[00:00:00] Hi, Steve Adams here from Tiger Medical and the Future of Personalized Medicine Summit. We're going to continue with Dr. Dar Radfar. Dar, welcome. Thank you for having me, Steve. I'm really excited. Oh, you're welcome. And we like Dr. Dar we've used him at Tiger Medical, his sleep program for several years and have great results with it.

So I'm excited to unpack that today. But Dr. Dar is a practicing dentist. He's got two locations in his practice. He's an international speaker on sleep apnea and snoring. On low level laser therapy on marketing, medical billing and much more he has a passion for speaking including personal development and spiritual strategies that help anyone manifest the life of their dreams And he says when we lead with [00:01:00] love, kindness and empathy, we are unstoppable.

That is awesome. I love that phrase. Dr Dar welcome to the summit. Thank you, leading with love and compassion is something that we all strive for hopefully But a lot of us live in a place of fear. We live in a place of fear, failure, fear of failure, rejection not being able to get out of our limiting beliefs.

And so some of the personal work I've done with Tony Robbins, Dr. Joe Dispenza. Dr Jordan Peterson. I've seen all these people and met them actually. Peter Crone. There's so many different people out there that really at the end of the day, I realized as a dentist of 23 years almost and my passion for sleep a lot of your mindset can't really be, you can't be really in a great mindset and have this positive type of mental wellbeing and being leading with love when you don't sleep well.

I don't care how much you benefit. I don't care how much therapy you've been through. Steve. It's when you [00:02:00] don't sleep well and get enough oxygen to your brain and your overall body and get deep sleep and get that growth hormone release and then all the other hormones and rejuvenation of your immune system and your energy.

It's very challenging to be able to propel into being a positive, loving, kind human being and ultimately living in that space of enlightenment and compassion. And in 2009 I fell asleep with the wheel. I was embarrassed I crashed my car into a tree. Luckily it wasn't a person or a car.

And I went through the process of, hey, maybe I have something called sleep apnea. And I was a practicing dentist for about seven years at the time. Not knowing what the future holds with dentistry and sleep and people wonder what is that even Correlated and when I had a home sleep test done in 2009 after my crash because I was feeling a little more tired throughout The day I was getting a little more of the hey, you're snoring by my bed partner and pretty young too yeah, I was 32 back then.

I was 160 pounds six feet [00:03:00] tall. So Don't judge a book by its cover. It's not necessarily overweight that can have apnea issues. And that home sleep test, Steve told me that I have mild sleep apnea. I stopped breathing 11 times an hour. And so they gave me a mask called that CPAP machine, continuous positive airway pressure.

I couldn't tolerate it. And a lot of patients can't tolerate it. And then a few months later, I got lucky. I was reading a dental journal and they had a mouthpiece. That was approved by the American Medical Association for dentists only to treat sleep, acne and snoring. So guess who was patient zero at my office?

Me. And since then I've helped a few thousand patients at my practices here out in Thousand Oaks in Oxnard, California, outside of Los Angeles. But really what we've discovered, Steve, is I can look in someone's mouth. I can have someone look at themselves in the mouth, the way the tongue. Has some striations or scalloping on the side of it.

The lower front teeth are [00:04:00] grinding and people grinding their teeth, the narrowness of the arch of the jaw that those are all indications that a patient may not be breathing well and they're grinding their teeth are struggling for air at night. And then the medical issues that come from it, such as high blood pressure, acid reflux, heart attack risk.

When I got on stage to speak to a corporation, top 500 company last month as I do my speaking towards not just dentists on how to screen and treat sleep apnea, but ultimately what can businesses do to help their employees in a more wellness kind of fashion. And right when I started, I had everyone take their phones out and I said, can you all Google sleep apnea and life expectancy.

Steve, do you know what you saw, what I, what people saw, how many years off your life if you're not treated for sleep apnea? At least seven, probably. Yeah, so the minimum studies have shown is 10, it's 12 to 15 years [00:05:00] off your life. How valuable is that as to be able to add quality of life to people as a dentist with making a mouthpiece that helps position the jaw in a way to get more air, or even sending it to a sleep physician to get a CPAP machine.

Sleep is such a crucial part. We never knew it was 12 to 15 years off your life if you're not treated at all. No idea. I was one of these guys. I went 10 years sleep in two hours a night, in bed for seven, seven, eight. And, that was where I, how I first got into Tiger Medical was my sleep was so bad and I needed to solve it.

So I corroborate everything you're saying is a lived experience as somebody who got through the other side of that. Yeah. And, Steve, a lot of times I was called grumpy Dr. Rad at my office back in 09. I can't imagine as you're not grumpy. Tired. Yeah. You come in eight, seven, 38 in the morning to your job and you're tired.

It just feels like Monday morning every day sometimes and your adrenaline kicks [00:06:00] in, you got to provide for your customers, your clients, your patients. And, a cup of coffee or two kicks in finally, and then you're able to function. And that's not a way of being. And then now, that mindset that we were talking about when you have come in with a, that energy state, as Tony Robbins says, that energy coming in.

If people feed off you, do your employees feed off you, your employer feeds off of you, your clients and patients and customers feed off of you when you have that positive extra energy, so to speak that radiates. And you can only do that if you get at least five hours, I know it sounds a little bit five hours of incredibly quality sleep with your airway open compared to what you said, seven or eight hours of this.

intermittent on and off sleep. Of course, our goal is to get at least seven hours of quality sleep where you're getting air in. But a lot of people can't do that. And it affects their energy levels with their loved ones. It affects their energy with their family and and having that patience and [00:07:00] understanding when you get home and you're tired and We're going to bed at 830 p.

m. and waking up a bunch of times and, one of the biggest things I tell my patients, do you get up to go to the restroom more than once every night? And they're like, yep, nocturia, frequent nighttime urination is another kind of self assessment. I'm almost 61. I'll turn 61. I don't know.

Next Saturday, 51 years young. Yeah. I actually last night slept all night and never went to the bathroom. It is possible for even because everybody says, Oh, when you're an old man, you have to get up all the time that's because you're not sleeping well. It's not because you can't. Yeah. A lot of the urologists in my neighborhood now are referring patients to me when they get a patient that comes in and says.

I'm going to the restroom a lot. I want to make sure everything's okay. My prostate, my bladder and and a lot of the times we see that the common denominator is sleep apnea. You open up the airway with an oral appliance or a CPAP machine, all of a sudden you may be getting up once.

Of course, some of [00:08:00] the key tips I don't want to go over those. So one of those tips for sleep is don't have a, a bottle of water two hours before, but within two hours before bedtime, right? Like those are some obvious, like we want to keep ourselves hydrated, especially if we have dry mouth because we take medications or we work out a lot, but definitely minimize the water.

So just sipping within the last two hours before bedtime. And a lot of some of the other sleep hygiene. I love this one. If you have a opportunity to live in a sunny state, I live in California and Florida and Miami and LA area. In the morning, if you can get about 10 minutes of sun in your eyes that increases your natural melatonin levels.

Yeah, that's a good little trick. And of course, try to stay away from caffeine about eight hours or so before bedtime. So most people around one, two shouldn't have p. m., shouldn't have their coffee anymore after that. Now, I have a lot of friends, oh man, I could have an espresso or a cappuccino at dinner and go right to bed.

I don't know if you've had any people do that, but if you look at that person's sleep quality, they [00:09:00] don't get into the stages of deep sleep and REM when they have caffeine in their system. Maybe they pass out and sleep, but it's that restless sleep. There's more restless sleep syndrome. So definitely you want to avoid any energy drinks or any coffee after eight hours before bedtime.

Let's go back a little bit, Dr. Darr, and talk about why sleep's important for your long term health. And secondly, let's break down the architecture of sleep a little bit for people. Yeah, so sleep is important because when you sleep properly and get enough oxygen, you get into these phases of REM and deep sleep that actually help reestablish proper hormone levels.

It helps regulate your heart rate. If you're intermittently breathing and making those noises and getting oxygen and not getting oxygen, your heart has to increase its heart rate and decrease its heart rate, increase and decrease. You're not getting enough nitric oxide if you're not breathing [00:10:00] well. And that itself can vasoconstrict.

The arteries increasing high blood pressure, and the studies about their out there have shown 30 percent of high blood pressure patients is a direct result of their sleep apnea, you fix their apnea they're off of medications, which is very powerful. The other slew of effects that can happen or acid reflux.

If you're taking those deep breaths as you gasp for air, even though your brain is knocked out and you do those interim and gaspings, what's happening is the diaphragm pushes against the stomach and the acid comes up and destroys that little muscle. sphincter called the esophageal sphincter, and that can cause more heartburn.

So we've seen 60 percent of GERD, or gastrointestinal reflux disease patients, are as a result of apnea. You fix their apnea, their acid reflux gets better. Five times higher risk of cancer of any kind. The new University of Wisconsin study came out. showing untreated sleep apnea, [00:11:00] not only in the initial cause of cancer, but also in when patients are in remission and the relapse of cancer or the metastasis.

Now, these are huge numbers and huge, important diseases that it's contributing to. What really makes me, and Steve, you probably will agree to this, when I talk to an oncologist, I asked him, I said, okay, you got a diagnosis of sleep, or of cancer, have you had this patient tested for sleep apnea? It should be a go to, because if you see a five times higher risk of cancer of any kind, how are we not testing all cancer patients for sleep apnea with a simple watch pad home sleep test?

And that's what I set up my patients to do. I have patients from all over the world. They're not necessarily my dental patients. Some of them from different corporations that I've spoken to through summits and in person, we get their home sleep testing done. And then let's see how bad the sleep is. And depending on the [00:12:00] score of the sleep apnea on the sleep study, here's a Denison Albuquerque, here's a Denison sleep app in Seattle.

Here's a sleep physician because your numbers are too high. Go try the CPAP machine. It's really knowledge is power. And sometimes it's on us to see, to know it and your physicians, even though there's these comorbidities or these links between your medical condition. and sleep apnea, they don't necessarily go right to the to sleep, to see if that's the primary cause.

And what I teach dentists on how to do on my coaching program is how to look in the mouth and see those signs. Cause we lose that every day, right? At least twice a year. If you're a good patient coming in on your hygiene appointments and whatnot. And I show the hygienist as well. This is what you look for to see if there's an airway that's and then just have the conversation of.

How well do you sleep at night? Do you feel tired throughout the day? And would you like me to refer you for a home sleep test? And ultimately a dentist can refer a patient for that. And then knowledge is power and you can go towards [00:13:00] the kind of treatment depending on the severity of the disease. So how can you self assess your sleep to, to determine if maybe I need to reach out to you, Dr.

Dar or someone else? So some of the big landmarks are if you're just feel more tired throughout the day and people say, Oh, I got old. Now they keep me up. The dog keeps me up. Yeah, those are definite, reasons that, you know, when we get woken up every hour or two hours, but even if you get a few hours of good quality air going in, you're going to feel more rested throughout the day.

So daytime sleepiness is a big one. Snoring is another one. I like the app SnoreLab, S N O R E L A B. That's a free app that you can download. The free version is fine, and you can listen to yourself and see if you snore. It picks up the snoring sounds. And gives you a snoring story in case you don't have a bed partner or someone in the house.

So indications of snoring is a self assessment [00:14:00] right there. And then dry mouth is another one. If you're waking up with a lot of dry mouth, that means you're really mouth breathing a lot. And you can't breathe well through your nose. And that's, that could indicate sleep apnea. Those are some of the let's call it daily things or nightly things that we see.

Getting up to go to the restroom more than once. In the middle of the night that could be an indication, not always, but that could be a reason. And then you have, looking at your own mouth, right? And can you see something? And I said earlier, lower front teeth, grinding of your teeth.

If you feel like your TMJ or your temporomandibular joint is sore in the morning when you wake up and those muscles are tight. You're struggling for air when it's a fight or flight response, right? And when we don't get air, we clench our teeth and we grind our jaw forward. These lower front teeths, scrape against each other, wearing them down because we try to put our jaw in a CPR position as bringing our jaw forward, opens up the airway.

And by the way, that's what the oral appliances do. It brings the jaw [00:15:00] slightly forward and keeps it forward to prevent, keeps the tongue seated. Exactly. It prevents the tongue collapsing against the back of the throat there, where the soft palate is. And so these are some tail signs. I would say, and then you're, you can look at your medical history.

If you're taking medications for high blood pressure, you can diabetic type two anxiety, depression, it's estimated up to 38 percent of depression, paid depressed patients is a result of sleep. Absolutely. Mental markers are probably going the wrong way as well. Cause absolutely. So you've got those medical signs.

We talked about acid reflux. You talk about history of heart attack, a stroke. Yeah cancer history. So if any of these are, I call these red flags, things that are happening in your world. Definitely. It's a good sign to be able to talk to a dentist, talk to your primary care physician, get a home sleep test.

You don't have to go to a lab and sleep overnight to check for the breathing part. At least other things like [00:16:00] restless leg syndrome and neurological issues of insomnia can be checked in lab, but they will always give you a home sleep study first to be able to rule out obstructive sleep apnea, because that's the more.

Concerning deadly, so to speak condition. Yeah. What about we Tiger Medical, we really like the aura ring, but what wearables do you like? Because the beauty of wearables is now you're actually seeing this is how much REM, this is how much deep, this is what my sleep efficiency was.

That's, those are telltale signs. Yeah, and I have an aura ring myself. I've been wearing one for a few months now. I just lost mine. I got to get a new one. Yeah it's crazy. Cause you know, in any business that you run, business coaches will show you, you got to know your numbers, right? And your health is the same way.

You got to know your steps. And the day you got to see how many calories you're taking, using up so you can see if what you're taking in, if you're in a calorie deficit, if you want to be able to lose weight and the same thing in [00:17:00] sleep, if you, it does help with the oxygen saturation, if you're below 98%, 97%, that's a problem that, that I have patients who do the sleep study, they only stop breathing a few times an hour.

Okay. But the oxygen saturation goes down below 90 and in a hospital setting, people would rush in and put oxygen on you. Yet you're doing this in your bed in the middle of the night, almost every hour. And your heart's just going to over, overwork and ultimately lead to all the medical issues that we were talking about.

So I do Oravine. I do any sort of Fitbit to type of all these type of watches too. They do have sleep functions. Usually they're good guidelines. They're not a diagnostic tool and really at the end of the day, what it comes down to is that feeling just a little bit more tired throughout the day, or if a bed partner, when you record snore lab and you hear those, the kind of the gasp snore, I call it that's a red flag and then.

With kids, right? Kids can have sleep apnea too. And, if you [00:18:00] notice your your son or daughter let's call it kids under the age of 12, 13. If you notice them snoring huge red flag, they should not be storing at all. If they're bedwetting grinding their teeth. A few months after my accident, my two and a half year old son, lo and behold, he's snoring, he's grinding his teeth.

So I, getting into the sleep apnea world, I took my son to a pediatric ENT and she looked and she's yeah, his tonsils are class four, huge tonsils, his adenoids are really inflamed, he's not getting an air. And we electively decided to do surgery. On my two and a half year old. And it was a hard decision, Steve.

You don't, I got emotional and before and after, but man, did it change his life literally the next morning, he was a different kid. And he went 30th percentile growth to 70th in 12 months. And we were wondering if something, he's just a grumpy kid, yeah not be that aggressive, what I like about the [00:19:00] wearables is they can change behavior.

Like I learned if I have popcorn in the evening from the movie theater destroys my deep sleep, so I don't do it very much. And I, when I do it now, it's because I'm choosing to suffer because I want it bad enough, so let's talk about treatments. What would you say, what are your top two or three things you like to go to, to get people to change and transform their sleep?

I'm sure there's a hygiene portion and then there's a physiological mechanical portion. Yeah. It is estimated about three quarters of sleep apnea patients are overweight, right? And, but the problem is. You can't lose weight properly if you still are battling the sleep apnea, right? There's a hormone called leptin is produced in deep sleep Leptin not only helps to increase your metabolism at rest, but it also helps You not crave those fatty, greasy foods, Steve, if you and I stayed up at a party or at a wedding till two, three in the morning, and then we woke up at six that next day, you're not going to feel like a chicken salad.

You're going to want some [00:20:00] pizza, a burger or something rich or dense, right? That's the production. Exactly. You want to treat yourself because you didn't sleep that much. And so losing weight. Is a big portion of being able to remove or release some of the fat constriction around the neck. And that's one of the the treatment modalities.

And another one, of course, if you're under the age of 18 orthodontic treatment is really powerful to expand the jaw or collect, excuse me, correct the retreated jaw. So if you have a big overbite. Yeah. Lower jaw is further back towards the back of the throat and the tongue is attached to our lower jaw.

Okay. Yeah. So if you've got an overbite and our lower jaw is retreated or further back, that's going to put the tongue further back against the back of the throat, causing snoring and apnea. If we can bring the jaw forward through orthognathic jaw surgery. Through [00:21:00] initially, if we catch it early enough under the age of 12, 13, 14 or so do appliances, orthodontic appliances through an orthodontist.

You can correct that retreated jaw, so there's some orthodontic care that can help reduce or actually prevent sleep apnea and snoring in an individual. So you've got those kinds of treatment with that. Of course, the number one gold standard since the early 80s has been the CPAP machine, the continuous positive airway pressure, and that's oxygen being blown down your throat.

Unfortunately, many people can't tolerate it. It's embarrassing, if you're out in the dating world and you need to put one of those on after you become intimate, they're gonna look at you like what the hell? Yeah, You know an existing partner may tolerate that if you bring that into the room because there's already some Tolerance of other things that we all do, right?

But, I've known to be saving relationships, Dr. Ratz and [00:22:00] as I make those, the other form of treatment, the oral appliance, that's more discreet. It looks more like a night guard that you're putting in and it helps reduce the snoring, if not eliminate it for most patients. And I always tell my single patients that are out there dating.

If you're going to go on a date and you think it's going to be a good one, make sure you take your appliance with you. You never know that, you may get lucky. And then there's some snoring all night and then yeah. Cause it's not, you're not going to be asked to come back again. I won't be a repeat customer.

And then there's surgical options, Steve. For example, there's. UPPP, which is really the uvula, that little punching bag in the back of the throat is removed, the tonsils are removed, the pharyngeal or throat muscles are lifted, almost like a facelift for the back of your throat.

Unfortunately, it's only about 50 percent effective, but a lot of people go to that route if they already have large tonsils, their self palate is very droopy. They have a lot of phlegm and coughing. Almost they feel like [00:23:00] their uvula gets inflamed in the morning when they wake up. So they feel like they're choking.

So they have to have that. But it does help up to about 50 percent with your sleep apnea score when a home sleep study is done. And then the last surgical one is Inspire. Inspire is a surgical implant that's put underneath your chest. And what it does when you put a little you stick a little remote next to it when you sleep with a sticky pad.

And what Inspire does is it has a electrical signal that sends to the nerve tongue called the hypoglossal nerve. And it contracts the tongue every single time you get a little bit of an apneatic event. So you've seen those ab. Commercials with those app constrictors that causes abs muscles to contract.

It's really a a little electrode that gets set that electrically sends an impulse to the tongue to keep the tongue tight. So it doesn't relax. And it's very gentle, very subtle, and it works really well [00:24:00] for severe patients. The surgery is expensive. It's around 20, 000. Most insurances are starting to cover it.

And every 10 years, that implant device has to be changed out because it is battery operated. But it seems to be a very effective tool for very, for severe sleep apnea patients, but it is a surgical device. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Wow. This is great. So Dr. Dar you have your two practices in California.

You're probably not wanting people from the summit to come to California, but maybe you are. But tell us about other things you're doing. So people that watch this, how can they engage with you and benefit from the wisdom and the training and the experience you have? Yeah. So I do a lot of teleconference calls with patients all across the country, even some across the, in Mexico, the Dubai, UK, and a home sleep study can be sent to any person who's.

thinking that they may have sleep issues or knows that they have these sleep issues that we're [00:25:00] discussing. So I can set up the patient. I have a home sleep testing company that I work with now and they send the the sleep equipment to the patient. Then you send it back after a couple of nights use for accuracy purposes.

You do it for a couple of nights. We get it scored by a board certified sleep physician. And then I go over the results and then I can guide and direct. I've treated, I've trained over 3, 500 dentists in the United States and abroad. But we have a huge network of dentists in this country that can help with an oral appliance.

Or we have also a network of sleep physicians, if a CPAP is indicated because the sleep study score was very high. And so that's a one way I can help. I also created some supplements. My rad ZZZ supplement actually has an ingredient in there. Not only valerian root, magnesium glycinate, things that help you healthy and relax and sleep better, but also it has an acetyl cysteine or knack.

If you Google that, for example, you'll see the effects of clinical studies [00:26:00] have shown that it reduces apnea by about 30%. So there are supplementations that we can take. And I included all those ingredients and the rad Z. So there is a program that I have for patients to be able to get the information, get tested very easily at the comfort of their home.

And then ultimately, boom, this is the treatment modalities that need to be done and I will direct them to how to get that done. Okay, that's awesome. So how do we, how do they find you? Yeah. I'm all over social media. I'm known as dr rad. If you just type in Google me, you'll find me.

My best way to reach me is through email. My first name, last name, dar rad far at gmail. com. Rad health Inc is my website for products and oral health, sleep health, TMJ health. So radhealthinc. com if you want to message me through that website, it'll come directly to me as well. I handle a lot of my, I only work now about two, two and a half days a week.

And I think we, before we got on I'm doing [00:27:00] a transitioning to about five days a month of actual clinical practice. And really, to be able to help the masses, I need more days and more opportunity, and that's what I'm leaning towards, to get on stage, talk to different employees of different companies, to get on stage in dental conferences, teach other dentists, so that they can go and show and help their patients, and ultimately, if anyone needs help, they can reach out via email or social media or the website.

Okay, thank you. Dr. Dar, thank you for being on. I couldn't endorse him more. My company, Tiger Medical, has used his sleep study services for five years. I've met him personally myself. And so I'd encourage everybody to reach out to him. If this is a concern to you. Thank you, Dr. Darr. Yeah. Thank you.

You guys are doing incredible work at Tiger. Matt. It's just, it's amazing stuff, what you're doing. Keep up the good work and everyone, a third of your life is spent sleeping. And you gotta do it right. If you're going to, if you're going to be on this planet to ultimately live in that [00:28:00] love, the compassion and kindness, so that one day when we are taking Our last breath, we can take it and be resting in peace.

Wow. That's a great finish. I'm going to say no more. Thank you.