EP8: More Than a Dentist: Dr. Tommy Spears on Airway Health

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Welcome to Healthy Knox, connecting Knoxville to better health. This is the show where we cut through the noise and get real about what it takes to live a healthier life right here in East Tennessee. Your hosts are two doctors who aren't just talking about health. They're living it and delivering it to this community every single day. Dr. Cherise and Dr. Trent from Corrective Chiropractic, let's get into it. All right, welcome back, Knoxville, where health isn't a trend, it's a lifestyle. This is Healthy Knox. I am your host, Dr. Trent Hippard, corrective chiropractor and wellness and lifestyle practitioner. Today's episode you are gonna love this guest. I love him as much as the next person, but I think he's also known as the baby whisperer. And- we are going to introduce from Crestview Dental- Oh Dr. Tommy Spears. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Now, we're gonna get into some really interesting stuff for the followers and listeners here. I want you to kinda tell them in two minutes or less what they need to know about your credentials, so then we can jump right into some questions. Yeah, it won't take long. I'm nothing special. I have practiced for 40 years as a general dentist. Had a midlife medical issue in my 40s. Realized I was going down the same path as my dad, who died of Alzheimer's. As I went down that rabbit hole of why Daddy died, I realized I was going down the same medical medicines and medical path. Found out it was a lot airway based. Went through three sleep studies. Found out I had sleep apnea long term. Long story short, I've corrected that, biohacked that so to speak. And I'm 65 now, but back about 15 years ago when all this really hit hard with me on what's going on with me I started realizing that my whole career I was watching people go down through a compensation, a digression, due to mainly mouth breathing when they sleep. And w- we can see it in the mouth, we can see it on the history forms, we can see it in the face. We just see it everywhere. I just started diving into that. Realized that I was sent a a message from God. Sounds like the Blues Brothers, but I really had one. I went to see a a dentist in Fort Worth, Texas, who released babies in front of me and did a lecture, and I said, "That's, this is why I'm here, so I want to do that." So that's 15 years ago, and about 12,000 babies later. We do about six babies every morning that are referred from all around, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, middle Tennessee, upper East Tennessee, and of course the Knoxville area. But also I'm still just a normal dentist, so I... Life's nuts but everything is related to airway. That's the bottom line. Everything in life is related to how we breathe. I love that. And I- we're gonna shed definitely some light on this topic that I think is really in the dark. And first question is, 20 years ago almost nobody was talking about airway and dentistry. What do you think changed? Wow. Unfortunately, maybe the aspect that people can make money off the business of airway that's, that would be my business answer. For me, it was a personal touch. It happened to me. It's changed my life. 15 years ago, 25 years ago, I was not in the shape I'm in now. And by the grace of God, we've helped. I'm not saying I've d- done anything, but we've helped with our patients to breathe better, be more healthy. But I think the unfortunate thing is that people see that it's coming all the big medical or dental disciplines, the Pankey Institute, the Dawson the big methodology people, the Las Vegas Institute, they used to poo-poo against airway, and I'm old enough to remember that. But now they all have airway related courses. And they all make money off of them. I'm not saying that's their total motive, but it's hard to make money. Honestly, it's really hard to make money. I'm to own this deal. And once you try to integrate it into your practice of a- an established dental practice, it's hard. But that, I don't know if that made any sense or not. It does. An answer. And I'll, and I'll relate to you. Being a chiropractor for 15-plus years it's hard to make money because you're in a profession. You're doing something that is countercultural. It's different. People don't understand it. It's been around for a little bit, and they still question it. So I'm gonna go into my next question 'cause I really wanna dive into some of these good questions with you. When you say airway health, what does that actually mean for the average patient or the average parent? Everybody, every human being maybe beyond, starts right here. It's the nasal pharyngeal. It's the oral cavity. Everything in our body from a health standpoint starts here. How do we breathe? Is it's, is it a mouth breathing? Is it nasal breathing? Are we affecting our oral microbiome, which we swallow 7 trillion microbes a day to the gut? The gut we now know is our second brain. Are we insulting it all the time? It starts right here. And so that's it. That's the bottom line. We don't go any further. Every medical I had a neurologist in the chair Friday, and I love her and she had done her sleep study, and I I said, "You need to do it. I can see battles in the mouth and what you're going through." And I said, "Honestly, every patient you see that's not a genetic problem or a broken bone, whatever, y- what are they doing a third of their life, or hopefully a third of their life? What are they doing at night and when they sleep or when they sleep?" So yeah, it starts right here. So for the lis- the listeners who can't see 'cause they're only audio on this, but he- he's pointing to his mouth and nose area, just to give you an idea. So- All right. I'm glad you said that- I got you. It's all good I brought up. Yeah, it's all good. So how does breathing affect a child's growth and development? So let's start, start the basics right there. Okay. Yeah, when you breathe through your nose, your tongue is lifted. Your tongue lays on the roof of your mouth. It's starting to build the maxilla, which is the top jaw. Obviously, it's, as we've given a perfect filter system. So if we start that early and in my world of what I do is lactations. So if we get a better latch, it's got the better mechanics of lifting the tongue, laying on the palate. So again, a downstream effect is you're nasal breathing. You're killing everything. The brain loves that air. We're building cheeks. We're building a good maxilla, which pulls the mandible forward. We're stimulating the brain through the mechanics of the palate, which has a lot of neural stimulation there anyway. So there's just a plethora of things. I think you hit the nail on the head. You want me to be quick. I didn't want to be- No, you're doing great. And I know this is a short forum, but we're definitely gonna have you back for some other episodes for sure. But I think patients don't understand just the neurology and the neural connections that are connected with the teeth, the palate, the tongue, and all these other connections of, the trigeminal nerve and the facial nerve. These all are very vital and important areas that, you have an infection, you have a structural issue, obviously this is gonna impact something so much more than just what you think is chewing for food and digestion. So my next question is: What are some signs that a child may have an airway issue that parents often miss? Clogged nose. One of the first things is my baby's just stuffed up all the time, or that baby's mouth breathing all the time because it's secondary air. The nose is not working. It's not... system's not going in and out, cleaning and filtering. So boogers begin, and sinus problems begin, and clogged nose, and sickness. Others are, obviously, you see a tongue that can't lift. When the tongue can't move really good, and that middle part of the tongue toward the back of the throat can't lift up. It can be tethered down. Lips that are tethered right there in the midline below the nose are not functioning and flap, and flanging out good. The... trent the bottom line is for infants if you're latching on a breast and there's problems, that's not normal. If you're latching on a bottle, which sometimes hides problems you don't know as well, but you do know that's not normal. So that's the first inclination you'd know maybe there's some issues that are gonna cause airway problems. Now, I wanna dive into what exactly is considered this, quote unquote, terminology tongue-tie? 'Cause we hear it a lot more often now than we used to probably 10, 15 years ago. I tell a lot of people this. I think as maybe a tongue-tie, quote unquote, with my fingers, because we all have restrictions. Do we compensate well? Do we need releases? Do we need what we call functional release? No, not everybody does that. But but we all have restrictions. So the tongue-tie is a loose term that talks about tissue underneath the tongue that restricts the tongue. It's that basic. There's a lot of levels of tongue-tie. I'm the guy that says if it's restricted, whether it's a string or the genioglossus behind it. It, it just, it needs to be looked at and may be treated depending on how the child is doing. I've seen a lot of mouths that look like, how do they do this? And they're nursing great, and they're eating great, and they're m- they're nasal breathing, and they're doing great. So we try to stay away from those kids. We do like to assess them, but we usually go on dysfunction. I think that's the beautiful thing about the human body, that it has a physiological adaptation process in lieu of stress and environment and things. So there's adaption that God created it for. And so that doesn't always mean that it's unhealthy adaptation, it just means that it's intelligent, yeah. And that that, that, that is such a great statement because for the last 400 years, and we've proven that with skulls, that we have epigenetically not We, we quit breathing with our nose. The nasal breather now is a rare human, and we're all mostly doing some mouth respiration at night, if not a lot, if not all the night. And so we've proven that. And and we have compensated fairly well, but I think we can do better, obviously. Yeah. I think right along the lines of that, just because we can adapt and we Just just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. And our physiology just does it because it's based off of the lifestyle and the environment that we're subjected to, and our li- lifestyle and environment's very different today. So let me ask you this question. How common are tongue-ties? It goes back to my last answer. They're probably a lot li- this sounds self-serving, but they're probably a lot more common than acknowledged or people are aware of. I know our wonderful pediatricians are not really on this wavelength. Some are, but I don't think they get a lot of lactation in their residencies. And again, dentistry's been thrown out to the side to where it's really not part of the medical community. But the answer is, I think there's probably more than that's been diagnosed. Yeah. And you're not alone in the thrown out to the side of the medical community. Yeah. I understand. Yeah. I know you answered this, but do you think there's anything to be said to this question, why has the awareness of tongue ties exploded over the past decade? Because airway. Okay. Okay? Because airway. That's my answer. It may be wrong but again, everybody goes digging down that rabbit hole, why do I have a sleep disorder breathing or why do I have sleep apnea, or why does these people think I have airway problems? And then you go to these side roads, and some of them are, deviated septums pharyngeal blockages, lymph tissue, and tongue ties. Tongue ties and lip ties, things like that. Now, if you could categorize all those different variations, do you think tongue tie comes first and should come first in terms of, least, least invasive to most invasive that we should address? No. Okay. No. I think if I was building-- If I had if I had to rank, and again, this is totally off the hip, I, I-- it has to be the septum, the turbinates, the pharyngeal space. That a-anatomy is most important. That's the place people come in and they'll say I just can't breathe out of my nose." And I said, "I don't-- You go borrow money. Go second mortgage your house for an ENT to fix you," 'cause that, in my mind, is the first place. Then if we have secondary tissue that's not functioning right, such as the tongue the cheeks. There's so many different things that are involved there, but we gotta have good patent nasal breathing. I think this brings up some really great questions. I've got a million of them in my head, just wanting to dive in, and I think this is great for this episode and for the listeners. But the reason why the tongue is so important, let's talk a little about why that is, because that fascia runs, and I don't wanna take all the glory here, but it runs from the tongue all the way through the rest of the body. So maybe expand a little bit on that and why that's so important. The fascia is its own organ, and I think we neglect it. I've neglected my own. And the reason that a lot of people have migraines and n- upper neck or neck or upper back issues, headaches TMJ, sleep disorders, is because the fascia is maybe restricted. And so that's where, again, I don't know if I'm answering the question right. That's when I get involved with a lot of pre therapy type stuff with the body workers such as yourself and a myofunctional therapist to find out is that fascia restrictive, and then we dive in underneath the tongue and try to d- displace it and release it. You led me into my next question, 'cause often I know you work alongside with lactation consultants, chiropractors, myofascial therapists, and pediatricians. Why do you think that team approach is so important? It's like everything else. It's usually not just one thing that's gonna fix it. We need a lot of people coming from different angles, and unfortunately, our medical world is so specialized. When I was growing up, I'm, again, I'm 65. When I was growing up, my doctor did everything. I mean everything. And now you gotta go to different people but that's fine, but it is a little bit more of a hassle for our parents to spend a little bit more money in different places. But yeah, I... It's so important for me when I do releases with these babies, or I release a child, or I release an adolescent, or I release an adult, I mean up to 90 years old, I gotta have you body workers involved. I gotta have a myofunctional therapist involved to teach and train and exercise the strength of the tongue. So yeah it's just the way it is now, unfortunately. Yeah. But needed, but very needed. I want listeners to know a little bit if they're new to this whole concept body workers or whatever, but chiropractic, at least from the viewpoint and the approach that I practice in as a non-traditional chiropractor it's so much more than neck pain, back pain, and headaches, and those are usually just the main drivers that people come into our office anyway with. But we're talking about a nervous system that's overloaded, overstressed, it's stuck in fight or flight, and when we have airway problems, it's keeping your system constantly in that overdrive. Anything you want to add to that? Again, that's right. We're together to get so synergistic 'cause our, the mouth breathing is a fight or flight moment. When you mouth breathe you dump cold, unfiltered air to the lungs that goes to the brain. The brain interprets it, goes through a little stress and fight or flight, cortisol dump. So yeah, if we can get into parasympathetic tone, and that's 100% the nose that's what we need to do. Again I say this all day long, the only time we're supposed to mouth breathe is for three reasons. That's talking, singing, and catching up, working out, whatever- Yeah you're doing, but- Exercise that's the only three reasons. Yeah. Yeah. How soon can a tongue revision, tongue release, how soon can those things happen? Okay, let me underst-- get a little bit more detail. What do you mean? Like- So if you have a, a- Give me an example yeah, if you have a patient that comes in or a parent with a newborn, maybe days old, and how soon can you do a procedure basically is what I'm asking. How, like days old, hours old? It depends. Every answer to every question is- Yeah de- depends. So here we go. Okay. It depends. So the, let's say a baby comes in and that baby's got, let's say the baby doesn't have any dysfunction. The latch is good, mama's not hurting, everything's good, but the tongue is unbelievably tied down by a fishing line. I release it immediately. I don't do the full scope. I just do the release of the anterior part and just to get the tongue a little loose. Other babies come in from, we get, like I said, blessed. We get all kinds of referrals from really a ton of referral sources lactation from all over the state, now the state. They've already been vetted, and so we already know but yeah, w- like today, I've got a baby here at 2:00. I don't know if this really answers the question either. But I had a Knoxville lactation send, "Can you please work this baby in?" So we moved some people around so I can get to the baby today. Normally, I don't do babies in the afternoon, but my discipline that helps me with the babies is staying a little longer. But yeah, we don't, I don't like mamas and babies to wait Okay, so basically it depends. And it really depends on the situation of how your child, how the person, the patient is showing up. What's their symptomatology, if they do have any? What's the functionality? And we go from there. It's basically do- we just get evaluated. It's the same thing with a patient comes into our office. I don't know if I can help you until I get my hands on you and see what's going on. And go from there. Now what are, what is one thing if we haven't covered it, that you would like to share about airway that most people are pretty novice to? Okay. This is real easy for me to answer, and it's this. I hope my gravestone says this, three things: "He didn't hurt me," "He thought I needed a sleep test," and, "He thinks everybody should tape their mouth shut." And that's the God's honest truth. I- the only way you know you nasal breathe is you gotta close your lips. And everybody tells me I know I close my lips at night." You don't know. You may be the rare nasal breather. That's, we talk about this all the time, the rare nasal breather. You think they're dead. They never move in bed. They sleep in one spot. They don't get up to pee. They don't sweat. They dream great dreaming. They dream crazy dreams. By the way, that's good brain health. But no, I think everybody needs to sleep test. We have a pandemic of d- at least disorder breathing. Maybe not apnic breathing, but at least disorder breathing. And it's sometimes crazy easy and cheap to fix, but you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. Now as we are running a little short on time, but I know we can come back and we haven't even scratched the surface. If you're new to this conversation this man has blessed my life and my wife with our two lu- little girls, and he's done their releases. And I can tell you the l- the latest one, our youngest, Brooklyn, who's seven weeks old immediately after the release, you can just tell her body tension was so loose afterwards. This is life-changing, game-changer. Not just- When it happens, this is affecting them for the rest of their life. Yes, the procedure is a one-time usually deal, but it's impacting your kids for the rest of their lives in terms of emotional regulation, physical health mental health, and beyond. So as I close up with you doc h- how can people get in contact with you if they're interested, they've got a challenge with a kid themselves? It's open for- first of all, thank you. That's unbelievably flattering what you just said, and that, that's really touching. So thank you very much for that 'cause coming from you, that you're the expert in that type of scenario. So again, thank you. That made my day. The second least, Crestview Dental. We're in Maryville, Tennessee, Crestview Dental. Again my name's Tommy Spears. When you call, they'll ask you to punch one for, I think Crestview, and two if you have a baby question or want to call, talk to our girls that handle the phones on the babies. It's kinda that simple. It is that simple. Most of the things in life that are worth it are that simple. Thank you, my friend, and I thank you so much for what you're doing, what you continue to do. And if you're a listener and follower, please don't wait any longer. Don't hesitate. There's answers out there for you. There's professionals and experts. Don't wait any longer, and definitely Dr. Spears is one of those. And remember, when it comes to your health, you're worth it. Thanks again, Dr. Spears. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you, Trent. That's a wrap on Healthy Knox. Thanks for spending some time with us today. If something we said stuck with you, share it with someone in your life who needs to hear it. And if you're ready to take the next step toward feeling better right here in Knoxville, come see us at Corrective Chiropractic. We're not just your doctors, we're your neighbors. We'll see you next time.