The Signs Nobody Recognizes About Airway Health

What if the headaches, anxiety, teeth grinding, poor sleep, digestive issues, and constant fatigue you’ve normalized are actually connected to one thing, your airway?

In this episode of Breathe, Sleep and Smile, Dr. Mark Cruz and Amber dive deep into the hidden signs of airway dysfunction and why so many people suffer for years without realizing the root cause. Dr. Cruz explains how airway problems can affect everything from sleep quality and nervous system regulation to mood, metabolism, focus, and even childhood development.

The conversation explores overlooked symptoms in both adults and children, including bedwetting, recurrent ear infections, crowded teeth, reflux, ADHD-like behaviors, and chronic physiologic stress. Dr. Cruz also shares the deeply personal story that transformed his entire approach to dentistry after his son’s emergency room visit led him to connect the dots between airway health and systemic wellness.

This episode challenges traditional disease-management thinking and opens the door to a more comprehensive understanding of human health, growth, and development.

If you’ve ever felt exhausted despite doing “everything right,” this conversation may completely change the way you look at health and healing.

To learn more about Dr. Mark A. Cruz, DDS. visit:
https://www.MarkACruzdds.com
Dr. Mark A. Cruz, DDS. 
32241 Crown Valley Pkwy #200  
Dana Point, CA 92629  
949-661-1006 

Transcript

From Disease Management To Wellness

0:00

And it wasn't until around 2007, 2008, if you will, somewhere around there, that my son ended up in the emergency room, and that was the beginning of really wow. I connected the dots as to where the problem was. What I did for me is I sought out the information from the people that really were the pioneers. So for me, I really researched it and I read the literature and I went there, and it was honestly much of it was outside of chemistry. My mission is to help you transition from disease management towards to wellness. Starting with your way.com. Breathe, sleep, and be well.

Is Your Airway Costing Health

1:12

I'm excited for another podcast. Amber, what are we going to talk about today? We're going to talk about the signs nobody recognizes, and that is, is your airway costing you your health? So most people with an airway problem, they don't know they have one. They think that they're just tired, they're anxious, they're grinding their teeth, they can't focus, they just think that that's just a normal way of living. So they go about their life. Yeah, I I'll argue that it's so prevalent in our society. And you know what? The data is pretty clear about that in particular. Um, especially, you know, high-functioning, young to middle-aged cohort in our population, that they're kind of in the prime of their lives and they're able to overcome a lot, but they're not maybe functioning optimally. And yet when you start drilling down, asking them questions, I mean, they may come in and say, I get these these headaches, or I've got some joint pain, or I'm grinding my teeth, or um I don't like my smile, that you delve a little deeper and you find out that there's a lot that's maybe going on there that was not recognized because it's so common and it would be considered normal, like, oh yeah, I wear my night guard, that's what I was told. It never changes the fact that you're still grinding. It just mitigates the effect, the adverse effect on the dentition of that.

Anxiety, Grinding, Reflux, And Sleep

2:40

But what we see are symptoms really related to the autonomic nervous system. So the autonomic nervous system has two branches it's the fight or flight, we call that the sympathetic, and the parasympathetic, which is labeled as rest and digest, meaning those normal functions are optimized. They happen easily. You digest well, no uh gastric upset or reflux, and you're thinking well, you're even keeling your moods and everything. Oftentimes, those individuals suffer from physiologic stress that manifests in what are called functional somatic symptoms or the functional somatic profile that's related to the autonomic nervous system that's trying to solve a problem, um, anxiety. You know, you may think that it's the traffic or a deadline that you're missing, maybe, but that's conflating psychological anxiety with physiologic anxiety. So, you know, as an airway-focused dentist, you you you kind of parse those out with your examination to understand what's what. You're not saying it's one or the other, maybe both, but you want to kind of find out how much of it is it from the things that we can resolve clinically, uh, and so you need to know whether it's physiological or uh or psychological. So there's that. Um depression. Depression is highly correlated to poor quality sleep and sleep fragmentation. It's not a lack of Paxel, you know, or any of the um uh SSRIs or that a lot of people are on that look perfectly healthy, but they're just tend to be a little blue, right? And you wouldn't know it because you know who's gonna broadcast that? Yeah, I'm on an SSRI, right? Um or you have digestive problems that get mislabeled as you know, gut issues because you don't have the right flora. Yeah, the uh the biome in your gut is super important, no doubt about it. Gut flora you know starts really from the oral cavity all the way throughout, and certainly we'd be healthier by eating more fermentable foods, prebiotics, probiotics. It helps with our digestion, but oftentimes we also miss the fact that you have the small intestine spasming due to low antidal CO2, the way you're ventilating causes a smooth muscle to spasm, so um that can create some problems. That's just another example. And so uh these are all very common symptoms that are treated in our um in our healthcare system, either with medications. Reflux is another one. Effortful breathing at night can pump the stomach and cause laryngeal pharyngeal reflux or what's called respiratory reflux that gets misdiagnosed as asthma. Uh oh, it's allergies, it's the season, but it's actually the pepsin that got atomized to go up the uh airway tube that doesn't belong there and it goes into the nasal fossa. It actually can also be in the Eustacean tube. There's a term in the odolaryngology or ENT literature called gluir, where they can actually culture pepsin in the ear tube, right? It doesn't belong there, and yet it's so nuanced. So there are a lot of these things that get tend to be glossed over, or we don't quite understand, that are, I say, the little canaries in the gold mine, and you start finding out if they have one, there may be multiple ones, and yet these healthy individuals find that maybe supplementing uh helps, um maybe changing their diet a little bit, exercising a little bit more, they're in control of it, and then they're now using Fitbits and wearables, and they really want to figure out what it is, and maybe it helps because the body does want to heal. If you give the body just a little bit of a chance, it will heal. It'll become subclinical, and therefore you think, oh, that supplement, I'm gonna talk about it. It's what took care of the problem. It just made you subclinical. There may be other things that are going on. So I think we need to have a more comprehensive awareness of what's going on in any given individual, not any one symptom, if you will. It's usually multiple things from all the organ systems. I mean, we can go I I feel like we can go so deep into this conversation on so many topics, and I think a lot of people just live with those underlying issues thinking that it's just a way of life.

Kids: Colic, Earaches, And Growth

7:14

Um, kids are the most under-identified group. I I that's that's what we we feel. What does an airway problem look like in a child and what actually happens if that doesn't get caught early? Oh gosh. Yeah, I mean it it could start from when you're born and they're colicky. Right. They can't latch. So a colicky baby is one that can't get a good seal and nurse, and so they're sucking in a lot of air, and that causes distension of the esophagus in the in the stomach, and they become colicky, right? They really complain a lot and they burp up. They might have reflux. Um so it could start as uh as as early as that, and then of course, at around three and six months, the risk of SIDS that while the larynx descends at about three, four months of age to be able to prepare um our airway for language. That's a whole process we're not going to get into. Um that makes them more vulnerable as well, where maybe choking, um, bed wetting, recurrent earaches. In most states, the pediatrician will will medicate five to seven courses of antibiotics if they have these recurrent earaches and then tubes, right? To the tune of 500,000 tubes uh a year, um, that again is putting makeup, I I'll argue, putting makeup on the melanoma. It's really not asking why, um, because most of those kids, most of them, clearly the evidence is clear, and yet I it's just mind-boggling that even though the evidence is out there that's not treated that way, but I understand our allopathic disease management healthcare system has its way of thinking, it's a narrow palate. You just expand that palate and it allows for the three small muscles that gets function to the Eustachian tube to function properly. And that's also been well documented. And so uh tubes is just kind of a workaround uh that problem. Um, conductive hearing loss. You may not even know that your child has conductive hearing loss. I mean, does a pediatrician routinely go ahead and do audiology on an annual basis on our kids? Maybe if they're at school and they're not doing so well, we may find out that they have conductive hearing loss. They can't hear the teacher as well and they don't have the attention span as a result. So these are some things that we start looking at. They're perfectly normal, except there's an issue with growth and development again, starting through the birth process. So I'll take a very comprehensive birth history on them. You know, how many weeks? Were they in the NICU? Was betosa? We can kind of go down all those things. And then let's say their LTS, less than six, they're four or five years old. What are their symptoms? Um when they wake up in the morning, are they cranky? Is their bed really messy? I call it a hurricane bed. So I ask mom to take a video or two of their baby when they're sleeping. You see, they're flip-flopping and they're sweaty. Um, they're getting up, they're waking mom up all the time. They have night terrors, or the parasomes are walking in their sleep. Those are all telltale signs. Then they get older, and now they've got dental crowding. And so then they go to the orthodontists to straighten out the teeth. The problem isn't a dental problem. It's not a tooth problem, it's a problem of facial growth, and of which the the teeth of lime is the least important. The more important thing when you start delving down and you do as an airway-focused dentist, is asking those questions. It's a breathing and sleep problem, it's the cognitive problems, it's the mood problems. They're not regulating metabolically. Maybe they're a little bit overweight for their age. Is it really the Pop Tarts that they're eating that their brain wants because they want the glucose? Because they're in sympathetic drive. I mean, we could talk a lot about all those things. But in our healthcare system, that's just the way we're treating them. And then industry with the food industry is just really feeding into that. And so they're not functioning, as I say, as an optimal mammal. So a mammal is super efficient in energy consumption because they're in parasympathetic coherence 90% of the time. As Robert Sapolsky, the well-known neuroendocrinologist that wrote the book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, he talks about how the zebra that gets chased by the lion once a month, as soon as it knows it's outran the zebra, it turns back and it doesn't continue running. Its head goes down into the grass and starts eating again because it needs that energy. And so that's an efficient mammal. Its survival depends on it. And so it's a little bit of that is really us understanding these very, very basic principles that I hate to say it, our disease management healthcare system hasn't helped. And don't get me wrong, I I our allopathic system has done miraculous discoveries and helped our society in many regards. But I will argue that a GLP1 should not be the first intervention in trying to lose weight. It might be convenient, you can continue to live your lifestyle, and and but there are side effects and they're relatively new. We don't know how many of them, and now everyone's competing with the different versions of it, and we're finding out they have other side effects that may be beneficial. Maybe I drink less alcohol because of this GLP one, so that's a benefit. Let's just kind of step back a little bit and say, how is the human body supposed to function optimally and not base it on what's common, which is a sick uh society. In the United States, we're not even in the top 50 population health. Um let's look to um what other blue zones are doing for health and wellness and um and then maybe change the way we um we see the patient. So I'll leave you with that. I mean, this is fantastic. I love going down these conversations because I think a lot of people are just really open to wanting to learn more, to understand what's best. Even when you just mentioned about ear tubes, you would never think to go down the route of checking their airway and and checking their breathing. You just listen to what the doctor says and you go and you get ear tubes, right? Um Well, I'll just say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for saying well, that's what our curriculum is all about is really understanding the physiology, understanding growth and development, understanding how things are supposed to happen and what are the things that happen along the way when they're not that are markers that we can reverse. The earlier you catch it, the less expensive it is, not only financially but biologically. And that's really what I'm held to for myself and for my colleagues, is really not to wait to where you're doing an intervention that's expensive that really doesn't even fix the problem completely. Um and I think that's what we should be doing for our population. And I think they would be very open to it if we do it, but that's just not the way we're trained. So yeah, thank you for saying that. Yeah, yeah,

The ER Visit That Changed Everything

14:47

absolutely. I mean, was there a patient or a moment in your practice that changed how you looked at the connection between airway and systematic health? Oh gosh, yeah. For many? My son, you know, who's gonna be 22 next month in a couple months. Um, but when he was six years of age, you know, I had already been um teaching um courses in airway on adults. My practice was limited just to adults. I was kind of focused on complex, restorative, prostodonic uh interventions. Um that was my my background. Uh and that I was always unsettled with certain concepts having to do with what we call occlusion that just didn't answer or make sense, and there were different schools of thought, and I was a little bit of a maverick in that, but I kind of kind of figured some things out and adding the concept of airway and myofunction, it wasn't just structure, it was also function. And it wasn't until uh around 2008, 2007, 2008, if you will, somewhere around there, that my son ended up in the emergency room, and that was the beginning of really wow, I connected the dots as to where the problem was. And I saw what I did for me is I sought out the information from the people that uh really were the pioneers. So for me, I really researched and and I read the literature and I went there, and it was honestly much of it was outside of dentistry. In fact, um then I started uh what's we now call a podcast, then it was called a spree cast, even before Zoom came around. And my partner and I started interviewing colleagues from all over the world, uh, from all kinds of different disciplines on this. And what I started seeing is this mosaic, and everyone had different points of view on the same problem. Let's call it the elephant, where one was looking at the tusk, one was looking at the leg, one was looking at the tail. You know, the parable about that that Godfrey talked about back in I think the 1940s or whatever, um, that they're all blinded but looking at just one section of it. And to me, that was like, wow, that was it. I need to really start looking at things more globally and uh and understanding with a lot of humility that I knew very little. And and that uh anytime you start making yourself the authority and the ego creeps in, that's when I know that person doesn't know that much. Yeah. The smartest people in the world are the ones that know the most and that are more open to understanding. And uh those that are dogmatic and that's the way it is, they're they they can't think about it. And and that hurts patients. That's hurt our population. Um I have many arrows in my back in the beginning from doing that. And now I, you know, and that's you know, I'm I'm an a grown man, I could deal with that. But the point is, is I started learning from the osteopath, from the myofunctional therapist, from the ENT, from the pulmonologist, you know, from you know, all these different disciplines. And that was really the beginning of my journey and connecting those dots of where it started with my son 2000 in 207, 2008. I mean, that's almost coming on in 20 years. And at the time people thought I was crazy about that. And I could tell you stories about some of those arrows that sunk in deep that really threatened and were was very disruptive to my local community and other communities that didn't want to hear it. And um, and so I'm very grateful that we are now that now we're full of many airway experts. Everyone's an expert now, right? You know, whereas uh the the ones that were throwing the arrows now, they're the experts. And that's okay, because that's natural human behavior. Thomas Kuhn wrote a book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution, and he talks about any disruptive technology, this is natural. Florence Nightingale, Ingar, Semmelweiss, there are all these actually uh dedicated chapters in my textbook about just this thinking. And you kind of kind of get good normal and understand that because you, as a provider, will also deal with that with your own patients and your own colleagues. So, this again is part of what this podcast is about, and I'm excited about having you uh help me with that. So thank you. Oh, absolutely. I'm enjoying it, and I'm I'm learning so much along the way, so it's fantastic.

First Steps And Finding Right Help

19:34

Um if someone was listening right now and they suspect that they or their child might have an airway issue, what would be their first step and what would they do? Well, I I I think uh I always say start uh start educating yourself uh about it, and that's how I get now maybe a third of my practice is from out of state. They come in, I tried to find somebody that really understood, and or I went there, and uh I heard about you, and they came in. And let me just make it clear this podcast is not about me bringing patients into my practice. I'm very busy. I'm bringing on partners, and I moved into a new uh facility to try to really scale that. My my main goal is really to get all of dentistry and healthcare involved in that. Um but having said that, I think um is educate yourself and then call a provider that you know you feel is uh airway focused to actually ask the right questions and get enough data. It should be data-driven, evidence-based, data-driven, and understanding what to do, as I keep on saying, measure twice, cut once. So that's what I would say. Um I'm uh have an app right now. I'll just end with that, that one of my patients who's an engineer who happened to, I treated both his kids, and he's now looking at being treated, and he says he started uh, as I say to all my patients, is the first step is really educating yourself. You know, go on my website, I've got a bunch of videos, and by the way, they're not just of me, they're of many, many different people, just to get that perspective. Because I always think that the patient knows will make the best decision when they're educated. So I always foster that and am emotionally detached from uh the relationship of a patient wanting treatment or not with me, doesn't matter. Um just do the right thing by yourself. But he started looking at some of that information. He said it was so fascinating. He said, I have to drop all my projects in this firm that he's in, and I spent the last three days just get taking a deep dive on the stuff that you were talking about, some of my podcasts. And then he created an AI agent that has a QR code that does not scrape the internet. It's just so won't hallucinate, and it gets just the evidence-based data on it. And so I'm excited about that because I think that's a lot of the futures in AI, getting really, really good data that is not distorted based on a lot of the misinformation that's out there. But to answer your question, summarize it succinctly is just get information, educate yourself. And I have found the mama bears, if you will, um they have a sense of what's right and what's wrong. And many of them will complain about how they're just not satisfied with the answers that they're getting from their pediatrician. Uh maybe for themselves they'll put up with it, but when it's their own DNA, they're like, they're gonna really take care of that. And I think kudos to them. And that's really a lot of what started the Maha movement, uh, which I think it's great. So there's this big grassroots that I'm very excited about and really taking more control um of our own health, and we've talked about that in other podcasts. So thanks for asking that question, it's a really good question. Yeah, and I think on um on an on another upcoming episode that we do, we should really dive into children and how you know how they're affected and and the steps that you can take, or even the signs to look for in your kids. And maybe in that episode we'll just break it down into different age categories because you talked about right from a newborn being colic right up to being a taller than to being in an early teen. So we'll we'll bring that to the listeners on

The Airway Timeline And Closing

23:18

the next one. Let's do that. I call that the airway timeline. Yeah. And there are epics, if you will, from cradle to grave. We start we start when we're born with that first inhalation. Right. That's how we start life. It's that wow when you get spanked, and you end with the last exhalation, which is at the time that your family comes together to celebrate your life. And in between, we'll call that the dash, there's a timeline. And growth and development, um uh adolescence, adult, and then you start getting into uh more of the geriatric population. I think that's a really good idea. Let's talk about it. And um and maybe it will take more than one episode one episode, but I look forward to that. Just might. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. That's my pleasure. Thank you guys. It's my pleasure. Thanks.