Ryan Robinson, DDS, is a unicorn in the medical world: a dentist who helps people open up their airways and learn how to breathe properly.
Breathe properly? What are you talking about?, I hear you say. If I'm alive, then I must be breathing properly, right?
Not exactly. It turns out that one of the casualties of modern life is the shape of our skull and the corresponding size of our airways. For the past 300 years, since the advent of the industrial revolution, we've been eating softer food, robbing our tongues, jaws, and lips of sufficient exercise.
And those deficiencies have, in turn, affected the growth and structure of our upper and lower jaws. Basically, our jaws are smaller, and our mouths are smaller, and our nasal airways are pinched.
How might you know you have a breathing problem? If you snore when you sleep, check. If you clench or grind your teeth during sleep, check. If you breathe through your mouth, check.
And breathing affects how well we digest our food. It affects how well we sleep. It affects our body's perceived and actual levels of stress. It can give us clear or infected sinuses. Poor breathing can actually cause depression and anxiety that we'll never fix by therapizing since the conditions are rooting in physiology rather than psychology.
Ryan Robinson was an “ordinary” dentist, or “tooth mechanic” as he put it, until he discovered the field of airway health and completely changed his practice to focus on healthy airways.
In our conversation, we talk about the reasons for our modern breathing problems, the wide variety of health costs, and several approaches to treatment. Since I traveled to Delaware for a consultation, we talked about my mouth, nose, and airways in particular. You can see the video of my visit here:
Bad breathing is an epidemic in the modern world, one that is profound in its harms and almost completely unrecognized by the medical profession.
As a big fan of lifestyle medicine, I hope my platform can get the attention of some of the bigwigs at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine to make Breathing the 6th lifestyle pillar, after Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Stress management, and Social support. I hope you'll help in this mission, so that we can all begin to breathe just a little bit easier.
Enjoy, add your voice to the conversation via the comment box below, and please share – that's how we spread our message and spread our roots.
Links
Dr Ryan's Practice: PainandSleepCenter.com
Breath, by James Nestor
Pain and Sleep Center YouTube channel
Dr Marianna Evans' Practice (orthodontist and skull expert)
Patrick McKeown (breathing educator)
Pediatric Airway Symposium 2021
Oura Ring
SnoreLab App
Glenn Murphy's StressProof Class – first ever online course (after bugging/begging him for 5 years!)
Dr Howie Jacobson
This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).
My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.
Here are three gigs that I do:
1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation
I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.
At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.
My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.
2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance
I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.
We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.
The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.
3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams
I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.
So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.
You CAN Change Other People!
Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.
What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.
Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.
Music
The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.
It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.
You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.
Gratitudes
Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.
Disclosure
This post may contain amazon affiliate links. I may receive compensation from your actions on such links. It don't cost you a dime, tho.
