients have sleep apnea that’s neural, so that means that their brain doesn’t release a chemical while they’re sleeping to continue to have a patent airway open.

Or a lot of times, which is 90% of the population, the apnea is actually a result of the tongue, the tongue muscles or the fibers tend to loosen as we get older in life and as that happens when we’re sleeping at night, we stop breathing and that’s what sleep apnea really is. So sleep apnea really means that we stop breathing at night and we can stop breathing for three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, sometimes 30 seconds in severe cases. And when that happens, our body doesn’t get the nutrient it really needs, which is called oxygen. We all need that.

Sleep Apnea Causes a Lack of Oxygen

John: Kind of minor little thing you might need here and there.

Dr. Nammy: Exactly. Exactly. So that is what sleep apnea is, and if we can’t get oxygen… That’s why it’s so critical to our life because we only have eight minutes before our body goes brain dead. And so that’s why it’s so important when somebody has a heart attack that we start CPR right away so that they’re getting the oxygen and we’re circulating it throughout their cells because we really need that oxygen to survive really and to live.

What are the Pros and Cons of CPAP Machines?

John: Yeah, I mean, just in my own family, my brother has successfully been using a CPAP. My two sisters thought they might have sleep apnea. One got a CPAP, never used it. The other just got it and used it and now she’s doing a lot better. And we’re going to talk about other treatments too, but it’s amazing. Four out of four kids in my family, we’ve all got it and we didn’t discover that we should be treating this till later in life in our 50s. So think of all those years wasted where you can be healthier with very little extra effort if you’re just breathing better at night. But in regard to CPAP machines, what do you think of them? I mean, what are the pros and cons?

Dr. Nammy: So, CPAP machines are interesting because you gave me a perfect example. You mentioned that one of your siblings has it, the other one never wore it. And so, the thing about sleep apnea, it is genetic as well for certain patients. And like you said, all of your siblings have it, and sometimes it’s also structural so people get it because if they have a history of braces, their airway gets constricted and things like that.

So, when it comes to CPAP machines, it’s important to have something versus nothing. What we find is most patients don’t use the CPAP because it’s very uncomfortable and it harbors bacteria. My biggest issue with CPAP machines is that the air is still going through the mouth versus a nose. We want the air to go through the nose because we really create this wonder drug or wonder chemical that our body naturally produces called nitric oxide.

So, one of the things we find patients with sleep apnea are more at risk for heart attack, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and all of those things. So when we have air that goes through the nose, what happens is that you create nitric oxide, which fights heart attack, diabetes, cancer, and everything else. So that’s what I really want is with a CPAP machine, if you have a CPAP machine and you’re breathing through to the mouth, you’re not really getting the benefits that we really want you to have.

And it’s really the analogy I always like to use is eating processed food with no nutrients in it. It’s a bare minimum versus organic, you said you farm your own vegetables and really getting that quality nutrient rich when you are breathing through the nose. So CPAP machines, I’m glad that they’re around. It’s not the ideal thing that I would want, but it’s a bare minimum to have basically.

Is Throat Surgery a Viable Option for Treating Sleep Apnea?

John: Yeah. And what about throat surgery? Is that a viable option for sleep apnea? Are there risks?

Dr. Nammy: Well, so many risks. I tend to live a very natural life and majority of the patients, nobody’s really volunteering to say, “Cut my throat open, cut my tongue.” You know what I mean? We could put a million dollar bid out there, but I doubt that we’ll get people who are really willing to do that. There is throat surgery out there. There’s also devices medical doctors can put inside your throat that stimulate kind of like a pacemaker. It’s a stimulator for the tongue. And so what that does, it keeps the tongue active even at night while you’re sleeping.

But with so much EMF and I don’t know, I would feel really uncomfortable having something like that in my body because pacemakers need to be replaced and why would I do that when there’s alternatives out there where I can make my own body work better using my own body to be able to heal?

And we are amazing beings. We’ve survived millions of years and we’ve adapted and our bodies are able to adapt and we’re able to biohack ourselves. So that’s really my approach is really biohacking. And then also, I don’t want to be dependent on someone else or something. I want my body to function on its own. And so that’s why I am not a big fan of throat surgery. It is out there. There are people who do it. I would say if I had a neural issue where my body wasn’t producing the chemical that it needs, that would be a reason I would do throat surgery or put a device in the back of my throat. But for 90 or 99% of the people who have apnea, it’s more structural and that can be dealt with.

The Relationship Between Age and Sleep Apnea

John: Interesting. So something’s not in the right place that’s blocking the airflow or…

Dr. Nammy: So, one of the biggest things happens is as we get older in life, like you were saying earlier, all those wasted years and we’re actually able to diagnose something called upper airway resistance, which is a precursor before people have apnea. So it’s much better to address everyone in younger age, so like 20s, 30, 40s rather than the 50s when they get the apnea.

John: Right.

Dr. Nammy: And the reality of this is pretty much everyone does get some sort of apnea as we age, and the main reason for that is our tongue muscles. So as we get older, one of the biggest signs of aging is these fancy wrinkles that we have because our body and our collagen fibers, we actually stop producing new collagen at the age of 25, and after that it starts unraveling even more at 40. That’s why we’re finding majority of the people who get diagnosed with sleep apnea are in 40s and 50s and 60s.

So, the tongue is already… The tongue is a muscle, so that muscle is normally tighter when we’re younger and the muscle fibers loosen over time and as they loosen over time, what they do is they block the airway and that’s what we call sleep apnea is when the tongue falls back. And that’s actually the scientific definition of sleep apnea is that the tongue actually blocks the base of the airway. The base of the tongue in the back here actually blocks you from getting the air.

John: Okay, so it’s the tongue that’s in the way.

Dr. Nammy: Yeah.

What is Vivos?

John: So, what can you do? There’s Vivos, what is that? That’s some kind of appliance to manipulate that structure.

Dr. Nammy: Yes. So as I talk about natural remedies and natural modalities, we start with some basic things first. The first thing we want to do is figure out where the problem is. Is it just the tongue actually needs to be strengthened? A lot of times it’s multifactorial, so it’s not just the tongue. It can also be sometimes people don’t have enough space for the tongue because they’ve gained weight because that’s very common as we get older.

John: I wouldn’t know about that.

Dr. Nammy: So, if we really look at what are the causative factors, and so we really want to address all the causative factors. What I have learned, and I love pathophysiology, I really want to look at how the body functions, what are the critical things that kind of go along with the airway? So the first thing I start with is looking at the nose, making sure the nose has enough space to be able to breathe. And because of allergies, because of history of braces, a lot of patients end up not having open sinuses. And the other reason actually is also evolutionarily, when we were monkeys, our sinuses were low to the ground, so we had big sinus cavities, but as we’ve gotten more upright, what’s happened is our sinus cavities have shrunk and our heads have gotten really big. That’s why everyone’s so smart nowadays.

How Our Nasal Structure Can Cause Sleep Apnea

John: But there’s a consequence to the change in our nasal structure because we used to be out there having to do so much and just sucking air in better is that right? Now we’re kind of just at the computer.

Dr. Nammy: And with a tech neck, right? Everyone’s got that.

John: I got it. Yeah, I just started Brazilian jujitsu and I’m like, “Oh my god, my neck.” Because I’ve been so locked up for so long. Thank God I’m doing something to wake my body back up.

Dr. Nammy: Exactly, exactly. What we want to do is we really want to start with all the areas that are involved in an airway, and that’s why I like to analyze it first. We look at the nose, we look at the throat of course as well. We look at the tongue and then also the airway right over here. We want the air to go in through the nose, so the back of the throat and down and into our lungs. When we look at this, we actually look at where are the areas where there’s a problem.

Sometimes if the tongue is an issue, for example, if somebody is overweight, the first thing we start with is we actually laser the tongue. So we have a laser, it’s a medical-grade laser, and it’s a fractional laser, which is really wonderful because remember I shared with you earlier that the muscle fibers or the collagen stops developing at the age of 25. So the only way your body will make more collagen is if you induce it with some sort of stimulation. And so, what the laser does, it stimulates the tongue to start producing more tighter, firmer collagen.

Tightening the Tongue to Prevent Sleep Apnea

John: So, you’re not shaving something off the tongue, you’re just triggering it to react?

Dr. Nammy: Exactly. As I trigger it to react, it’s almost like the tongue went to the gym and picked up some barbells, so it’s tighter.

John: And you didn’t have to go spend hours. You just come see you and it’s done.

Dr. Nammy: Yeah, and your body does this naturally. All we did is give it the right stimulation and it makes that collagen, which is fantastic. So that’s the easiest solution. There’s also tongue training exercises that we can do as well to kind of upkeep it. Sometimes what happens is if there’s history or braces or if the sinus cavities are too small, we actually have to activate and expand the upper dental arch and the lower dental arch. Now you’re like, “You’re a dentist, why are you talking about my sinuses?” What’s really interesting is that on top of your upper arch is your nose, so these are connected, and then on your lower arch, your airway is right here. So it’s connected.

John: Yeah, it’s all connected

Dr. Nammy: And not just as a whole-body connection, but really structurally it’s connected. So if I expand the upper dental arch, I’m naturally going to expand the sinuses. And we have now done studies to discover that we can expand the sinus cavity, the 3D volume, so you can actually get really good air and really great expansion.

John: So, the roof of your mouth, you’re literally getting a wider roof of your mouth, you putting an addition on?

Dr. Nammy: Yes. So we have an appliance that we utilize and what we do is active… We now know the frequency of the bone-making cells. So what we do is activate the bone-making cells to make more bone. So you actually widen your palate. As you widen your palate, you get more nose breathing and good oxygen. Also your tongue has enough space, so that’s fantastic. And then when we widen the lower arch, we actually expand the airway, the air volume, so it goes from this to this. So we’re able to do with one millimeter of change or width of one millimeter, we’re actually able to increase the volume of air by 100%.

John: Wow. So yeah, you’re not talking about another two inches wide, roof your mouth. Talking like minuscule little changes are massively effective.

Dr. Nammy: A millimeter. Think about that, just a millimeter.

John: Yeah, that’s crazy. I wouldn’t have thought that small of an amount would do it.

Sleep Apnea’s Impact on Your Overall Health

Dr. Nammy: And also, the impact on your overall health is massive because we know that majority of the patients who have sleep apnea or have some sort of breathing concern end up having high blood pressure, end up having reflux. They end up having irritability, depression, super common, and they’re breaking their teeth left and spending thousands of dollars on dentistry and being uncomfortable. These are just some basic common signs. But what I’m seeing in the younger generation more and more and more is a lot of IBS, a lot of autoimmune conditions, even thyroid. Those are all-

John: Yeah, don’t even get me going on that because I have colitis, I have thyroid issues, and when I read, I started reading about Vivos and Homeoblock and I forget the name of the doctor. I think it was on Homeoblock, he said he spent all these years with all these autoimmune issues, and then he did this, the Homeoblock, I think he was the inventor or he was one of the people, first people to do it. I forget, but everything changed.

I mean, his autoimmune just reversed. That just seems like, what? This was the cause of the autoimmune. Why didn’t I know about this and why do these… I have these wonderful Mass General doctors, but why aren’t they talking about this? Why does traditional medicine, I went gluten-free when I got colitis 15, 20 years ago, and it was amazing. And the doc… Oh, you don’t need to do that. So I went back and got organic wheat bread, I ate wheat bread and then I had symptoms again. So some of these things you are not going to get from your traditional doctor or your traditional dentist.

Dr. Nammy: Right, majority of the reasons why patients are not getting this information, to be frank is most medical doctors are trying to keep you alive. They’re not focusing on prevention. They’re just really putting a band-aid on the symptoms or any disease that you have. The biggest things they’re making sure is that you’re not a liability. They don’t want you to die with them. That’s the basic thing they look at and a person like me who’s a holistic practitioner and more boutique and more customized, so everything we do is highly customized for all of our patients. So we look at your genetic risk for inflammation, we look at the bacteria that cause heart attack, diabetes, cancer, all of that stuff. We focus on this nose breathing and really making sure your body is in balance. So you talked about Dr. Belfor and the beauty about what he says and how he is cured by that is because what happens with the body is that the body needs rhythm.

So, it’s inhales and exhales and inhales and exhales when we have that rhythmic experience, and it’s a cycle. So our body likes that cycle. So what we really want to do is put our bodies back in rhythm, and the reason with IBS in how nose breathing really impacts it is because when we get that nose breathing, getting that nitric oxide, it actually helps our gut relax. It really helps the movement go through, help us process our food, and it really also helps us relax. So that inhale, the rhythm that I was talking about, because all of aging or all of our bodies, everything is all inflammation.

Even the food we eat, even if it’s good food, it’s causing some sort of inflammatory response. Earlier you talked about wheat, and so the wheat, it just causes a higher inflammatory response than something like an apple. When it comes to this, what we want to do is if our bodies, we increase the resistance our bodies can really tolerate. So when we get that nose breathing, we create that nitric oxide, that nitric oxide helps us neutralize the wheat allergy or the gluten allergy or pollen allergy or anything that we have because our bodies are designed to work. We lived in the forest, our ancestors have survived. It is meant to work really, really, really, really well. As long as it has a proper form and function, it is able to do its job very, very, very well.

Comparing Vivos and Homeoblock

John: And so briefly touch on both. So Vivos and Homeoblock, a little bit of both of those and maybe even how they’re either the same or different.

Dr. Nammy: They’re very similar in its function and how they work. So Dr. Singh and Dr. Belfor, I worked with both of them. So Vivos and through Vivos, I worked with Dr. Singh who started Vivos, and then Homeoblock is Dr. Belfor. So they both actually worked together for many years. All the publications that you’ll find on 3D, expansion of the sinus cavity, also about the airway and the breath, they actually did the studies together. They actually mapped it out together. There’s a slight difference between Vivos and Homeoblock, and that’s why there’s two different methodologies or two different… They kind of diverted would be the right word. These are both devices that activate the stem cells in your palate and your lower arch in order to expand. And what I’ve found is a lot of my patients who have had apnea no longer have apnea after I’m done with them. We test them and that’s how we can confirm that they once had a diagnosis of sleep apnea.

We do the treatment, we test them again to see if they still have sleep apnea, and we find that they don’t, which is really phenomenal. And we do this all naturally. Now we talked about the two products. We talked about Vivos and Homeoblocks. There’s a lot of different actually, appliances out there. The main reason I love using the Vivos and the Homeoblock is because once you’re done, it allows your body to stay that way. And that for me is fantastic. You’re not dependent on a device for a lifetime. You’re not dependent on anything for a lifetime. And once you’re done, you’re done, which is awesome. So the Homeoblock is majority of the upper palate and Vivos does the upper and the lower palate. So that’s an easy way to distinguish which ones which. The similarity or the mechanism is very similar in how it works.

There’s no, only one’s going to work and not the other. They’re very similar in how they work. But the reality of it is, is the way that I’m able to do the… When I do my Vivos, I do it like a Homeoblock because we want that rhythmic challenge. We want that rhythmic inhale, exhale. So we really create that harmony for the body and every practitioner has their own ways. I actually trained through Kalish Institute for Functional Medicine, so I was able to apply all the things I learned through that and create this beautiful product or this beautiful service for patients like you who have sleep apnea so we can get them to be healthy and be comfortable and not be dependent on a device and have that total confidence.

It’s not even just like I did something, but we have tests that show you with confidence like, hey, this has worked. And they’re third party tests, they’re done in the comfort of your own home. And it really allows us to really serve and help our patients and help the community in the best way really to live a long healthy life so we can all live our purpose and really go back and do what we need to do, whether it’s our children, whether it’s a work we do, whether it’s non-profit, whatever it is.

Sleep Apnea Customized to Each Patient

John: Well, it’s so fatiguing to not sleep. I think I have mild sleep apnea, or at least that’s what the doctor told me, but I feel like it’s probably fatigued me so much you get used to it, you don’t even think about it. That’s normal. So you don’t think about it as much as you should. I would think the value of not having to use a CPAP just to be healthy, it’s hard to even put a number on it because it’s changing your entire well-being, if you are reducing inflammation, getting oxygen with my limited knowledge of functional medicine that I’m trying to study, seems well worth doing either of those. Do you do one more than the other now?

Dr. Nammy: I do both. I would say depending on what the patient needs. So I base it on each person. Like I said, we customize everything we do for each person. And so I wouldn’t say I do one more than the other. I would say-

John: You don’t know until you see the person.

Dr. Nammy: Yeah, I’d have to see, yeah, once I get the 3D scanning and then I’d be able to evaluate where I need to expand them, that’s when I decide which product I’m going to be using. But you know, one of the things you mentioned up earlier is what is the value? It’s really priceless. And the number one thing, it’s like we get time, we get life. The quality of life that we get is phenomenal because when we’re kind of conditioned to think that it’s okay not to have good sleep and it’s okay not to be happy, and it really isn’t, we can choose to be able to have a good life.

We can choose to be able to, I know when I don’t get good sleep or if I’m stressed out about something or something like that, I’m not my best version of myself. I’m distracted. I’m a little cranky. And so when we are able to… What I really just want to do is stress is never going to go away. A lot of the troubles are never going to go away. All I want to do is increase my body’s capacity to handle it. I want to increase your body’s capacity to be able to handle stress, inflammation. I want your body to work well on its own and you can do what you need to do. Most importantly, stay married if you have a significant other-

John: Yeah, crankiness and snoring, not conducive.

Dr. Nammy: And I’ve had people who are just like, “I don’t believe you.” And I give them a 90-day challenge. I said, “You know what?” I’m a big wine fan. So I always say, “You know what? I will bet you a bottle of wine in 90 days if you don’t feel better. I will buy a bottle. We can stop treatment, all of that stuff.” And I have so many wine bottles now, let me tell you that.

How Long Does it Take to Get Relief from Sleep Apnea

John: So Vivos and Homeoblock, you can do a short term and get a feel for it.

Dr. Nammy: You can get 90 days; you’ll see a significant difference in how-

John: Really? Interesting.

Dr. Nammy: Yeah, within 90 days, because remember what I said, just a millimeter of expansion does a world of wonder. So within 90 days, I’ve gone patients off of… With patients with a lot of acid reflux, I’ve been able to take them off of medications within six months. I have been able to really serve people in so many ways, people with autoimmune conditions. They used to have to take a pill every single day to calm their immune system.

John: I’m on one and I had like to be all natural, but it kind of, it’s like an aspirin for your stomach essentially. But I think that blocks you from complete healing because you’re altering your body by adding something to the equation. Whereas if you just let it naturally heal, but if you’re lacking oxygen, you’re challenging yourself so much that it’s the lazy way out. Me and my sister, one who takes something similar for colitis, that’s kind of the normal approach, the band-aid approach.

Can Natural Treatment Reduce the Need for Medication?

Dr. Nammy: And the thing with the autoimmune taking a pill is that over a period of time, your liver’s going to wear out. That’s the real big issue. People take aspirin after 40, you start taking a baby aspirin. By 60, your skin is so thin and-

John: Wow.

Dr. Nammy: … They give you another pill for that. And that’s the thing is it is like a cycle. You go from one pill to another, from one pill, it goes to two, two to three, three to four, and then that’s why you see people and 60s and 70s with a pill box and that they think it’s normal. It’s like candy for them. And it doesn’t have be.

John: I think Dr. Belfor said he had so many things that spiraled out of control.

Dr. Nammy: And the beauty is that we can, and thank God for technology, thank God for all the things that we’ve been able to research. We actually now know how to resolve these things naturally and really, really push the envelope of humanity and really lived that a 120, 140, 150.

Natural Treatments to Extend Life

John: I just read two books I went a little crazy on since Friday I read both Dr. Hyman Forever Young on Audible. I listened at 2X speed to Forever Young, and then my brother said, “Oh, I’m reading…” I shared it with my siblings. And so my brother says, “Oh, I’m reading Smarter Not Harder by the guy that did…” Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Diet guy, I guess. So I hadn’t even heard of him, but I got it on Audible and I listened on two and a half Speed. So both of those books, I guess one’s about eight hours and one’s about nine hours.

But I just listened from Friday to Sunday, like nonstop in all the things I was doing, gardening and driving. But it seems like, and I’m no functional medicine expert, but it seems like there are so many common themes. Like Dr. Hyman said, he’s planning to live from either 120 or 180 years old, and it’s not an impossibility with the technology and with the biohacking and with all these different things we can do now, the future for what you can do is pretty different than even say 50 years ago.

I mean, certainly there’s ancient things. I mean, you’re coming from India. When I went to India, it was like, wow, there’s thousands of year old culture and Ayurvedic medicine and things that have been around a long time, but there’s also new things that we’ve discovered. I mean, how exciting is that? What’s the future from your perspective with these new technologies?

Dr. Nammy: Oh, the future is amazing. And growing up with Ayurveda, my great-grandfather was like 99 when he passed.

John: Wow.

Dr. Nammy: Yeah, I’ve already known-

John: That’s awesome.

Dr. Nammy: Yeah, I mean, it’s nice to come from a background of Ayurveda where we know what to do for longevity, like eating healthy, exercise. He walked every single day, just a lot of these things. But what’s been really nice is Western culture is very different because India has a different lifestyle where it’s very organic, it’s simple in many ways. But then here in the US we’re busy. We have so many things going on. We eat packaged foods, all these other things, and going back and really realizing what can we do? There’s one side of that, which is packaged food, things like that. But at the second side, it’s like, we’ve done all this research and we can layer that on. We know all these things from Ayurveda for how long, now let’s tack it on with science. Let’s look at ice bath.

Ozone Therapy and Ice Baths

John: Both of those books talked about that. Ice baths, even ozone therapy, I’m like, “What?” I hadn’t really heard… Is that, I think you mentioned in that one of your podcasts, you do ozone therapy?

Dr. Nammy: All the time. Ozone therapy is fantastic. And the way I like to do ozone therapy is through the ears. You can do IV ozone as well. My preference to do it through the ear, nose, and throat, because it really, like a lot of people have mold issues.

John: Yeah. I’ve had mold issues.

Dr. Nammy: And so, it kills off the mold, which is fantastic. [inaudible 00:29:00] Better, pretty instantaneously. Now a lot of times they combine the lasering of the tongue with then doing the ozone. It’s fantastic for patients. It does a world of wonder and really clearing everything out for them, and people’s faces change within a minute. It’s really wonderful.

Benefits of Holistic Dentistry

John: So holistic dentistry is really, it’s just that, you’re really looking at the whole system of the body through the lens, if you will, of your mouth and your nose and all that. But you’re looking at improving the whole system through these different techniques.

Dr. Nammy: Well, because we once thought that disease was belly up from the inside, we’re actually now discovering that, or we have discovered that it’s actually diseases this way down. My goal really is to help patients have confidence in their health and knowing with testing that they’re doing everything customized for them with knowing their genetic risk for inflammation, knowing the bacteria that they have inside their mouth, making sure they’re nose breathing. And also we test it with… I have patients who come in all the time, their kidney’s not functioning well, their liver’s not functioning well. I do what I need to do. We send them to the medical doctor, they test them again, and it’s really nice because… And I don’t tell the medical doctors what I’m doing. I tell the patient, let’s just test it. And so their liver starts functioning better, the kidneys start functioning better.

Because what we’re really doing is looking at the body as an overall and removing toxins, getting it to function better on its own, giving it air. And it really starts here, right? It’s C1 to C3, it’s neck down. And for such a long time, dentistry has been a stepchild of medicine where they didn’t think that we mattered. And it’s now, it’s like with the airway, it’s the most important thing. And dentistry is very important, and especially holistic functional dentistry on top of that is even more crucial because it’s highly customized. I see specific, and if you’re looking for the results, like the biggest bang for your buck or the biggest impact you’re going to have for the rest of your life, preventing Alzheimer’s, preventing heart attacks, cancer, anything like functional, holistic dentistry is a way to go.

And especially with a functional medicine background and dentistry together, that is really a powerhouse. And for me, I felt like it was a big powerhouse because I feel like the best clinician because of that. I’ve always been a holistic dentist, but adding that functional layer and going through functional medicine-

John: Really?

Dr. Nammy: Yeah. It really has allowed me to really… It’s just precision. It’s laser like precision.

A Scientific Look at Natural Medicine

John: Very scientific look at the natural methodologies of healing so that you’re not guessing. It’s the lab work. That’s my limited understanding of functional medicine. You’re really scientifically checking. We want to make sure what we’re doing is working. You wouldn’t want to just guess and just, oh, just people say, take this colitis drug because this is the main one you take. You want to get deeper than that.

Dr. Nammy: For me, coming from a background of Ayurveda in holistic health, I had a feeling that I was doing the right thing. Now, functional medicine is giving me the facts and just really fact-checking myself, and there’s no feeling involved. It’s total science. It’s total facts that it’s working. My body is telling… Because we don’t know what’s happening in our body. We don’t know, honestly, do we cellularly know if our blood sugar is high or low? We don’t know.

We only know when it’s on the critical stages. So we only know when it’s too high or too low. And that’s really, we will faint or something like that. Or dehydration. We don’t know when our body’s thirsty, but we do know when we’re super dehydrated because we get dizzy or exhausted or something along those lines because our body’s really good at coping. And so these things combine together with the holistic health and with knowing exactly what the testing, it really allows me to treat with natural products and really have that confidence in health and really confidence in longevity. And that confidence in knowing that it’s just like you don’t have to worry about it anymore. You’re like done. You know, it’s getting an A plus. It is having the answers to the test.

John: And like you said, you’re giving these treatments and then you’re doing various tests like the sleep apnea tests or possibly, I don’t know, blood work. I mean, if you’re doing that, you do that as well.

Dr. Nammy: I try to do blood work through the medical doctors. You know what I mean? I try to… Also want collaboration with the doctors because it creates awareness for them, but then-

John: But you collaborate, and you tie together.

Dr. Nammy: And they’re treating their patients better after us working together. So I want to be a member of the team. I don’t need to do everything myself, and I don’t want to be the one all be all. And I’m not. I feel like working together when you have two minds versus just one and collaborating together and really in sharing the knowledge, and that way we’re both giving a patient the best care. And I like it too, because it’s a double-blind. They don’t know what I… I mean they know certain things that I did, but not specifically. But when we get the tests through the lab test that they’re usually, patients are usually going through and then we see the results it’s a nice confirmation and it also builds that confidence again. It’s that confidence in health. So it’s like a double-blind and it really gives that great confidence.

Is it Possible to Live 120-180 Years?

John: No, that makes sense because so often people go to the dentist and it’s just you get a cleaning or you have a cavity or something. But really you should be looking at the whole big picture and tying into your other doctors, not just basic primary care and you go for physical once in a while. I think if you can live to 120 or 180, it’s probably not going to come by the sad American diet and just going once in a while to your basic doctor, you can advance your health and life so much, but you got to take an action and go seek people like you out.

Dr. Nammy: Yes, absolutely. I feel like the things that we provide are… And that’s actually what happens is people seek us out because they’re interested in natural health, they’re interested in holistic health, they’re interested in living longer. They’re interested in getting off… Of being out of pain. They’re interested in these things. It’s a beautiful thing to work with people who want to work with you. It’s so wonderful because we are able to get such great results because I do my share, they do their share.

John: Well, this has been fantastic today. I’m so intrigued. I could talk to you forever because it’s so inspiring to think what you can do for your life, and some of it’s not going to take a huge amount of time, and you’re going to feel so much better. So thank you for the chat today.

Dr. Nammy: My pleasure.

John: And this has been John McDougall with Dr. Nammy Patel. Sfgreendentist.com, and see you next time.