Bridging Dental Health and Body Mechanics for Optimal Well-being

Unlock the mysteries of your body as we navigate the interconnected world of posture, jaw alignment, and overall health with the expertise of certified athletic trainer Alina Kanner. Delving into the nuances of Postural Restoration Therapy, Alina sheds light on how something as simple as jaw placement can spiral into complex conditions like TMJ or scoliosis. Her personal triumph over ADHD and eczema propels our discussion beyond traditional treatments, revealing the profound influence of our posture on life's daily activities and the potential for tailored therapies to revolutionize individual well-being.

This episode meticulously examines the art and science of physical therapy and chiropractic assessments, with a particular spotlight on the Postural Restoration Institute's approach to evaluating movement patterns and occlusion. From gait mechanics to hip and shoulder mobility, we peel back the layers of human movement, interlinking dental health and bodily mechanics. Discover the transformative power of PRI techniques that harmonize visual systems and occlusion, offering a blueprint for personalized healing.

Breathing, the silent rhythm of life, takes center stage as we confront myths and unveil the critical role of expansive breathing in maintaining posture and regulating our nervous system. Understand the natural asymmetries within our anatomy that can lead to imbalances, and grasp the significance of addressing the nervous system in managing pain and fostering overall health. Join us for a journey that not only illuminates the intricacies of health but also empowers you to be a well-informed advocate for your own path to wellness.

To contact Aleena go to:

www.aleenakanner.com

Or find on Instagram @aleenakanner

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To learn more about holistic dentistry, check out Dr. Carver's website:

http://carverfamilydentistry.com

To contact Dr. Carver directly, email her at drcarver@carverfamilydentistry.com. 

Want to talk with someone at Dr. Carver's office?  Call her practice: 413-663-7372

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of the Root of the Matter. I am your host, dr Rachel Carver. Today we have Alina Kanner with us, who is a postural restoration trained therapist and a certified athletic trainer, and I really wanted Alina to come on today to talk to us a little bit about how the jaw, the head and neck is all related to our posture, right? If we have, maybe, scoliosis, can we help with the jaw and vice versa? And everything we talk about on this podcast is how the entire body is related.

Speaker 1: 0:30

And in dentistry, TMJ as most people call it, or TMD as dental professors call it, temporal mandibular disorder is very common. More often we see it in women and oftentimes dentists. We give you a splint and send you on your way, and that is great because that really helps with the symptoms. But are we correcting the whole problem? Really, I'm hoping Alina can dive in and tell us a little bit about, maybe, why these things happen. Other kinds of treatments should be. We'd be looking at more of our spine and maybe our movements, maybe our muscles, right, how we can try to improve this really common affliction that can cause a lot of downtime for a lot of people. So, alina, welcome. Thank you for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 1:11

Thank you so much for having me. I am excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Great, why don't you? I think your background is fascinating, so why don't you tell us a little bit about your early athleticism and how you got to where you are today?

Speaker 2: 1:23

Yeah, I also think your background is very interesting and fascinating, but I'll tell you a little about me. So I am currently. I went to school and all that, but right now I'm a certified athletic trainer and I do postural restoration. But it took years for me to be able to say that. So I'm going to start when I was young.

Speaker 2: 1:42

I really struggled in school when I was young and I think it's actually made me who I am today, because education for me, the education system, just didn't work for me. I was a super ADHD kid. I could not focus, I was all over the place. We were talking a little bit earlier about eczema. I had eczema, serious eczema my entire life. So I just struggled growing up with these things and really struggled in school and eventually realized that my passion was within athletics. So I was a gymnast, but I started a bit later and then that transitioned to Olympic weightlifting where I really was a very serious athlete, which the weightlifting ties very much so into my journey. So I did weightlifting around the time I was finished with graduate school, I guess I should say I went to a small school in upstate New York, studied kinesiology in undergrad and then I went to graduate school at University of Arkansas, and while I was at Arkansas, I was studying to become a certified athletic trainer, which means that I can work on the sidelines of sports teams. I am a rehab professional, a healthcare professional. I was doing emergency care on the sidelines of sports teams. I am a rehab professional, a healthcare professional. I was doing emergency care on the sidelines of sports teams and my goal was to go work for USA Gymnastics because I just love the sport. I myself had gotten into doing Olympic weightlifting and so you can't really be an athlete and then work for athletic events. It's just difficult. The schedule was very hard and I decided you're only in your 20s once like I want to fulfill my athletic endeavors. So I did, and throughout that time I had a great weightlifting career. But I wasn't ever fully able to hit my potential because my body failed me. And that is where I started to get into this root cause approach to figuring out what is going on with the body when the body is I don't really want to say failing, but when the body is not acting optimally. So that's a bit about my journey. I ended up studying postural restoration.

Speaker 2: 3:35

I started in around 2018. I took a course and then I decided it was way too difficult for me because, like I mentioned, school was still really tough for me. And then I slept on the information for a year. I took another course and I was like, wow, this is really my time to get in on learning this. I moved across the country to learn this information and had an amazing mentor who I always attribute a lot of my success to, because she really taught me in a way that I could learn along with me, cleaning up my gut and changing things with my lifestyle and diet. I was able to really change how I view education and I actually love learning. It is a very important element to my life. I read a ton and I do learning the way it works for me. So that's a little bit about me. It's a very all over the place, interesting journey, but I'm here today and I'm excited to be here. That's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Was there something specific that got you into the postural restoration and maybe explain to us what does that even mean? You see so many people today with terrible posture right the head forward, the what? The screen I don't know what they call it these days, but it's becoming a real problem because we're so attached to these little devices. So it's super important. So that's why I really wanted to have you on and want people to be aware that there's therapy and things that we can do. So, again, was there anything specific that made you look into it?

Speaker 2: 4:57

Yeah, I think when. So around the time I heard about it was when I was in my last year of graduate school, and it's actually a funny story. One of my classmates and he's from Japan, so PRI has a basis in Japan and that is the only other country besides the US that PRI really teaches in another language. I don't know why, but they just have PRI Japan and I think it's funny. It's a story that becomes a circle. So in graduate school, tosh, one of my classmates he said to me like one of the last weeks he was like you're not going to work as an athletic trainer and I was so offended I was like what do you mean? You need to do one-on-one. You should study PRI. I didn't know what it was and I think he just thought something about how I treated people and how I was with people and how I might do better working in a one-on-one situation. So I ended up. I obviously had heard about it, I read a little bit about it and then I had heard about it a couple of times. In New York there are a lot of people that have studied PRI maybe not to the extent that I've studied it at, so I did start to hear about it. It was in different gyms. So I started to train people at an Equinox because that's what I did after graduate school. I wasn't sure really where to take my career. I didn't fully want to work as a certified athletic trainer. I was very burnt out from graduate school and I started to learn from mentors, shadow people, and I heard about PRI and I was like I have to take a class and so that's how I fell into it. But now what is PRI? That was your other question, so I want to definitely touch on that.

Speaker 2: 6:36

So Postural Restoration is an institute based out of Lincoln, nebraska. It is founded by a man named Ron Hruska, who looks at the body very differently, and now he has been teaching courses for the last 20 years to teach us as practitioners to look at the body in this unique approach. So we look at the asymmetries of the human body, the natural, inherent human asymmetries that we have, that we're born with organ placement, brain, vagus, nerve, different things about us make us naturally asymmetrical, which is not a bad thing. It is just something that we need to know and we should manage with the way that society is now modern day society. And we look at these asymmetries and in order to help people with pain or even hormonal issues, other issues.

Speaker 2: 7:17

We use senses such as the occlusion, how people's teeth hit, such as a visual system, and even how your feet touch the ground. We use different senses the muscular system as well as respiratory system to change how our bodies perceive like center and the space that we're in. And really that's ultimately what. Why somebody is in like a chronic pain situation is that their body doesn't really know how to function. It doesn't really understand the gait cycle, it doesn't understand how to breathe. The senses could be off, the occlusion could be off, there could be visual dysfunction, et cetera. So that is my summarization and my interpretation of postural restoration, and now we can go into depth on whatever you'd like, fantastic.

Speaker 1: 8:04

So take us through. Let's say somebody's coming in, they have a kind of chronic achy pain. For instance, I developed a shoulder issue. I just yeah, and I'm like this all day for 20 years. It's true, yeah, yeah, it's a really tough position. It is.

Speaker 1: 8:19

All of us have most dentists, see, chiropractors and stuff, because we just have head and neck and I'm so short that I'm always in very odd positions trying to see and look and reach, and so it's interesting. And last summer I was traveling doing CE and I'm putting my suitcase up in the above compartment I was like, oh, my shoulder like it feels really weak. What's what the heck is that about? So I've been trying to find the right and chiro and massage and all that, but I'm like, eh, and even I remember, even in dental school I was told I had scoliosis. I was told I had a leg length discrepancy so they just wanted to give me something for my shoe and I'm like, okay, but that wasn't really fixed. So over years I developed and I have bunions that's another sign of the bones and muscles, everything on, yes, genetic, but whatever. So I've always had a hip that's out of place and so it's nice the younger you are.

Speaker 1: 9:15

If you can recognize these behavioral patterns then we can correct them, so that we don't hit 45 and now we're achy all over the place because our body finally is like okay, I can't take it anymore, help me out here. So let's say I'm coming to your practice. I'm like I have shoulder interestingly I had left shoulder and then hip pain Extremely connected. So I'm coming to you, I'm like, okay, help me. How would you walk me through?

Speaker 2: 9:42

What do I need to do? Yeah, so typically people will come in exactly like that, right? So one of the first things I always ask people is what they do for a living, because that is what you have once spent time for you, studying for years to learn how to become a dentist and the position that you're in so whether somebody is at a computer screen or in somebody's mouth, like as a dentist, dentists are quite interesting because the position that you have to do for work is so, especially if you're a righty dentist. It's so patterned. It's a fascinating position. Actually, pri did a study on dentists. I'll send it to you. Yeah, it's very interesting, I think on shoulder pain and dentists actually.

Speaker 2: 10:20

So I always look at what people do for a living. I will always look at typical things that you would look at in an assessment for if you're a PT or a chiro. I look at gate mechanics, how somebody is walking, how somebody is moving. Are they swinging their arms during their gate cycle? Are they just missing their heels on the ground or are they hitting their heels on the ground? Are they walking on their toes? Are they able to shift their body right to left in an even manner or is it very uneven. So those are some of the things I'm looking at. I will look at a squat test. I will look at a standing reach test. Are they able to squat to the ground? Can they touch their toes, can they not touch their toes at all or can they completely fold in half? So there's a spectrum of things that I'll see. I look at hip range of motion, the same way chiros, pts, athletic trainers will do that. Then we start to get into the PRI specific testing, which look like tests that I learned in school, but they're not. So there's different tests for the pelvis that will tell me the position of the acetabulum Instead of just looking at how is the femur moving inside of the acetabulum, the hip bone. Are we also able to move the hip bone on the femur? And that's something that I did not learn in traditional school. Look at shoulder range of motion, but I'm not really looking at shoulders. I'm really looking at how well the ribs move with that test. I then look at neck range of motion, which again, is not really just a range of motion test. It's looking at what is the entire system doing. Do we have a neck that's able to center over the right side and then center over the left side, or are we stuck in one position? So I'm looking at all these things.

Speaker 2: 11:58

I take a very in-depth history. So if people come see me, the first 30 to 40 minutes of the appointment is me just talking to somebody and pretty much interviewing them to figure out what is going on, because the person will tell you in the history what's going on. If you know how to ask questions and you know how to go back in depth, I'm sure it's the same when you're working with patients the history will tell a lot. So my assessment looks the same for every single person, but the results are always different and then the treatment varies. So I'm always using a postural restoration techniques. There's about 700, I think 20, 720 techniques, which is a lot. I do not know all of them. I have my best, like 50 that I love, and then here and there I'll sprinkle in new ones. But those PRI techniques are extremely powerful because they're essentially pieces of the gait cycle broken up in different positions, utilizing the visual system, the occlusion system, and then putting the body into different positions where they now have to breathe. So you might be contracted on one side, expanded on another, which is typically not what you might be in in your normal day life. And then I'm saying, okay, hang out here, breathe and hold and do that for five sets of five reps. So treatment is similar but different depending on the person.

Speaker 2: 13:14

I do always look at occlusion as best as I can. I'm not a dentist and I'm not an optometrist. I always say that on anything that I do because I know what I've learned through that amazing dentist and amazing optometrist. But I don't claim to be those professions. I'm not. I look at the body and how the body works. Those professions influence how the body moves and works. So I will look at teeth, because teeth is something that you can visibly see to the eye. Obviously, with eyes you can't really see that, but I can ask a lot of very specific questions that will drive me to understand if somebody has a visual component in their history, and not everybody needs that, but I cover my bases.

Speaker 1: 13:56

So when you see, so when you're looking at occlusion, what kind of things are you looking for?

Speaker 2: 14:02

I look for cross bites. Of course that's one thing with anterior or posterior crossbites, and I will put a glove in and look in the back at somebody's mouth if I feel like there is any sort of malocclusion back there. A crossbite is very hard to fight against with PRI techniques, so I can do it like my best friend has a crossbite and she feels fine, so you can get better. But if someone comes to me and they've been in pain for 15 years and they're not getting better and they've done a couple sessions with me and they have a crossbite, then I know I can't fight that. I'm trying and it's not working. So I definitely crossbites are like a big thing. I'm looking to see if there's a like an asymmetrical bite, so if one side is class one and one side is class two, or one side class two, class three, whatever, et cetera. So any asymmetry.

Speaker 2: 14:49

I'm looking at the way that the jaw deviates. Does it deviate to the right or to the left? I'm looking at the way the cranium is situated. Is it oriented to the right, et cetera. So just looking at all these things I am looking to see, does this person with the jaw deviation? You'll see a midline shift. So I look at that all that too. Sometimes it's very clear, Sometimes for me I'm not a dentist, so it's not clear, and I will take a video and I will send it to my dentist colleagues or my myofunctional therapists, Cause I look at. I'll look at tongue function too, depending on the person or child, but I think that all of that's so important.

Speaker 1: 15:26

And that's something. So crossbite for any of you who aren't really familiar with that term. Ideally all of our upper teeth are supposed to go over the lower teeth, but for some reason some people they have the opposite, where the upper jaw is so narrow that the bottom teeth actually are opposite right. So the upper jaw is so narrow, the bottom teeth are around it instead of inside of it, and we often when we see this in children it can be present as early as two years old, when the teeth first come out, and that is something that even most orthodontists will say that needs to be corrected ASAP. And when they're little, when they're young, the jaws and everything are still malleable.

Speaker 1: 16:05

We have a really great between ages. Like three and seven is when we undergo the most growth in the mouth, so that's the perfect time we want to intervene with certain devices. We've had other people on the podcast who've talked about this kind of thing, but yeah, really it gets a lot more challenging the older we get to try to move these things. So, cross-button, it can be just one side, Sometimes it can be maybe just a couple teeth right in the front that are off, and I had one of my assistants. She had an anterior crossbite. We made her a device. She was such a champ. She wore these devices nonstop around the clock, basically didn't talk for six weeks, but we jumped the bite, fixed it in six weeks. It was amazing, Absolutely amazing. And she was an adult, so was it's harder? It's possible.

Speaker 1: 16:48

It's possible but you gotta have a committed um, consistent, you know where. That's why it's easier when they're children, why we've had so many episodes talking about. We need to correct all of these issues that we see at a young age. Like you talked about the tongue, I know my younger daughter. She has terrible forward head posture but a lot of it, I think, is related to her tongue tie and we know it's tongue tie and I'm like she's been doing a lot of myofunction. I'm trying to do everything I can to not have to cut it but I don't know. We're getting to the point now at 13 where we're doing this.

Speaker 2: 17:20

It's so hard and it's really hard to know when is a good time. I actually want to discuss this because the order of operations is important. Our world with PRI. We always say PRI has to come first. You need to get the body, the nervous system, in a really good spot if you're ever going to cut tongue.

Speaker 2: 17:38

Obviously, infancy is different, right, they cut tongues in infancy all the time, not really worried about that. I think the breastfeeding afterwards really is amazing rehab for the baby. But in my 30s I have a tongue tie. It's something that I've thought about. But if I was in a place where my nervous system wasn't completely solid and calm and able to get into the sympathetic and then back down to parasympathetic, and if I was all over the place, cutting the tongue is not a good idea for that type of person. And I think dentists has to be really specific on who they say is able to cut tongues or who should go for that procedure, because I'm seeing the people that have had their tongues cut twice because there was a reattachment and now they have issues posted Because I do see a lot of that.

Speaker 1: 18:28

That's such a good point and we just recently talked about that with a myofunctional therapist that so you've got to have the therapy before. But I love what you're saying. We talk about this a lot too on the podcast that you, if you cannot get into parasympathetic nervous system, you're not going to heal from anything. So this is just. This is so valuable. And again, here we are talking about something completely different, but again related, and I really feel when I think about my eczema, that so much of it yes, it was parasites were. But why did the parasites overgrow in the first place? Because my nervous system, like from a young age, my nervous system was jacked up always from whatever happened in my early life, right, and so it doesn't take a lot to send me over there. So, having a stressful career, like as a dentist, you know that can, and every time I have some crazy emotional, stressful event, boom, I feel my eczema coming back.

Speaker 1: 19:19

There, you go, and because when your nervous system's out of whack, your digestive system's out of whack, You're not making the right energies not flowing, and so then parasites and toxins and fungus, all that overgrows. So the basis is a functioning nervous system, and that's why I'm really excited about having you on and talking about this postural, because one of the ultimate goals is to and this is like in chiropractic we want to have the spine, everything in perfect alignment as best as we can so that the nervous system can function easily. Right? We're supposed to be able to easily go back and forth with these nervous systems, and in modern society we're finding that really challenging.

Speaker 2: 20:01

That's why these kids are struggling so much. It's hard.

Speaker 1: 20:05

It's terrible. Tell me a little bit about. You briefly talked about breathing. This is another thing that's really important to me. I don't think people understand how breathing plays such a role in posture, in nervous system regulation. So when you mentioned you looking at ribs and that diaphragm right, and sometimes reading this new book, all about this and the author is talking about, sometimes we get a little bit crazy when we talk about belly breathing. I really wish we'd talk more about the diaphragm. Not really, you're not supposed to necessarily breathe in your abdomen, it's supposed to be your diaphragm. So maybe you can help clarify that for us. What book is this? It's on Capno Learning by Peter.

Speaker 2: 20:45

Fitzgerald Amazing, yes, and I've done a good amount of posts on this too, because I see this constantly and people especially like yogis will be like this is how I was taught to breathe mainly from my belly. And or people post-pregnancy they do this and that can create a diastasis. So the commonality that I have seen with people is that they come in and they're like yeah, I learned how to breathe in this class and they taught me how to breathe mainly from my belly, and they bluff their ball belly out and they get no expansion anywhere else. But let me tell you something your actual lungs are in your rib cage and they even go all the way up to like where your shoulder, like where your traps are. So that's just something to note is that the ribs house the lungs. Your belly houses organs. You don't need to breathe only into your belly. Your belly should rise slightly, don't get me wrong. It should definitely rise a little bit, but we need to have chest expansion and posterior mediastinum expansion, which is the region that is in our back. That is where our posterior lungs lie and our vagus nerve actually goes through there.

Speaker 2: 21:52

So a lot of our breathing techniques encompass a variety of positions to get people to breathe better into their chest and breathe better into their back. So ultimately you have a rib cage. I don't want the ribs expanding up and down, I want the ribs to expand outwards in a lateral motion, getting air everywhere. And now there's this 360 breathing, which really pushes the belly out in all areas, and I don't agree with that. I honestly don't even agree with calling this diaphragmatic breathing, which is technically what I'm discussing right now about breathing up into the lungs. It's called diaphragmatic breathing. I think it should just be called like expansive breathing, because you're expanding and then fully contracting when we do these techniques. I don't think you need to be doing that throughout your day. I think you just need to be nasal breathing all the time. But what you do consciously during my PRI techniques and just in life in general, what you do consciously will go into your subconscious. So when you're breathing, if you have that available expansion in your posterior ribs and lungs and into your chest, then when you're on a walk you're also going to have that expansion.

Speaker 2: 22:53

So that's one of the fastest ways I can influence someone's nervous system is by having them do a PRI technique. I will take them from doing their entire history with me getting all worked up. Some people will cry in a history and I will lay them on a table, I'll do their testing and I will have them breathe into a balloon three sets or whatever two sets of something and their entire demeanor will change and that's the nervous system and they'll be like oh my God, I haven't felt this calm in so long and it's. I would like you to feel like this every day. Yeah, so I think that breathing is that is the in the order of operations. Breathing is that is the in the order of operations. Breathing is number one.

Speaker 2: 23:30

And I think I love myofunctional therapists, I love dentists and I love optometrists, but and I, from what I have seen is everyone is very specialized and I feel like I am this person on the outside.

Speaker 2: 23:40

I'm looking at the whole body and then, if you come to me first and I can decide which way to go, but if you go to a dentist first, if you go to a myofunctional therapist first or an optometrist first, you're missing the main boat of why you might be there in the first place. I think there's a big talk about expansion right now. Everyone wants to do expansion but like, why don't we get the nervous system good first. Before we do that, before we put prism lenses on somebody's eyes, let's get the nervous system in a better spot, because you might not need as much, you might not need the expansion if you can get your nervous system in a better place. Because if you're coming to me for pain, then I want to treat your pain. If you're coming to a dentist because you feel like you don't like your asymmetry, you don't like, you want to change something that's a little slightly different than someone who has pain. But if you're treating pain, I truly think that order of operations has to come first.

Speaker 1: 24:34

Pain to me. I've done a lot of study of energy medicine and energy underlies the biochemistry. In traditional medicine, dentistry. We're all just learning about the chemical, the physical and the chemical way the body works. But underlying that is the energy. And if energy doesn't flow properly, nothing works. And when I think of pain I'm thinking there's the energy is not flowing right. Right, and that's why the nervous system, like you said I love what you're saying the number one thing we need to work on is that nervous system. If energy can't flow, you can take all the supplements and eat the best diet and yada, yada, yada is not gonna work if energy can't flow properly. And that's the biggest thing that I've been learning reading this book all about proper breathing, because that that triggers so much of pain and if anyone never has had menstrual cramps, for example, and you just learn how to breathe into, you can make such a difference in your pain by learning how to breathe properly. So I love that you're saying that and that's that's just awesome. And I think it's really important to actually had a consult this morning.

Speaker 1: 25:35

I was talking to this woman with pain in her mouth, right, and so I'm looking at it from the bigger lens and I said tell me your whole history. There was a lot of emotional stuff, that trauma as a child that was evolved in that area. There was extractions of wisdom teeth that had dry sockets. There's all this neck and shoulder pain.

Speaker 1: 25:53

Again, thinking about all the thing, and the first thing we talked about was nervous system regulation. What are we doing to stimulate the vagus? Because we can do surgery and all this stuff to try to fix whatever's going on in that jawbone. But if you're not and she was even saying I heal really slowly I'm like, okay, that's another clue, yeah, we need to focus. So the first thing I'm doing for her, before I even touch her mouth, is going to do an energetic scan. Where is the energy? How much energy do you have? Where is it flowing, where is it not? Because nothing I do is going to work if we don't get that energetic system and the nervous system balanced. And that's been the biggest lesson to me in my journey is that, yes, you can do all these other things that are healthy, but that nervous it's got to be key and breathing is one of the easiest, best ways, cheap, right, it's inherent.

Speaker 1: 26:44

Not invasive Learning how. So maybe you could give us a couple of quick techniques of what's proper breathing.

Speaker 2: 26:54

I can explain the way we do it. They are very complicated actually, the PRI techniques. They put you in very complex positions. I am because the need for this has gotten so big and PRI has really started to get out there. They don't have anything for general public. All their information is for practitioners to learn. So I took it upon myself to start to make some sort of a bigger way for people to learn these techniques Because, like I said, they're non-invasive. Now the cranial and cervical ones are a little more complicated and those are not going to be available right now.

Speaker 2: 27:29

But I am making a membership where people can join and be able to access techniques in the way that I would plan it out for a more general patient who just came to me, overall not feeling great, and there's four phases to it. So there's going to be about 24 techniques that I'm giving out, with specific directions with my cueing, because a lot of times people will tell me oh, it's not the same when you're not there and it's because I will cue certain things. Now there's an eye that I have from doing this for years, but also, if you hear that voice in your head, you'll be able to do it on your own. But a big thing that I will say is, whenever I'm doing any sort of breathing technique, the PRI techniques put you in these weird positions because they're trying to utilize specific muscles that allow your brain to what we call like your body, to oscillate well right versus left side. So we're trying to utilize the gait cycle. So, for example I'm just going to go into the asymmetry a little bit we have three lobes of lung on the right side of our body and two on the left.

Speaker 2: 28:34

We have a diaphragm on the right side of our body that is bigger and stronger and attaches lower into the lumbar spine than the diaphragm on the left side of the body. In school we learned the diaphragm is one muscle. In PRI we learned it as a hemidiaphragm. Two because everything in our body is two. We even talk about the tongue being two because your right half of your tongue is different than your left half of your tongue and if you suction your tongue up to the roof of your mouth and one side droops, that tells you one side is different than the other and people who've worked on it maybe don't have that problem. But yeah, so we have that diaphragm on the right side much bigger than the diaphragm on the left. We also have I mentioned the lungs and we have a liver. So our liver is three pounds on average. It's only on the right side of the body. Our heart, which is up in the left side, keeps that left chest wall open.

Speaker 2: 29:23

So because of these asymmetries, we actually see a body that's more lateralized to the right and a pelvis on the left that slightly comes forward. That is a normal human patterning. That I will see. There are layers of compensation, but we're going to go into this asymmetry talk. So that pelvis on the left side that comes forward has a hamstring attached in the back. Both the pelvises, the acetabulums on the ischial tuberosity have these hamstring attachments. So if you have one side coming more forward than the other, then that left side is in a lengthened position and people chronically stretch their hamstrings. When you're chronically stretching your hamstrings, you are not stretching the same hamstring as you are on the right versus the left side. So we see more incidents of left hamstring tears, left hamstring issues, strains, et cetera, especially in athletes, of left hamstring tears, left hamstring issues, strains, et cetera, especially in athletes. If we are seeing it on the right side, it is for a different reason. So that right there tells you so much about these different asymmetries.

Speaker 2: 30:17

Now the PRI techniques will take into account this. There's a lot of left hamstring work. There's a lot of muscles that mitigate this pattern. So we'll use a left oblique, a left hamstring, a left inner thigh. We use all these different things left lateral pterygoid more than the right. But there's a reason and that is because the different positions, so we have these different patterns one at the pelvis, one at the rib cage. We see patterning at the feet and then in the head and neck. Obviously this is the most complicated region from here up, also because there's a brain in there so that can make it go whatever way it wants. But so that kind of puts it into picture as to why the techniques are the way they are. Because people will tell me all the time can I reverse the technique? And it's no, you do it on this side only. So yeah, that's the background to the breathing techniques.

Speaker 1: 31:14

So that's really interesting that we this whole idea I think some people may have heard the more symmetrical like our faces, the more beautiful people are, the more symmetry. But more common is that we all have these and it's interesting, it's built into the human body. That's fascinating. And then if you have a job like me where you're having repetitive motion, which of course maybe over time you're going to have some issues there, and for me, I've got the left shoulder, right hip because they are connected, Everything with all the fashion all that business.

Speaker 2: 31:40

Righty Dennis, you're always having to compress into this left side. We're naturally more compressed into the right side and open for business on the left side, so you are going against your pattern all the time. So you're going to have to use your neck to pull air up. So dentists do have a lot of pain, I feel for dentists, because the career is fascinating. Like the more I've learned about dentistry, the more I'm like, wow, this is such a cool because you guys are mini artists in reality.

Speaker 1: 32:07

Yeah, I can see all sorts of. I never thought I was artistic until I became a dentist. I'm like oh, there's definitely some arch. I thought it was really more on one side of the brain, another. But yeah, you really have to use is a lot of it totally the arms, the hands, all the positions, yeah, yeah no it's awesome.

Speaker 1: 32:23

That's interesting. Yeah, so that's so. I've been doing a lot of research in this because I'm like I need something more than just like I was doing PT, but it wasn't you know, the thing about chiro and PT is that they look at you as you're symmetrical and you're not no one.

Speaker 2: 32:39

And the problem I have with the cracking with chiropractic look, I like to get adjusted. I was a gymnast. I learned how to do a back crack when I was like 12. But the problem is that you have a spine that is oriented to the right and a torso that's trying to come back to the left. So now most people are fine when they get their back cracked, but not a lot of people are not fine with their neck, and there's a reason for that because the neck is asymmetrical. You're not the same, you're not symmetrical. So we have to be careful if we are not doing postural restoration therapy first and then the adjustment.

Speaker 2: 33:14

One of my colleagues is a chiro. He meshes the two really well, but he starts with postural restoration. He gets them breathing first, then, if they really want to be adjusted, he'll adjust them. I think that's brilliant. That's why there's incidents of things like stroke because of neck adjustments on a very asymmetrical person. And now head injuries will also make people more asymmetrical, and the more I'm reading lately about primitive reflexes that have not been properly integrated, the more I'm seeing that really contributes to asymmetry. Stress and trauma also contributes to asymmetry of the face. But we really see a lot with head injuries, like especially head injuries. At a younger age I start to. There are different things in the body that will point me. I can almost look at somebody and just and know if they've had a head injury.

Speaker 1: 33:57

And I think a lot of us don't realize like the skull has got sutures right, Like it can move around. We talk about denture a lot, the sphenoid bone and getting that in the proper position in order to get things lined up and feeling good. We know cerebral spinal fluid.

Speaker 1: 34:12

When I took a CFT course and it talks about when you have metal that crosses the upper midline, you shut down cerebral spinal fluid flow. And I was like, oh, that's really scary, oh my gosh. And some people have bridge work there. People have metal partials and you think I know even my glasses they tested and they said I have metal framework. But now that's shutting down your cerebral spinal fluid. I'm like oh yikes.

Speaker 2: 34:42

So for sleeping, it has to be like a happy medium. Right, I sleep in acrylic plastic dental appliance, but because I sleep in that, I don't have back pain that I've had since I was 15. So, yeah, it's acrylic plastic, but it makes me feel better. So some people are not going to do that, though Some people don't want to do that.

Speaker 1: 34:57

So I think everyone has their own balance with it Absolutely, so tell me a little bit about that. How does wearing the splint affect your back?

Speaker 2: 35:03

Yeah, so for me the splint changed a lot about my life. Actually, my story is quite interesting. I had a head injury when I was 12, got glasses, probably around 13 or 14 years old, which is a common occurrence. No one in my family has distance glasses Nobody including like my grandmother.

Speaker 2: 35:22

No one, I got glasses like two years later. The prescription continuously went up, because that's what happens with myopia prescriptions. Then, when I was in graduate school, it took a jump when I was doing Olympic weightlifting, probably because the Olympic weightlifting really extended my body and made me need to use more of my eyesight to be able to see more focusing muscles, et cetera. I don't have a crossbite or anything like that, I just have a slight midline shift. I'm basically class one on my right side and class two on the left side.

Speaker 2: 35:51

I had braces for five years, tongue tie, really vaulted palate. I'm just, I'm so grateful that no one took my premolars. That is it. I didn't get expansion, but like I didn't get my premolars taken out and I sucked my thumb till I was like five or six. So it's frustrating because I know the entire reason as to why now and I feel my mom tried every I was in braces for five years. If I could redo it I would, but at the same time it's part of my journey. So when I moved to Texas, ended up going to the optometrist there, we realized that I was overcorrected by a full diopter, so meaning I was wearing 2.0 or 1.7, I think I was in two and then they put me down to one and I was actually had pretty chronic insomnia for four years and then, within that week, my insomnia, the quality of my sleep, changed. I was able to sleep longer and it's been I've been amazing since then.

Speaker 2: 36:42

Of course I always had struggles with some nights, because that's what happens you don't just get rid of insomnia, but it is drastic. I'm a different person than I was before that eye appointment, so we lowered my eyes and then I decided look, I wanted a dental splint. I had back pain since I was 15. I was a gymnast that's pretty common. Just if I stood for too long I had back pain. If I worked out, I would feel it.

Speaker 2: 37:05

With any sort of deadlifting motion, even as an Olympic weightlifter, I always had chronic. It was an annoying discomfort. When I got the splint, I didn't get it for my back pain, I just got it because I thought that I would feel better, it would calm my nervous system. I thought that it would help me and I did a splint with Dr Lekha in Texas, in Dallas. He's amazing and he's been doing this for years. And I got the splint and within three or four months, I remember, I was having more pain. I talked to my mentor. She was like you need to get your eyes checked. Your vision's probably different. So after the splint my vision almost went down to almost nothing. So the splint was made in a way where I was standing.

Speaker 2: 37:48

I had done PRI for about a year and a half. So for me that's a very long time. I would never make a patient do PRI techniques for that long. But it's myself. And that splint changed my eyesight because it completely realigned my face. My asymmetry decreased and it's not that the splint did anything necessarily. It gave me a more even bite when I slept at night. My bite is still the same, but my sense of my bite is different. So the goal of our splints I like to call them sensory splints, that's like my terminology for them because all I'm doing is rewiring, recalibrating that brain with the splint to allow for the ability to actually do the PRI techniques Like I had done left glute PRI techniques for a year without ever feeling my muscle. It's because my bite was so off that I couldn't. So that bite can control how the rest of our body feels. That's why I look for cross bites, that's why I look for these, but I don't have a visibly obvious issue with my bite.

Speaker 1: 38:46

But I think this is the big issue, because a lot of people like you have been in braces forever and their teeth look straight, but the problem is the orthodontists pull off the brackets when everything's straight, but they don't do the functional analysis and so often they never even bracket the second molars, which is mind-boggling to me, because why are we ignoring a tooth, and those are often the teeth that throw everything off, and so that I think that's something that's really important to know. You may not everything looks good, it may feel okay when you bite down, but we often have something we call the hit and slide. Where it becomes, your teeth come together and it's not right. Your brain is, ooh, I don't really like that, so you'll slide a little bit till you can come down. You don't perceive that hit and slide, but what we'll see very common, the canines the long, pointy teeth are often worn flat and that is a 100% sign that those second molars are in the way, and so you're grinding those down to try to get into a physiological comfortable position for your nervous system. So it makes sense to me, the orthodontist like we and it's interesting if you read if you've ever had Invisalign in part of the documentation. It will say at the end you will likely have to have occlusal equilibration. But how many dentists or orthodontists certainly aren't going to do that right. They've given up the drill.

Speaker 1: 40:09

And what general dentist knows how to do? I didn't learn how to do occlusal occlusion. I did a five-month curriculum learning all about occlusion. Because after I was in practice for a while I'm like what's up here, something's weird. Like I did a crown on this side and now this side is weird. Did I do that? Because when we're talking about teeth we're talking in millimeters, so it doesn't take a lot to throw everything out of whack. And, like what you're talking about, there's and there aren't a ton of dentists, a lot of dentists. We can give you a splint, but we may not be in expertise in what you're talking about, the sensory. Like learning. It's really an art learning how to make sure. Like you said, that nervous system, I'm sure there's way. I'm not that experienced in making that perfect. I'm always looking at the nervous system. How can we expand? How can get really looking at that, looking at everything together and ultimately always doing that equilibration. And I have a great, cool little machine that you can bite onto and there's software.

Speaker 1: 41:06

It shows not only where you're biting, but how forceful, you're biting where the first point of contact is Because, again, when we're talking about asymmetries, if you're hitting on one side first, then the other, then all the muscles, everything goes out of whack. So learning how to try to get calmness and relaxation in the muscles is so important for the whole body.

Speaker 2: 41:29

Like you said, that machine is cool.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Yeah, it's very cool that helps your back.

Speaker 2: 41:34

Yeah, when I got my braces off nobody ever asked me what I feel in my bite and to me they're straight, they're really straight.

Speaker 2: 41:42

Everyone always compliments my smile. I'm glad I have a good smile, but I don't feel any of my left side ever, unless I'm in a guard. So if I do my PRI techniques in that guard, the techniques increase tenfold. I can feel every muscle so much better Now that I've been wearing that for three years. I don't need it to do my PRI techniques. I will feel the muscles because my brain has recalibrated to this sense. Also, the guard allows me to really feel my canines. I never used to feel really my canine, I only ever felt right molar, and that's a problem. You're supposed to feel a nice full bite and so I might have a great smile and I see this all the time with patients in the clinic and these my bite. This is my most difficult one to refer, because they look fine, their teeth even look like they touch, whereas a crossbite I'm like. Okay, this is very clear, clear as day.

Speaker 1: 42:33

That's where that T-scan, yeah, and it's so helpful because you can see it, and it's a fascinating little tool that when I learned the occlusion, I was like I need this to be able to really help try to do a lot of that with the pain and everything. How do you get everything to be more balanced? And there's certainly an art to it and you don't want to take away too much to structure. This is one of the other big drawbacks of Invisalign is that it was very common to have posterior open bite, meaning you'd finish the treatment and then none of the molars would touch.

Speaker 2: 43:05

That's a problem One of my colleagues talks about this all the time. We've talked about it before and braces. They used to do this too. I don't know why.

Speaker 2: 43:17

The thing with the splints that I find really fascinating is for people who need like expansion or tongue tie releases. If you actually get them in a splint first, if they do have any sort of occlusion issue, that will calm their nervous system. If the splint is made. When we do the splints we calibrate them standing, so we don't. My dentist will take the scan laying down because it's just easier the way the machine is. But then when I go to that second appointment and I am there with that patient and I am putting them into different positions, sometimes I just do it straight standing. Sometimes I actually put them more leaning over to the left, with the body more into the left side, because the sense of the bite changes ever so slightly.

Speaker 2: 43:51

And I have even seen the craziest thing. My Ron, who I mentioned earlier, came to New York and he looked at one of my really complicated patients. She had a dental guard. She had prism glasses. He made me pop out lenses of a pair of glasses I had and all we did was put those glasses on her and take them off and her entire sense on the bite changed. We could see it. He had the strips, or they call the articulating strips, and you could see the entire bite change, with black frames around her eyes versus none. So there's so many things that could. It was very cool and now she's doing much better with the treatment that we've done.

Speaker 2: 44:27

She was in that for four months just plain glasses with nothing, and the guard for four months and now we were able to actually get her into proper glasses that can work for her. She feels much better, which is crazy because she's been in care since she had an eye turn and stuff. So she's been in care for a long time. So it is wild to me how much this guard can actually change and impact a nervous system. Wild to me how much this guard can actually change and impact a nervous system. So for me, let's say I ever wanted to do expansion or tongue tie or whatever. I've been in a guard at least for three years, so I know my nervous system is in a much better spot to handle any of that. But for any of your like difficult patients that their nervous system isn't in that right spot, you really think they need expansion. That's really the problem.

Speaker 2: 45:08

Like I have one patient right now. She has a completely messed up bite. Her front teeth were knocked out when she was 12. She has a lot of stuff going on. We got her in a guard. She's been in this for a year. She's still not okay but at least going into her new treatment she's in a much better spot. She was referred to orthos. She has to do orthodontia. You go to an airway dentist who looks at this stuff. There's definitely solutions, but I think the order of operations is so important and unfortunately most dentists are not as open to it as you are. You're fascinated and you love it and you're eating it up and that's exciting for me because that's the only way this gets out there and we can help more people.

Speaker 1: 45:47

That's why we're doing the podcast right.

Speaker 1: 45:49

It just creates this awareness, because so many of us dentists and lay people alike just aren't aware. I remember one time I was with a brand new dentist out of school and she'd been working in private practice for I don't know six months and she said wow, you really don't learn much in dental school, do you? Yeah, you learn the real basics, because four years it's certainly today it's like not enough time, but there's just so much out there and when you are looking at the lens of that holistic view, it's important because you can screw somebody's whole posture up right, you put that crown in wrong and you're going to down the line have a lot of problems, so it's really important to consider.

Speaker 1: 46:26

That and that's I think that's the hardest part of being a dentist is making sure the bite is just right, and it's challenging.

Speaker 2: 46:34

It's only hard because you're aware of it. Yeah, because you know so much and you care so much. That's why it's so hard, but because of that, you're doing such a proper service to the people you serve, and that's all that I ever want to see with people is just doing that. That's amazing.

Speaker 1: 46:52

I love that you have this interdisciplinary. It's so awesome. So why don't you run around? We could talk for hours and hours and hours. Maybe we'll talk again, but tell me somebody who's really interested in this where are you located? How did they find you?

Speaker 2: 47:08

My main base is New York City, not that far from us here.

Speaker 1: 47:13

No.

Speaker 2: 47:13

I should come and visit With. That being said, I don't love New York. It is very hard on my nervous system. I am there because I love the providers I work with. That is the main, and I have my friends and family there. But I travel a lot. So I'm currently in Arizona. I'm on a big trip five weeks. I like later this year I'm going to Italy. So I do travel a lot. So I'm currently in Arizona. I'm on a big trip five weeks. I like later this year I'm going to Italy. So I do travel a lot. So I do sometimes see patients along the way, but my main base is New York City and that is really where I can help the most people because that's where I have my providers. I am seeing patients. I do see patients in New York City and on Long Island and I am coming out with this membership. It's called the Rooted Well Membership and it's funny because this is the root of the matter. My thing is called Rooted.

Speaker 2: 47:53

Well, so we're all talking about roots and that's coming out, I am hoping, the beginning of April. I've been working on it for a while, but that's where people are going to be able to access a couple of PRI techniques and really education and interviews with brilliant people. So that's where I want to help get this information out there.

Speaker 1: 48:11

But yeah, it's on your website. They'll be able to get. Yeah, so what's your website?

Speaker 2: 48:17

It's just my name, alina cannercom, so she's A-L-E-E-N-A-K-A-N-N-E-Rcom, so check her out. And then that's my Instagram. So I post, I try, and Instagram is my main source where I post as much information as possible, free information for everybody. My entire goal is just to spread knowledge and what I've learned, so Love it.

Speaker 1: 48:45

Yep, that's our goal to just spread the awareness, create awareness, because ultimately, I feel we need to be our own doctors, right? We need to advocate for ourselves. So the more that we understand how our bodies work, the better able we are to care for ourselves and our loved ones. Thank you so much, alina, for coming on and sharing your wealth of knowledge Amazing, and I can't wait to see that membership. I think that sounds fantastic and a great way to reach more people, get people to help if they're not super close to New York City and can't make the trip. Thank you again. Thank you everybody for listening. If you love the podcast, leave us a nice review, let us know what other topics you'd like to hear about and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Have a great day.