You're listening to Health Lifelines, a podcast brought to you by the Lifeguard
approach, your trusted source for insights, solutions, and training that empower you to
become a lifeguard for your patient's health and well-being. Welcome to the Health Lifelines podcast.
Today I am so excited because we're going to be talking about an extremely important issue
and that's why I have Dr. Bill Hang as my guest today. I'm going to have Dr. Bill Hang
introduce himself so you can hear the true value of what he's doing to save lives in our world
today. Dr. Hang, welcome. Well, thank you. And when you mentioned the term saving lives,
I decided at age 15 to become a dentist and one of the reasons I did, I was a process of
elimination and that I thought about being a physician, but I really didn't want to be
saving lives and I didn't want to have what I was doing or not doing determine somebody,
whether they lived or didn't. And yet my practice evolved to that was exactly what I was doing
for the last 20 years or so of my practice. I graduated dental school at the top of my class,
not because I was smarter than anybody because I wasn't, but I worked harder than anybody else.
And when I got accepted into the Orthodontic Training Program at the University of Minnesota,
I won the lottery, I was very happy about that. And so I dove into it and I took all the old journals
back from starting the early 70s, clear back to the early 1900s and I'd scanned through them.
Didn't, wasn't assigned to me. I just wanted to know about the profession. And I learned everything
I was taught and I believed it passionately. I thought the people that were training me were very,
very kind, very knowledgeable. And so when I went out to practice, I did exactly what I was taught.
And I was, I was asked actually asked to stay and teach, which I did for a few months and then
decided I didn't want to be an academia. But I moved to rural area in Vermont and kind of
to get away from the cities in 1975. And I did what I was taught until I began looking at the
faces and other people in dentistry were saying that orthodontists were destroying faces and
causing TMJ problems. And I took great offense at this because here I was taught to do this. And
I was taking out teeth in more than half of my patients. But when I finally looked at the faces
when I was done, I realized that I was not producing good-looking faces. And the whole subject of
TMJ issue, that was very controversial then, isn't controversial now. I'm firmly convinced that I
was producing problems that way. So I started on a long continuing education process that took me,
well, really hasn't even ended, but it started in 1981, 82. When I realized I just couldn't
continue to practice the way I was. And I was working in a rural area in Vermont where what
you get, what you do gets home before you get home. And if you change your practice and it doesn't
work out, well, you might as well pack your bags and leave town. But what really happened was I
decided to stop taking out teeth because I just couldn't stand it anymore. And yet I didn't know
another way. So it was a very dark time in my life. But my practice actually grew because people didn't
like the removal of teeth. And I had people coming from all over the state of Vermont to see me
from other towns or their other orthodontists. And fortunately, some of the new things I was doing
seemed to work out. And patients really liked it. I got into the whole reopening of extraction space
then starting in 1989. And that wasn't something that I just woke up one day and said, oh, I'm
going to do this. No, I had a woman who had had teeth taken out. And she had a headache pattern.
Her face was caved in. And she was desperate. And she was 27 years of age. And she actually
really forced me to try to reopen the space. I didn't even know it could be done.
And I told her everything negative that might happen. I said, you might lose teeth. You might,
I might push the teeth off the bone support. You might be into an open bite requiring jaw surgery
to fix. I don't know. I've never seen it done. It's now I've never seen an article that said
this could actually do this to everything I said to her. She said, I don't care.
She literally became a human guinea pig. And so in September of 1989, I began that process for her.
And I was able to do it. And it actually got rid of her headaches. And they've been gone ever since.
And it changed her facial appearance dramatically to the point when she went to visit her mother
in Florida from others and oh my gosh, you have lips because it filled her face back out.
And that then just started one thing at another, began to reopen spaces for more people.
And I in my practice, I had people from when I moved to California, ultimately, I had people
from more than 30 states and several foreign countries coming because they wanted the spaces
reopened. And it was that that and I began to learn from all of them. And believe me,
it's I don't want anyone to think that every case where you have teeth taken out is going to
result in some disaster. But it happens enough so that you you I just I can't I can't, you know,
go along with any kind of retraction because of what I've learned from all these patients over the
years. Well, you are truly my definition of an architect of change, formerly known as a traditional
orthodontist. Well, I'm just an Eagle Scout, I like to say this, I'm an Eagle Scout. And that
means a lot to me, I was 15 when I became an Eagle Scout. And it's like doing the right thing,
always no matter who's watching. And that's really what I am. And people say, Well, you're,
you have a target on your back, people don't like you, because you're doing something others
are still doing, and you're not have you're saying you're not a not supporting what everyone else
is doing. I said, I'll I'm doing this is when I when I even teach a course, I say,
these are not really my ideas. This is what I've learned from listening to my patients.
And that's how we learn. And that's how and that's why I say, Yeah, I'm just a person that is able
to take this together and put it together, and just come up with, for me, connect the dots with
some common sense. And that's why I do what I do. Well, you truly have stepped out of the traditional
line that most of the world is standing in. And you've started a new line, you step aside and
started a new line that is truly, I believe, going to impact the health and wellness of the world.
Oh, I hope so. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I look at as a hygienist, I look at things.
I look at my patients medical history when they come in. And when I see that they have a dished
in face. And in talking, we, I find out they've been through traditional orthodontics with extractions.
And they're now suffering from they snore, they have a sleep disorder. They have AFib.
That's developed over time. They have high blood pressure. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
And they have a lot of imbalance. They say, I don't know what's happening, but I just don't seem to have
the same balance that I used to do. And headaches. And when looking at their mouths, you find very narrow
arches, even though they've had orthodontics and their airways, their Malanpatti score is
is usually a three to four. When I asked them about how they sleep, they say, oh, I'm a terrible
sleeper. You know, I just can't seem to get the good rest. And when we know so much now about
the impact of all this, that can be a result, I'm not saying that 100% of the cases, a lot of this
can be a result of a narrowed airway from traditional orthodontics. And especially with the
influence now we have of science on Alzheimer's and heart attacks and strokes, I just think
I just applaud you for your effort to continue to beat the drum that we've got to make some changes
here. And so I'd like to talk a little bit more about the things that as hygienists, we can see
on a health history. And when we look at in the mouth that can help hygienist identify patients
that could possibly benefit from having their spaces reopened or whatever else you might recommend.
And, you know, we want to improve the quality of their life, you know, that's, I took an oath and all
of us hygienists took an oath just like you guys did to advance the art and science of dentistry.
And I think that's one of the big drawbacks of sticking and maintaining your beliefs and tradition
is that we don't advance that for patients particularly. So can we talk a little bit about
what hygienists can look for in they do their exam because you know, as you and I talked about before,
as hygienists, I think we're the chosen ones because we spend more time with a patient
in a year. Oftentimes it's four quality hours and sometimes even more than that. And, you know, I just
wow, an opportunity to shift how we take care of patients. I started a program called the lifeguard
approach which guards and guides patients health and wellness. And my purpose is to help patients
become their own advocate and to learn enough to start to get to that point where they step up
and ask for help. I love to teach patients how to ask for help. And that involves having
them become aware of the science and what their risk factors are. So I'm hoping you will help us
take better care of patients. Well, the first thing, I mean, it's so simple and you know this,
the patient can walk in and you can see them the way they walk. One of the biggest things is forward
head posture. Patients hold their heads forward just to keep them able to breathe. Also tilting
their head back, a slope back, forehead. That's somebody they're keeping their chin forward,
trying to keep their airway open. Most people don't even know that our foreheads are supposed to be
vertical straight up and down. But when you see a forehead tilted back at 20 or 30 degrees,
that's someone who's struggling to keep their head forward and the chin forward to keep their
airway open. That's simple to do. You can even look at the face and the lips are often thin. Draw
a line in your mind from the nose to the chin and you'll see the lips are often back. The lips are
very thin frequently. Sometimes the cheeks are flattened. The face, the chin is recessed,
particularly if a retraction was done early on during the growth. I have articles out of the
referee literature showing how the forward growth of the lower jaw goes on just fine. Then
if you close some spaces up, you don't see it anymore. I look at the referee literature and
that's proof to me. I've also seen it happen in patients that came to see me from way, way, way
back. You can see the narrowness of the jaws. That's obvious. An intermolar width that is in
the 20s or low 30s. We should be over 40 ideally, but very few people have that. That's simple to
see. Wear on the teeth is frequent because a lot of times the patients are stopping breathing
and they're grinding their teeth as a response during an apneic episode. Wear on the teeth,
the very first thing I always want to look at. Even if you're looking at a two or three-year-old
child with the teeth in, sometimes they've got worn down teeth by that time. That child may well
be broxing their teeth at night having apneic episodes. Dr. Heng, what about acid reflux and
GERD? That's a very common thing. As a patient stops breathing, they're struggling to breathe.
Basically, they're pumping the acid out of their stomach up through the esophagus and they can have
this yucky taste in their mouth in the morning. That's a common one to look for. You see erosion
on the teeth. You see where they've worn it and then it's all cupped out because that's acid erosion.
Dissolving the enamel and even the dentin away, those are simple things to see. Most of the people
look at more in teeth and think, oh my gosh, in dentistry, we're diagnosed with a huge shortage
of porcelain. That's not what we should be looking at. We should look at that and say, oh my gosh,
does this person have a real breathing and sleep problem? As soon as you start down that path and
start asking the questions, then indeed, the patient will sometimes really open up. They
had never thought of it, but once you bring it up, then one thing flows after another one.
Those are simple things to see. The narrower the arches and the fact that the teeth are gone,
you don't even have to have teeth taken out to have been retracted. Headgears are still being
used. At 1981, there was an article in the literature saying that basically upper teeth
really don't stick out in class II patients. As a matter of fact, it says that the upper teeth,
the upper arches often too far back rather than too far forward, and yet we continue to use headgears.
I was trained to use them. I haven't used one since the early 80s, but they're still being taught.
I was at a lecture not that long ago where orthodontists were recommending their use,
and I still have journals sitting here right with me or in front of me that talk about using
headgear to retract. These are all things that's easy to see. When you question the patient,
they'll often say, oh yeah, I had orthodontics. I was supposed to wear a headgear and I was really
good at it, or what I really liked was the ones who'd say, but I never wore it. I would say,
congratulations for not doing that. You're probably better off. I was told regarding headgear
jokingly, but he got his point across. He said, if I didn't wear it, he was going to weld it on,
and I was only supposed to take it off for special occasions.
When I started orthodontic training, that was something that was just had done that. They'd
done a study where they'd put it on for 90 days. Kids wore a headgear for 90 straight days,
24 hours a day, and they would wear it. I saw some of those patients of mine
that I treated in my residency program. That's easy for the hygienist, and I agree with you 100%.
The hygienists, they need to also obviously see the signs of chronic mouth breathing,
the lipopart, the what we call the accentuate and cupid's bow appearance, the flaccid lower lip
that's rolled out. You can see that very, very simply. The lips should be together all of the
time at rest. The child should never have a mouth hanging on it. They should never be
like that for sure, but even having the lips apart just like that, that's not okay. Yet,
that was me as a kid. I have pictures of me going back sitting in a sandbox when I was three years
old. There's a picture of me with my lips apart just a little bit. I grew up with my mouth open
every night, my pillow wet every morning, and it would be that way even now if I didn't tape my
mouth. I've been doing that for 12 or 13 years. Yes, I've been doing it close to six. Would you talk
about mouth taping? I first heard Patrick McEwen talk about it, and he's the my world expert on
breathing. And when I heard him talk about taping, I thought, why don't I try that myself?
And I also, being an addicted runner, I have been running all these years with my mouth hanging open,
and that's when I decided to try to run with my lips together. And when I took me, I would run a
few hundred yards, and I'd have to stop and blow my nose, run a few more hundred yards, stop and
blow my nose. But then, probably no more than two weeks, I was running and not stopping to blow my
nose. My nose was beginning to work. It's like a muscle. You either use your muscle or you lose it
if you either use your airway or you lose it. So the more you use it, you get the air going through
there and it'll cause the nose to clear out. But you have to train yourself to do that. And then I
even began running marathons with my lips together. And I've run the Boston Marathon many times
with my lips together. And the last time I ran it actually did a publicity stunt. I put tape on my
mouth and ran the whole thing and had my wife take a picture of me. And that actually appeared in the
Sunday Times of London. And I'm not the crazy person doing that. I mean, there's another, there are
other people that are taping it. I mean, world-class athletes have taped and are training that way.
So it's very legitimate. And we're totally healthier when we're nasal readers. That's where, you know,
James Nestor's book, Brath, published in 2020, number six on the New York Times bestseller list
and published in 37 languages. I mean, that's really brought the attention of the world to
this whole thing. And so mothers are being incredibly well informed. And they would come to my practice,
you know, knowing a lot, which is great. And the better informed they are, that's great. So
like when you're a hygienist and you're examining them, you'll find so many of them today are so
much better informed that they were in the past. Oh, absolutely. Could you talk more about the
difference in the quality of oxygen you get when you breathe through your nose as opposed to breathing
in through your mouth? Don't you get a higher percent of utilization? Yeah, what you're really
doing, it's called a bore effect. I'm no physiologist here, but what you're doing is you're driving up
making it so that the oxygen in your blood does no good. You've got to get the block oxygen out
of the hemoglobin into the cells of your body. And so by nasal breathing, what you're doing is
you're driving up the CO2, which causes the oxygen to get to the out of the hemoglobin and into the
cells of the body. And so, you know, you think as if you're running, oh my gosh, you're going to be
breathing less, and you're getting more oxygen. That's the paradoxical thing. You actually get
more oxygen by breathing less. And that's where you read that in Patrick McEwn's book,
Breathing Cure or The Oxygen Advantage. Those are incredibly good books that every mother
ought to read The Oxygen Advantage and make sure that her child is a nasal breather. That's
what CAF is all about, to try to get everyone to do that. But it's paradoxical because you think,
oh, if I breathe more, I'll get more oxygen. No, no, no, breathe less and get more oxygen.
And I tell people to do this all the time. And I actually motivated some of my patients. I had two
two boys that I was treating it. They didn't even know each other and it was years apart.
But they came up to me and said very timidly kind of, by the way, Dr. Hang, I learned to run with
my lips together. And I took a minute off of my mile time. These are kids like 10 years of age,
and they're running in their school and they'd be time doing the mile. And that that's a highly
motivational thing for kids to perform better. Yeah, that's awesome. When you talk about oxygen
and that utilization, what happens to and I know this happens a lot with kids when they eat a lot
of sugar, what happens when the sugar molecule is attached to the hemoglobin? And that's normally
where we want all of our oxygen attached to the hemoglobin, right? So do sugar, does sugar intake
conflict with oxygen utilization? I'm not the physiologist to answer all of that. All I know is
that we in dentistry, we have a great position to make the kids healthier today by cutting down
our eliminating sugar. And there's so many books that are out there on that that mothers should
read. Robert Lustig's book, the Metabolical, is good. And anything by Robert Lustig is good.
If you really want your kids to be healthy, you really have to have to watch what they're going
to be eating. And so those are the pillars of health to me is what you take in by eating and
by your breathing. And we need to that should be part of dental practices today. We are the
literally the key to health. We are the gateway to health by what we do. If we get our kids to
get their lips together and breathe through their nose, I believe passionately that their
faces are going to grow more forward. And that even goes back to the 1800s. A book by George
Catlin was called Shut Your Mouth and Save Your Life. And it was written in the 1800s. And he was
an artist and a Western artist. And he wrote a book about this and showed that the Native Americans
had better balanced faces than the Caucasians in his time back in the 1830s, 40s, and 50s.
And so this is not new. But the health aspects of it, what we really what most people don't even
know is that dentists orthodontists were treating in the primary dentition in the early 1900s.
And one of the things that they were doing was they were doing it to create space, expanding
both arches. And they were doing it to try to prevent mental retardation. And here we are
talking about mental retardation today. We have Ron Harper at UCLA, a neurobiologist who's got
studies showing brain damage with MRI evidence with just one night of reduced oxygen saturation
for kids. And so you've got, you know, my good friend, Bill Cooper from Savannah, Georgia has
written a book called Why African American Kids Can't Read. It's a great, very short read, but it
really doesn't have a thing to do with the color of their skin. It has to do with the fact that
many of them have had sleep apnea and they've got brain damage. It doesn't, whether you're black,
white, green, purple, or it doesn't matter the color of your skin. If you've had this brain
damage, if you've had sleep apnea, you may well have brain damage and never, never do well.
So we have to take this as an incredibly important health thing and be serious about it.
Oh, absolutely. You're listening to Health Lifelines, a podcast brought to you by the
Lifeguard approach, your trusted source for insights, solutions, and training that empower
you to become a lifeguard for your patients, health, and well-being. This episode is just a
taste of the strategies and stories we will share to help you and your patients live longer, healthier
lives. If you're enjoying the content, make sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.
As a reminder, this podcast and the opinions expressed here are not a medical diagnosis.
And don't forget to explore our additional resources, tools, exclusive content, courses,
and coaching solutions from the Lifeguard approach by visiting our website at thelifeguardapproach.com.
And now let's jump back into today's episode.
So you mentioned lack of ability to read what other types of effects you're seeing today.
What's the big one? The biggest thing, it's out there. And Steve Sheldon is a retired head of the
Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago. They're a pediatric sleep clinic. And he would say in a
lecture, and I've heard him say this more than once, he says, I don't believe there is such a
thing as ADHD. And he'd say, I believe it is always, and that's a really strong term for a
researcher, to use, I believe it is always a sleep and breathing problem. Well, you look at the
numbers. And the last time I looked, I think it was about 15% of kids are diagnosed with sleep apnea,
or excuse me, with ADHD, and they get drugs. And so the behavioral aspects, they're bouncing around,
the teachers want to kill them, they want them out of the class, they want them to be drugs,
so they don't disrupt the rest of the class. And I understand that. But drugging them and making
them into little zombies is not helping them. And for those who want to, you can go look at a
video on YouTube called Finding Connor Deegan. Connor Deegan was a young boy in a suburban
Chicago school, who was just about one performance away from being kicked out of his school and
putting an institution. He was suicidal, and not a happy kid. He made it to Lurie Children's Hospital
and saw some people there that I know very well, including Steve Sheldon and Kevin Boyd. He had
his tonsils and abdits taken out, I believe, and he had some expansion and became a totally
normal kid. And the video represents that. It's a very compelling video, very emotional.
But I've seen pictures of him. Now, I've met him. He's a nice kid. I've met him after he became a
quote normal kid before everyone was wanting to kill him. And I met some parents who had kids in
his class. And believe me, they didn't like him. Well, why wouldn't they? He was very disruptive.
And a lot of kids will be bullies that are like that. And so they get a lot of negative feedback.
And so they can easily, with that negative feedback, end up on the wrong side of the law.
They don't do well. And there are studies out of the UK showing that they don't live as long, either.
People with ADHD. So this is above and beyond the heart attack stroke and cancer, the big three
that everyone understands is related. Everything's related. And it's a huge, huge, huge problem.
Well, they're now talking about the third cause of death is medical error.
Oh, wow. Well, we better not talk about that now, had we?
No, we better not. But it's the elephant in the room, right?
It is the elephant in the room. And I think the basis of that is one of the things that's causing
that is that what I appreciate about you and your approach to creating healthy human beings is that
you are more focused on the root cause and not just the traditional
know of what we think causes different events in lives. And I so appreciate that and that
approach that you have. So tell us about what you're doing to impact the dental community to
help them. You have two different organizations. And I'd like you to talk about those.
Okay. Under the UC, this thing ortho to health behind my head here, that's our little
we have a trademark on that. Our little emblem there means oxygen O2, ortho to health.
But under that umbrella, we have ECHO, early childhood health centered orthodontics,
which really is everything we're doing is non retracted. We don't want to do anything which
retracts in any form. But the goal is to recognize the problem as early as possible and really treat
in the early in the primary dentition. Now, orthodontists are taught that I was taught that
you can't expand the lower arch because there's no midline sutural. We all know that. But and if
you were to do that, you'd push the teeth off the bone support. But the fact of the matter is I began
doing that in the mid 1980s after a head of an orthodontic department lectured about doing it.
And Mike Durkis is his name is headed Emory University. And I've become pretty good friends.
And I expanded my own kids. And I've done it for many other people. So we teach lateral expansion,
but we also teach how to develop things forward. And that's part of that program. But the focus
but the focus really is to try to treat in the primary dentition. I began doing that because I
originally was treating the mixed dentition. And I see I take records on somebody when they were
four or five, but not treat them until later on. And when I took records again later, I could see,
oh, my gosh, look at how that face fell back. And that's like water under the bridge, you're never
going to have that time again, that's growth you're never going to get. And so you're starting out
way behind with both jobs so far back, can you get them forward or not. So that's that's one of our
programs treating under age 10 and under our focus really is to get pediatric dentists and mainly
general dentists who do orthotics, because sadly, the orthodontists don't seem to be wanting to do
that, even though that was what was being done more than 100 years ago. Now, so we teach everything
is non retractive. And that's, you know, we talk about what works and what doesn't there. And
there's no magic wand here. There's no magic appliance. There's things that are out on the
internet that people think are somehow magic. Well, I'm sorry. I don't believe there's magic in any
of these appliances. And certainly, I mean, I have some patents on things that I've come up with.
But I don't believe that my appliances are magic. It's, it's what I do with them and how I treat
people that may help them. And that's what's really very important. age 10 and above age 10 to 110,
I haven't had anyone 110 want to have treatment, but I'd be happy to do so for no fee whatsoever,
just the privilege of treating somebody. I have always said anyone over 80, I would treat, you
know, for free just for the privilege of 80 isn't sold to me anymore. But maybe I'd say 90.
What we teach there is, and so many people have been retracted, or their faces fallen back so much,
just because they hung their mouth open their whole life and their face fell back.
And we have monkey studies to prove that that really happens.
Just like I believe it happens in humans, just as it was on the experimental monkeys.
The other thing is, in that we have, we call our ERRS group. Now, this is a term that I came,
that my wife and I came up with, extraction, retraction, regret syndrome, ERRS as a mistake.
It's a term we came up with many years ago, when I realized that there really was a syndrome.
A syndrome is a collection of things, science and symptoms that seem to come together. And there are
lots of syndromes we have in dentistry and medicine. I define this syndrome, extraction,
retraction, regret syndrome as a constellation of aesthetic, functional, and emotional signs and
symptoms, which are resulted from retraction. Doesn't mean that everyone who is retracted has this,
but there are plenty of them to do. And I get people, when I've published on this and written
articles and stuff on the internet, I get people contacting me from around the world and they
basically identify, I am a poster child for ERRS. And they send me their records and their pictures.
Can you help me find someone in my town? I'm sorry, I can't even find someone on your continent,
much less in your town. I'm trying to train people. Although I have a new member in my ERRS group
from China. And there's a huge number of people who are in China who have contacted me. They're
at much more risk for this because they have a shorter nose. Asians have shorter noses and their
faces appear more full. And the diagnosis, according to traditional orthotics, is that's
by max lip intrusion, take out four teeth. And I get people literally contacting me saying,
they can't breathe anymore. Do you have someone? I'm desperate. I can't live like this. And I
sent you some, I sent you some adjectives that one of my patients, they're very, very, very strong
adjectives about describing what has been done, what they look like, how it's affected their life.
And so in that group, in the ERRS group, you know, you have the emotional part, which is really,
that's a very big part, but you have the aesthetic part and the functional issue and pain issues
which come by, we can show how the mandible gets trapped many times. And if you just bring the
front teeth forward, that'll untrap the mandible and the pain pattern seems to go away. This is
something I've learned from other people and I've done it for many, many other folks. There's lots
of different things. Reopening the spaces may help, may help, it may not. I like to share
a story about one of my very good patients. It was a, I saw him for the first time probably now
10 years ago. He was a 48 year old gentleman who had grown up in the Philippines and he'd had two
upper bicuspids taken out and he pulled back and he had literally no chin. And so my wife
did the initial consultation with him and said, you know, here he is, he expects you to be able to
grow his jaw forward. And, you know, he'd seen on the internet that I was able to do certain things,
but I'm not growing an adult's jaw forward. So I went in, I actually saw him in an instant. I knew
that this guy would have sleep apnea just looking at his face. And he'd been on blood pressure meds
for four years. And I asked him if the cardiologist had asked him if he'd snore. No. Did he suggest a
sleep study? No. And I took his blood pressure. It was 163 over 128, which is stratospheric. And I
realized I didn't know it then, but I have heard it now. I should have called 911 right then. I had
two women working in my office who had formerly worked in a cardiologist's office and they said,
if you take somebody's blood pressure and it's that high, you're supposed to call 911. I didn't
know that. Well, I took that and I told him what it was and I looked him square in the eye and I
said, you need, and his cardiologist hadn't even suggested a sleep study. I said, you need a sleep
study and you need it now or you're going to die. I think I used those words. And two days later, he
had a sleep study now. And he had severe sleep apnea and he desaturated to 65% oxygen saturation.
Absolutely.
Now, later on, later on, I learned from him that when that happened, they woke him up and they
sent him home. Now, think about it. Why would they do that? They saw the severe problem he had.
They didn't want him to have a heart attack or stroke in their sleep clinic. I viewed this as an
emergency for this guy. An emergency orthodontic and surgical treatment. He had no chin, his face
was so far back. Reopening spaces for him was not going to do a thing for him. It was a surgical
procedure he needed to have both jaws moved forward. And that's what we teach in our ERS program,
the diagnosis and how can we help these people? Will reopening solve the problem or not? Or is
it a surgical case? And this is terribly important to know before you even start. What your chances
are of being successful. And by the way, I never promised one person resolution of one symptom,
not one, ever. You're a human being. There's too many factors here. So we started him in treatment
and we had him do surgery and he went to another city to have it done because that's the
where the surgeon was that I worked with. 10 days post-surgery, he emails me and he says,
Dr. Heng, I can't believe it, but my blood pressure started falling immediately.
Down into a normal range, 120 something over 70 something. It had been stratospheric. And literally,
it went down like that and has remained down. And this is how I learned. I mean,
because again, I'm not a physician. I'm not a cardiologist. And as I said, I don't ever
promise resolution of one symptom. But when you see this kind of thing happen and you begin to
really realize how big a deal it is, and I have many what I call, oh, by the way, Dr. Heng comments,
when I've done things for people that have given them back their tongue space and airway,
gee, I don't fall off the treadmill anymore. Or I used to get three or four sinus infections a year
and I haven't had any now that you reopen my spaces for me. The numbness in my hands and feet
that I had after I had my retractable or that that's all gone. And I mean, these are things that I
would never have known. What am I supposed to say, you know, when when somebody comes in and says,
and I've just, for instance, I've moved the lower teeth forward a little bit in reopening some spaces,
just barely moving them forward. And somebody comes in and says, my wife says, I'm not snoring anymore.
And I said, well, I was supposed to say, well, your watch nuts, that can't be. No, who knows better than the patient.
The patient knows better than I could ever know. And that's what, as a doctor, as a hygienist, we have to
sit down, shut our mouths and listen. And that's when we learn all these good things.
Well, and I think the other part of that too is we have to start asking quality questions
based on science, not questions. You know, I don't ask people anymore if they snore.
I simply say, tell me about how you sleep. Okay, exactly. And I think tell me about questions
are really, really good because they elicit. Yeah, it elicits an emotional response from them.
If they're sleeping horribly, you're going to learn about it really quickly. And what I did,
because I so believe in the value of a sleep study, I purchased a home sleep study machine
just to use with my family and friends as a screening tool. Because I think that sleep
is such a controller of our lives that I want to know if somebody's getting great sleep or if
they're not just because I love and care about them as a family member or a close friend. So
yeah, it's not unusual that my friends will call me up and say, can you do a screening for me?
Once you've opened that door, the patient really is a very appreciative. And I have to finish this
story about this gentleman. I mean, his mother, she was from the Philippines, originally, but
I lived in Southern California and his mother contacted me just about two years ago, after I had
left California, sadly, she said she was coming to Los Angeles and wanted to meet me and thank me
for saving her son's life. I'm just an orthodontist. And I don't, as I said, I became a dentist
because I didn't want to be saving people's lives. But here's someone literally saying that to me.
And it's so nice. It's so gratifying to me to have someone feel like that. And this gentleman
actually sent me an email last summer with him and his new wife, which he never would have had,
because he had no chin. And she admitted that once she saw him, how he was before he had his
surgery, she said, I wouldn't have been interested in him. But now when he's got a chin and an airway
and he's healthy, they got married. So he sent me a picture of them standing in front of the Golden
Gate Bridge in San Francisco and says, this is the anniversary of my surgery. And I just want to
thank you or remember that fateful day I walked into your office. So it makes me feel good,
because here I am, I signed on to learn how to fill teeth and started dental school in 1966. And
here I am later on still at it, even though I'm retired, I'm semi retired, because I'm literally
trying to help others do what I learned to do by listening to my patients.
Yes. And you are helping to give the two most important things that people hope for in their life.
The first one is to be happy. The second one is to be free of their suffering.
And so I hugely acknowledge you for what you do and how you take care of people and your
persistence and your relentlessness to get your approach out there to help people.
All right. So tell us about what do you think there's lots of general dentists doing orthodontics
now. How can either of your groups, if they would to join your groups, how can they help
their patients get healthier and help them live a long and healthy lifespan?
That's a great question. Let's talk about the echo group first, because my target there is
general dentists doing ortho and more than that, the pediatric dentists have the skills
to treat the brilliant kids. Well, I have more than one practice, whether one general dentist
and pediatric dentist, all they do now is airway treatment. They don't get a handpiece out,
they don't put stainless steel crowns on teeth, they're not fighting the sugar wars anymore.
So you can literally have a practice where that's all you do and feel very gratified in doing it
and have people come from great distances, because sadly there's no, there's not competition, but
even though the American Dental Association mandated screening for airway issues
seven and a half years ago, it's still not commonplace. So there's plenty of room for growth.
The other aspect is the adults and the people who've been retracted, reopening extraction spaces,
adding bi-cuspids where no teeth are missing, that sounds completely crazy to most people.
You think, oh, if you try to do that, you're going to push the teeth off the bone support
and lose teeth and the answer to that is, well, no, the answer is no, if that were happening,
I wouldn't be doing it. So my goal is to train people to be confident to do those things. And
my mentorship is truly that. You can't just give this stuff out in a two-day lecture,
I've tried that, and have someone do it. You have to hold their hand. It takes many times
hearing the same message many times. Oh my gosh, I've heard that person lecture before.
He may have said that a year ago, but I never understood that. And I've had that happen in
my own life. So I know that I need to have a mentorship where I'm holding somebody's hand,
they present their cases on an internet forum to me, I get up in the morning and I go,
I have breakfast and then I go to my computer and I'm responding to those people every day
and trying to help them. And they post their cases before they treat. And then during the
treatment so that they get support. And I may sometimes I'll get on the phone with them and
say, Hey, this is, you got a problem here, you need to be doing such and such. So it's
in our lives, we want to, we rise on the shoulders of those who came before us. And we,
as they say, we need to pay it forward. And that's what I'm trying to do. I've had mentors that have
helped me along the way. And more than anything, I've learned from my patients and I just want
to make that, I don't want to go to my grave with the ideas that I have that can help other people
that made my life fun and my practice fun because I did get so much positive feedback and I had a
lot of fun doing it. I want others to have that same experience. But more than that, it makes
me feel great to have someone write me an email even after I'm retired. This happened not infrequently
where someone on my former patients gets my email address and they contact me and they may ask me,
GD, you know, somebody in such and such an area, because I have a relative there that I want to
see have done what you did for my child, whatever. Well, you are the epitome of a compassionate
person. And I so want to thank you for all that you do. And I would encourage listeners
to contact Dr. Hang and both of his groups, check them out and really do this on behalf of your
patients. And the oath that you've taken to never do any harm. Yeah, I went through a very dark
time in my life and I put this out there for others. When I first started down this path in
the early 80s and was going to continuing education courses all the time, and I still had patients
that I had teeth taken on, it was a very hard time for me. And I had a lot of guilt and I got
professional help for that, which is important. And I needed to share that with other people,
because there was a time when I thought I would end my life. I didn't even know back in those
days in the 80s that people had to breathe. Let's be honest, I was straightening teeth,
taught it to line up teeth and make them fit like gears. When I realized almost 30 years ago,
the impact that the airway had on this whole thing, that's when it became, oh my gosh, really
crazy. And I was happy by that time in my life that I had long since quit any form of retraction,
wasn't taking out teeth, wasn't using headgears. But what people have to understand is,
there's going to be a guilt for people who decide they want to change, there's going to be a guilt
feeling. What you have to say is, okay, fine, that's then and this is now. I did that then,
that was accepted. And I can no longer do that. And you can't worry about what you did yesterday,
because you can't, to some degree, you can't change it, although reopening spaces is something
that you could do. But it's a very emotional thing. And I've gone through it. So I can see it and
people's faces when I have a conversation with them. And I know they're going through this problem.
But as one of my very good mentors, Omer Reed, and you know his name, Dr. Omer Reed,
used to say, if it's been done, it's probably possible. I like that one. And one of the other
things that he would say is, I'm here to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
Those are great homerisms. And I learned so much from him. And that's what I'm here to do is to
comfort the afflicted. I've been that person. But I'm also to afflict the comfortable and say,
you know, you may want to look at this in a different way. Because to be honest,
you know, what we learned in dental school, there's I have one quote out of the literature
I'm an academic from the State University of New York in Buffalo, talking to years ago,
an article that said about 8% of what we do in dentistry is evidence based. What a way to end
that this interview by saying that when we when people say, Oh, I have an evidence based practice.
Really? Nobody has an evidence based practice. They don't exist. Let's be honest. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, this has been an amazing discussion here today. I want to thank you for your time and
all the effort you've put in over the past. And I encourage anybody that's listening,
be like Dr. Hang, step out of line, and really and truly make a difference,
and save the lives of your patients and bring that emotional aesthetic and pain problems to an end that they have. So, thank you so much, Dr.
Hang. Thank you. One thing I want to say before we stop here is you and I both share the
distinction of being on the advisory board for the Children's Airway First Foundation.
And that helps to drive a lot of what both you and I believe in and I encourage everyone to go to
Children's Airway First.org and check out the website, Meet the Executive Director, Rebecca St. James. We have a great
mama bear that will help you with challenges that you have with your kids. And they'll even help you find someone like Dr.
Hang if it's possible in your area. So go ahead. Also, read Candy Spark's book, Mom's
Street Saved My Brain. It was just released a couple of weeks ago and it tells a very compelling story that everyone should read.
I'm very, I'm promoting that book to everybody right now. Yes. Mom, Save My Brain and it's available on Amazon and in other
bookstores all over the place. So thank you again, Dr. Hang. I hope to see you soon. Okay, thanks so much. Bye now.
That's it for today's episode of Health Lifelines, brought to you by the Lifeguard Approach. I hope you found
inspiration and actionable insights to support you and your patients' journeys towards better health and more fulfilling lives.
Remember, every small step you take today builds the foundation for a healthier tomorrow.
If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate, review, and share the podcast with someone who could benefit from it.
Your support helps us reach more listeners and grow this community of health-conscious individuals and dental professionals focused on becoming
lifeguards for their patients. For more tips, tools, and resources from the Lifeguard Approach, visit us online at thelifeguardapproach.com.
Also, follow us on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn at the Lifeguard Approach. Thank you for tuning in.
Until next time, stay informed, stay inspired, and keep showing up as a Lifeguard for your patients
at every single appointment.