New Year's Resolution

If losing weight is your New Year's Resolution, you won't want to miss this episode of ADVENTing with Dr. Madan Kandula and Dr. Ethan Handler.
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Published on
December 20, 2019
Updated on
January 4, 2022

If losing weight is your New Year's Resolution, you won't
want to miss this episode of ADVENTing.

So, New Year's Resolutions. I think, this is the time of year that a lot of folks are thinking about the New Year. I think throughout time it's likely been a situation where once you kind of see the clock that, or the calendar that's moving, that you start thinking about your life as a whole, and what is life gonna be like moving forward? I think most people, I think everybody probably, wants a life that's ahead of them that's as good as it can be, that's the best it can be. And most people, there're probably some robots out there who are watching, but for the non-robots who are human, most people who are humans, sometimes don't make the best choices and have maybe the highest of goals from a resolution standpoint, and fall beneath those goals from a day-to-day, life happens. And so I think for us here, I think what we've begun to see is that people come in, sort of towards the end of the year or with this mindset of, a resolution of breathing, which is a weird, kind of a new kind of a thing. But I've seen a little bit of that, and the more I see it, the more I'm like, "That's where you wanna start, man." Like that's it. Like if you had to do something to change your life on every different front, it's taking something or taking you. Assuming you're not breathing properly and getting you to breathe properly, that's the thing. And the good news is, unlike going to the gym every day, or making the right choices at the grocery store, this is a relatively simple fix your meeting. If there's a question of an issue, then it's a matter of coming in so we can evaluate. And likely, there's gonna be a fairly simple set of solutions to get you moving and on your way. And likely, it's not gonna impact. Meaning, it's not gonna be much of a, or any downtime kind of a thing. So it's kind of that perfect storm of sort of looking at your life and thinking about how it might be better, and being able to do something simple to make it better.

Well, I would venture to say that most quality of life, or sorry. I would venture to say that most resolutions tend to be quality of life decisions, right? So they always center around health, for the most part. And dietary changes, and things like that. So like if you had to think top three, I'm gonna work out more, right? I'm gonna eat better.

Sure.

I'm gonna get better sleep. Maybe stop smoking, who knows. Like it depends on what the habits are that people have, but they all tend to be health related, right? So think about if you're not breathing well through your nose, and you're having problems sleeping at night, and it has to do with your breathing. Think about, if we get that working, all these other things get a lot easier to tackle.

For sure. Absolutely.

It's the patient who's got sleep apnea that is told to lose weight and then primary care might wave bye-bye to them, and say, "Go drop 30 pounds." And then they come in here and I'm like, "Look that's great if you wanna lose weight, "but let's get you better sleep, "and then you can lose that weight, "'cause you have more energy, right?" I mean it all effects these down the stream. Prioritize your breathing and your life to get healthier, because this is where it all starts. And then you can tackle these other things a lot easier.

Absolutely. And it doesn't mean you can't have more than one goal.

And a lot of times I think, it's not always guys. I think it certainly can be women as well is that, snoring, it's a chronic issue. It's chronic and a very prevalent issue that's unlike most other. Somebody's gotta let me know if there's some other medical issue that's like this, where somebody's suffering. So if somebody snores or sleep apnea, they got a throat issue. Their throat is blocked. And when they sleep at night they're creating that annoying sound, because their throat is strangling them from the inside. And so the issue that that person is suffering with medically is impacting them, and those around them. So there are not many. I mean, again. I can't think of any other. There might be some other medical issue that impacts others as well as the person that it's happening to. But for a lot of folks who have or are thinking about the new year, and thinking about ways to change things. Breathing, and especially breathing well when you're sleeping at night is something that helps you out, from a health standpoint. But it also, I think, we talked about this in the past from a sleep divorce standpoint, is it saves relationships, it really does. If you can sleep soundly and quietly at night, that is more attractive that if you're.

Right.

And we tend to make light of it, and it is sort of, you can make light of it, because I guess that's just what we do. From a serious standpoint, it's something that, nobody wants to snore. Nobody wants to be the the snorer. Nobody wants to be the bud of a joke. Everybody wants to be sort of whatever, part of a community. Part of sort of something. And so, when somebody's snoring, it's isolating. It puts you out on your own island. Back to new year's resolutions, I think for many folks it's about family and being together. And it's hard to be together if you can't breathe properly. You can't sleep properly, because nobody wants to be around you. Or you don't wanna go on big trips or vacations or can't.

Right, because you're embarrassed. And it's sad that people live their life like this when they don't need to. Again, I mean it's sort of the stocking stuffer that just, it's powerful stuff. And most people I think think about sort of, how do you say this? Most people think about resolutions that are more complicated than what we're talking about. But none of those complicated things is as fundamental as getting your breathing checked, getting it fixed.

So knowing that snoring is a throat problem, and let's say for the patient that doesn't have sleep apnea, right? So they just have, they snore, they make noise, right? Which is a throat issue. Why does getting their nose working better sometimes can improve the snoring?

To break it down simply, that's the start of your airway. So if your nose is blocked, then you've got to breathe. And so if your nose is blocked, you either have to pull really hard through nose to get air to come through there, or you gotta drop your mouth open. Either one of those things can, if somebody has a tendency towards snoring, if your nose is jammed up, then it's going to, essentially that snoring, it's gonna create exuberance at the back of the throat as you're trying to breathe. If we can take a nose that's jammed up and blocked and we can fix it. Then all of a sudden, somebody's mouth can stay shut. When your mouth is shut, your tongue gets pulled forward. When your tongue is pulled forward, your airway is more open. Well, it certainly cannot hurt. So if somebody snores, they've got a throat issue and almost assuredly, they're gonna have a nose issue. So we start at the beginning, we start with the nose, and we start with the whole. But if we're talking about, "I need to be fixed." You can't breathe properly, you can't breathe through your nose. So get the nose working and go. Some folks whose throat issues may be more on the mild side of the occasion, get the nose fixed and the throat stuff kinda fades away. Other folks it's the start of the journey. Get the nose fixed and then we'll have a pathway for the throat part.

So again, starting here working downstream seeing how the cards fall.

Yeah.

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First published by ADVENT on
December 20, 2019
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New Year's Resolution