Doctor Andrew Cohen, welcome to the QVC podcast.

Thank you for having me. I am so excited to be here. Okay. I'm excited

to be here, too, because you have one of those stories where you started to

tell it to me, and I was like, what? So let's

just start there. So we're going to rewind. I'm

going to set the stage. You are a practice. You have a

thriving dental practice. You're busy, you have

kids. Everything's good. And your health starts to take a

turn. Starts with chronic fatigue and then mild sleep apnea. And because

you're in the dental world, you have access to all the best experts.

So you're like, I can deal with this. Because clearly, I'm connected.

I know all the people, I know all the things. What happened?

Okay. So I'm going to actually go a little bit back, even just a touch

more. Okay. Because I'm a big why guy, and

my story really starts with why. So

my best friend who I went to dental school with,

and we practiced a quarter of a mile from each other,

he came to my house, he. In

2007, and he told me that he

was just diagnosed with multiple myeloma. And it was,

like, crushing. We were 34 years old. We were just starting to have

kids. We vacationed together, we played golf together. We were our

sounding boards in dentistry. And he actually. I was

really about to quit dentistry. I was,

like, 38, and I just. I didn't have a voice.

I felt like every time I was telling a patient that they needed to do

something, they were questioning me. And I was really lost, and I

just really depressed and burnt out. And he begged me to go

to a continuing education center in Arizona called SPEAR Education.

And he literally dragged me there. And within five minutes of being there,

I was like, I knew that this was my education home, and it

changed everything for me. I fell in love with dentistry. Could you

just say what it was about that program that was different from

what you'd previously? Yeah. They helped me find my

ability to talk to patients. And that's where I

learned co discovery. And literally, on the

flight home from Arizona, I revamped my entire

practice on the plane, and I implemented it that Monday morning,

and I haven't looked back. And now my

whole makeup and the whole foundation of both my

dental and my sleep practice is. Let me explain the

etiology to you. And if you understand the why,

then the how and the what becomes easier to

follow through. Amazing. So this program,

this beer program was for

dentists or medical professionals? Dentists no, it's an

advanced dental education center. So

it's where dentists. If there's a couple in the country, there's

Spear, there's a place called Coy's and Pankey and Dawson.

Unbelievable. If you want to learn advanced

both dental skill and running a business

and patient communication, you really need. You just don't learn

enough in dental school. You have to get that extra education. And it's one of

the top places. So they gave you a training and a framework

to relate and communicate with your patients. And that's

what transformed everything. Yeah. And as you've seen, like

firsthand, so good. I like jump at it and

I like dove headfirst. So. Yes, you are. You're a keen

learner. Yes, keen learner, Dr. Andy. Awesome. Okay,

so fast forward a couple years. He was really struggling with his

treatment. He was on a lot of medications and trouble sleeping.

And, you know, we were really trying to enjoy as much time as we could

together. And so we would share a room. One it was

because we wanted to make sure we made it to class together,

so. But my snoring had really become a problem and I was

afraid that I was going to keep them up. So I made myself a snoring

appliance and I woke up the next morning and I was like,

oh my God, that's what it's like like to sleep. And I

just like recently I was at a Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas and I

fell asleep in Cirque du Soleil. That's how tired I was all the time. So

it turns out my first patient was a board certified sleep

pulmonologist. Okay, so just to recap, so you were sharing a

room with your friend who was unwell. You were worried you would keep him up.

So you're like, I'll just create a device for myself to stop

myself from snoring. Yeah. And it worked. And you were

like, oh, this is what it feels like to be well rested. Yeah, I had

no clue. And then my first. We don't know what we don't know, like normal.

I mean, like our normal is our normal. I just thought, you know, I

young kids and I worked a lot, like crazy hours, and

I just thought I was tired. And my first patient today was a

sleep physician and he said, let's get you sleep tested. And I had mild sleep

apnea. So I treated myself with an appliance

that brought my jaw forward. And when you bring your jaw forward, your tongue

comes with it and it opens up my airway. And like, I was great for

a couple of years. My wife is happy cause I wasn't snoring anymore.

But then like a couple years later, I started to snore again.

And now my blood pressure was going up and I was gaining weight

and like nothing really had changed and I didn't understand it.

So I, like, I dove into sleep medicine, ultimately

becoming board certified in 2019. And

I was going along this. At first when I started, I was like an

appliance dentist. I would make an appliance. And then I started learning at

SPEAR education, where I was faculty too, that

there was an anatomic component, you know. So what is it? I started learning about

nasal breathing and expansion. So it tones

and lifts the soft palate. Okay. So it

opens up the airway. But it's not like a permanent fix.

It's kind of like going to the gym for your soft ballot. Okay. And.

But if you don't use it, you lose it. So you have to do touch

ups. But it worked great. I mean, my VO2 max

improved. During the day, I could work out. I mean, I could. I just felt

like I could breathe easier. But then again, year

goes by and now my blood pressure starts creeping up again.

And they went from one medication to two medications and they said, oh,

take another medication. It's fine. We got you managed. And that

was like, it. I've had reflux my entire life. I was worried about being

on protein pump inhibitor and what it was going to do to my kidneys and

my bones, but I could not get off of it. What's a

protein pump inhibitor for? For the reflux. Like,

so it literally stops the production of acid in the stomach. Okay.

And. But it has kidney and bone issues, like side effects

to it. And I mean, I've been on it since I was in my 20s

and if I missed a day, it was just so painful.

Okay. So I just. So you're on the medication for the

reflux, then they add blood pressure,

then they add another blood pressure, and then there's like an annual

laser treatment to open the airwaves. Yep. I just want to get a full

picture of all the full picture interventions happening. And the

reflux thing had been like. Sounds like most of your adult life.

Yes. And I've been. And I was tired my whole life.

Like, I. I was that person that would hit snooze 11

times and all my roommates would want to kill me because I just

kept hitting snooze every nine minutes. I couldn't get up. Yeah,

I relate. Yeah. For now, it's 2022.

I am wearing a bra strip, mouth tape,

and appliance. I've done laser treatments, and

I'm still snoring. I'm still feeling tired. I'm never feeling rested.

So I decided to do maxillary expansion, where I

literally separated and expanded my top jaw at 53 years

old. What is. Okay, what does that look like in practice? Is.

Is that a procedure or a device you put in your mouth?

So I had eight implants

inserted into the roof of my mouth like a kid would do,

like a palatal expander. But when you're an adult, you need to

anchor it with implants. And then I had to crank myself open

until I separated. And I separated the day of

Thanksgiving on my mother in law's couch. I heard it snap and it

was. Oh, God. Oh, God. I'm sorry.

That sounds awful. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't fun.

It wasn't, you know, it wasn't really, like, painful. It just, you

know, you lisp a lot. It's uncomfortable. But I had to fix

myself, right? And everything that I had been told up to that

point was the only way I could fix myself was fixing the anatomy.

Okay? That is how we are trained. Fix

the anatomy, fix the flow, and you will

improve. Six days after I opened. I have never

breathed so well in my life because I have a deviated

septum. Okay. And when I started widening. Your

maxilla is connected to the nasal bones, so they

were widening too. Okay. I have not been

congested or stuffy in a year and a half. I mean, that was like

the single best thing. I can breathe all the time. So you might. So

that you did that expansion and it was like

new breath. Like, oh, my God. The breathing ways you could never

have. You weren't able to breathe before. I thought I was fixed.

I really thought I was fixed. And then the summer after,

I had that taken out, six months later, now I'm in

ortho to get my teeth aligned. I did a

sleep study at a course that I was in in California to

learn how to do a tongue tie release, which is really important to create

a proper seal for nasal breathing. And they make you do sleep

studies there to see how you're doing. And I went from mild to

severe, and I was like, what? So you did

this rather complex

intervention to widen the anatomy of your jaw.

Yes. Which did bring a lot of relief and did improve your

breathing in many ways. Yes. But then you went and did a sleep study

and your sleep was worse. Yes. Okay.

Crushing, chronic Illness is so complex, isn't it?

Like, it is not necessarily a straight line. Okay.

So all of my colleagues told me, well,

you know, that your jaws are both set back

this way, so you need to now break both your jaws and move everything

out. And I had to do something because I was

desaturating below 90% for over an hour, which is

like, what does that mean? So my oxygen levels

were dropping into the 80s for over an hour while I

slept. That makes you at a really

high risk for stroke, heart attack, and

there's. It's supposed to be, like, in the high 90s. Well, I mean, ideally, like,

if you were to test it right now, you would be somewhere around 96, 97,

98. Okay. So when you're in a hospital and you're wearing the pulse Ops on

your finger, the bells aren't going off when you go below 94.

But no, nurses come in. They don't come in until you go below 90.

When you start going. Going below 90, they come into the room, they put

oxygen on you. Like they're trying. Like, being below 90 is

bad. And you are dropping below 90 every. Night for

over an hour. Which is over an hour. Yeah. Which is

terrible. I mean, you're talking about, like, high risk for cognitive

decline, inflammatory issues. Like, bad.

I had to do something. So from class,

I called the number one oral surgeon in the entire country.

His name is Mike Gunson in Santa Barbara. And I said,

I'm in big trouble. And he said, and I scheduled for December 11th.

And then I said to myself, well, maybe I can, you know, get myself a

little bit healthier before I do the surgery, which will improve healing.

And someone had mentioned about sugars, and that's kind of how I entered

the circadian and quantum realm was

I got a constant glucose monitor, and even though I wasn't diabetic

or pre diabetic, my sugars would go out of range. So I

started wearing a constant glucose monitor to just keep myself in

range. And I started to see that I was doing

better. But that's when I heard the podcast with

Jack Cruz and Max Gohane, and I was like, whoa,

I'm really missing the boat here. I'm doing exactly

what healthcare is doing. We're looking at people from a macro

standpoint, and we need to look at people from a micro standpoint,

because the cellular issues that people are having,

the energy issues, or in my case, the energy

brownout that I was having, an exponential effect on all of

my systems. Fatty spots on my liver,

creeping high blood pressure Triglycerides that were high,

sleep apnea, they're all inflammatory diseases. So

about three months after I started. Okay, one quick

sec. So when you listened to the podcast with Dr. Gulhane

and Dr. Cruz, like, just summarize one more time,

like, what the paradigm flip was for you, because so

you were. You were like, macro to micro. Yeah, well, I mean,

in transparency, I listen to that podcast, like, four times to start

to understand it. Okay, well, yes, everyone does.

That's, you know, I mean, that's part. Of the course

cycles. And, you know, I learned it in dental school, but I just learned it

till I could pass the test. I didn't really understand, you know, the

implications of how your mitochondria is really the

light water magnetism. And it was hearing that for the first

time, for the second time. And lucky for me, my

best friend in Las Vegas, his name is Doug Sanquist, who's also a

dentist, he was about a year ahead of me in this journey

and had been telling me, and he was an advocate for me, he says, andy,

I really don't think you should do surgery. I really think you need to learn

about Redox, and I think you need to learn about how to improve your energy

system. And when I first heard him tell me about this,

I mean, I thought he was nuts. And, you know, we joke about it now,

and it was probably a month later, I'm like, wow. Like, I'm

really, like, I feel better, you know? And it was the

summer, so it was so easy for me to just spend more time outside.

Okay, so you listened to this podcast. It flipped, and you were

like, oh, maybe I start with my mitochondria instead of just

doubling down on the anatomy. Correct. I didn't want to do the

anatomy. Well, yeah, that sounds really awful.

Yeah, I really didn't want to do it, but I felt like I had no

choice. It was the only option that was given to me. Right, and so in

the paradigm that you were working out of and that you're

all of your colleagues work out of, it's an anatomical

issue from beginning to end. That is what their

working theory is. That's what they work from. And so you

opened the aperture a little bit because you're like, I really don't want to break

my jaw and have this surgery. And started to

bring mitochondrial function and

perhaps like, a bioelectric

paradigm into the picture. Yep. Okay. And

so then how. What did that do? Like, how did your behavior. Like, what did

you start to do once you were like, okay, if this is True. I'm gonna

try like, you just like going outside or like, what were your.

Right, so. Well, I have a tendency, as you know, to jump

all in. Yeah. But this is a hard area to jump

all in on because it requires a lot of discipline.

So I started with, you know, for me, the easiest thing to

do, the easiest metric for me to check was a constant glucose monitor.

And I started to make like really big changes. And then

I started to see that I would have a night with

no snoring. And then if I had like pasta or

pizza, I would snore terribly. And I'm like, okay,

so there's an inflammatory component here, the sugars, like. Cause

I literally was tracking, was using the app snore lab

and I was tracking when my sugar went

up on my cgm and when I snored, they went

up and down together. It was amazing. So. But then

daylight savings happen. So in that first three months,

I went from severe back to mild with just getting

out into the sun during the day. I did not understand

all the different spectrums of sun. I didn't understand red light at that point.

And uva. I just started mitochondria doesn't care what you

understand, it just cares. You're outside. Yeah, I

wasn't blocking blue light at that point. I just kind of was CGM and

getting outside really dark in uvb, which was great. I mean, I felt better

when I was in UVB light. And then the sleep apnea went from severe to

mild. Then daylight savings happened. And all of a sudden it was like I

took a massive step backwards. That was my aha moment.

Because what changed with daylight savings was my light.

So everything else was the same, except now I was

completely missing. All my signals were messed up. And I was

talking to my friend Doug and Doug's like, I

think you need to start getting more of these light signals into your

system. And I did. I went all in on light and

I started seeing the sunrise every day. So I would sit out in front

of my office for 20 minutes every morning at sunrise.

Then in between patients, I would, if I had like a five or ten minute

break, I would walk outside during uva and then I would

come home and I would eat my lunch outside. And you know,

during uvb, I bought my first two pair of

blue light blocking glasses. I bought a red light panel to

help me use as an adjunct because I do believe that there's no

replacing the sun. But sometimes, like, you know, right now it's what, 10 degrees where

we live, going outside is kind of hard. So we have to, you

know, see where can we meet our patients, where can I meet myself?

And that's really what my focus is as I started working with

patients back in April. Like, I want to meet my patients where they're at.

I had blood work done in the beginning of January, and

a lot of it wasn't all that great still. And

I started asking them for specific tests, and they

said, my physician, why do you want those? And I said, well, I

wanna understand my inflammatory component. I wanna understand my

leptin. And he's like, well, what would you do with that? And I said, well,

I would get more red light and more sunlight and block more blue. And he

laughed. And then three months later, I came back. My triglycerides went from

170 to a hundred. My A1C went from

5.7, 5.3. My vitamin D went from

47 to 66. So. And

now, a year and a half later, I have no apnea.

0. I just tested it two weeks ago. I'm on no blood pressure

medication. I am on no reflux medication.

And I can't remember the last time I said, oh, my God, I have to

take a nap. I mean, if I want to take a nap, I choose to.

But before, it was like I had to schedule my whole day around the nap.

I lost 40 pounds. I have put 10 back on since the winter,

just because it's. I think, you know, my wiggle room, I think that's

really the key, right? So my wiggle room with my anatomy

is small because my anatomy is still off, right? It's still

set back. But if I control all my factors, then my

anatomy is not a component because I'm fixing my energy

system, I'm reducing my inflammation. And I

just said this to a patient that I had a consult with yesterday. Actually, excuse

me, it wasn't a patient. I was speaking down at Temple University Hospital to the

sleep fellows. I did a presentation for them explaining the dental

components, the anatomy, how they need to look at their patients very

simply to say, okay, is there an anatomic issue that could be contributing

to this? And I said to them, I said, well, let me ask you a

question. I said, if you twist your ankle, does your ankle get bigger or smaller?

They said, bigger. I said, if you have heart disease, does your heart get bigger

or smaller? Bigger. Someone who has type 2 diabetes, do they get bigger or

smaller? Bigger. I go, why would the soft palate, why would the nose, why would

the pharyngeal region act any different Tissue is tissue. If you're

inflamed, it's going to get bigger. If it gets bigger, it's going to get closer

together. You're going to snore, you're going to have sleep apnea, and then you're

missing. The most important time for your body to heal

and repair itself is sleep, because you're not getting into the proper levels of

sleep to allow that to happen. So this never ending

wheel that you're on, you're inflamed at night, you're inflamed during the day,

your signals are getting messed up, your signals are messed up at night. So

I open their eyes to make them understand that

there's a lot of factors. And I've gotten a lot of

pushback in the dental community because I'm coming at this

and they think I'm trying to say, oh, the sun is going to fix

all your problems. No, that's not what I'm saying. What

I'm saying is that if you just fix

anatomy and someone has a metabolic issue,

you have the potential of making them worse. Because the body,

when it's inflamed, does not want more oxygen. It

wants to get rid of oxygen. Ho, ho, ho, ho. Okay.

This is big. That is a big statement. Yeah. The

body, when it's inflamed, does not want more

oxygen. This would speak to people who have adverse

reactions to hyperbaric oxygen treatment, which happens.

A friend of mine had that happen with a family member.

They were all excited. They thought this was gonna really help this

person recover from a complex series of illnesses and

surgeries. And he nearly died.

So when you're opening people's airways and doing all of

this anatomy, the thought is more oxygen is better.

But if you, what you're saying is if you don't understand the metabolic piece,

more oxygen is not necessarily better. Boom. So why would that

be? One of the biggest reasons is when the body is inundated

with inflammation. Blue light, non native EMF.

Iron in its natural state of iron +2 goes to iron

+3. And iron +3 can't carry oxygen in the

body. So you become hypoxic. The body's trying to get rid of the

oxygen, it needs more electrons. So we all

know that free radicals, which is free oxygen,

is what is a marker for cancer. So you know,

or if you look at the definition of inflammation,

it's fire. How do you make a fire flame,

build, burn bigger? You add oxygen to it, you add

fuel to it. So if the body is not

reacting well, if apoptosis and tigathy are not working

well, if we're not having enough energy to make

melatonin to that gets your free radical,

you are just making inflammation worse. So

I think it's important component and what I'm trying

to get across to the dental field or the

sleep field is that these patients

absolutely may need anatomic fixes.

But, but let's see how much better they can get. If you fix

root cause problem, which is inflammation.

That's the etiology of every disease we have is based in

inflammation. If you have someone that is on high blood

pressure medication and their blood pressure is managed and you take them off

the blood pressure medication, what happens to your blood pressure

goes back up. Because you haven't fixed the etiology, you're managing their

problem. If you want to try to resolve disease, you have

to fix things at a foundational level. And that's why I

was attracted and for the last year and a half

been studying quantum and circadian biology because that's

root cause issues. And the issues that you

make on a micro level have an exponential

effect on the body. And when I was presenting yesterday,

I said, you, you remember when you were a kid and you took a microscope

and you used to, you know, get the sunlight and you would burn

blades of grass and they all laugh because they're like, yeah, we were

doing like bugs and stuff. I'm like, look, I know, but I was trying to

keep it, you know, on the download that we were just burning grass.

And I said, well, that's the same effect that you can have

when you get your energy system in your body working bright. It's

exponential. You're focusing that energy into the body.

So the body's processes are doing everything that they need

to do to run effectively and efficiently. And that's I think,

a critical piece to this puzzle. So

it's not that metabolic will fix sleep apnea.

Metabolic is an adjunct to some of the anatomic

fixes that we can do. We need to be able to offer

both, that's true informed consent. And that's my

frustration with my colleagues, is that

we're too procedure based. And in order for a patient

to have true skin in the game, they have to understand

all of their options out there. And that's my goal when I'm working

with patients to say, look, we have two boxes that we can work with.

We have an anatomic box, we have a metabolic box, and we can work

on them both together we can work on one

and then maybe switch to the other. But I don't

think just looking at anatomy and

ignoring the metabolic, we have to be able to at least

inform our patients on how they can get their

foundational energy system working better and make them understand

how important that is. And, you know, sometimes it's as

simple as making them understand that wearing sunglasses in the middle of the day is

telling your brain it's nighttime, and using blue light at nighttime

is telling your brain it's daytime. You're all of the signals that

our body is supposed to be doing at those specific times

are getting. They're in chaos. And when

you first hear about this, it's very difficult to wrap

your head around it. But then when you start to see the evidence, when you

start to understand what we're really talking about, the change

is profound. And I think I proved that in myself.

Where, I mean, look, my trouble foods are the three Ps.

Pizza, pasta, pretzels. Can't walk by it without eating it.

Okay, well, it doesn't mean I can't not eat it. I eat it all the

time. I just now know that if I eat it, 30 minutes later, I go

out on a walk and I use up my sugar so it doesn't get stored

as fat. So it's knowledge. And you

know, how you can make simple changes in your life, but the simple

changes take dedication to follow through. And that's

the challenge. This is quite the journey you've

been on, Andy. Like, truly. And then.

And to already be out in front of your peers and in front of your

colleagues educating on this and bringing that piece in.

For somebody listening to this, where, let's say this is their first time

coming in contact with this info. You know, talk to me about the

sunglasses during the day and the blue light at night. And that's throwing my body

into chaos and causing me to be inflamed, blamed, and causing

me to potentially present as needing surgeries and all these other things,

like, because of the light. Like, how is that so

reorient me if I'm in a paradigm that just doesn't.

Right. Well, it's like the current paradigm is just like light.

So what? Like it's nothing? Like, it doesn't matter. Our paradigm

is that our biology is programmed by light. So talk to me

like I'm in that first category and it's how do you

talk to your clients and your patients? Yeah, that's the challenge, isn't

it? So, you know, when you start talking about light, it seems so

insignificant. Yet we are creatures of energy

and Light. And if we don't get that system working

properly, we're doomed to fail. So what

I try to do is I try to make

analogies for patients so they can better understand when

I'm talking about sunlight. I will tell them that red light

or the sunrise, which anchors your circadian rhythm, it

gives your. It's basically resetting all the clocks in our body.

And at 8 o' clock in the morning, maybe our liver

is supposed to work. At 9 o', clock, our pancreas is supposed to work. At

10 o', clock, our heart is supposed to end. Every clock in our.

Each organ has a specific time to run a specific

function. And what we need to do is we need to turn the hands back

of the clock and get it set up every day. So we're maximizing

the process of when it's supposed to happen. Because if we miss it,

then we've missed it for the day, and then we don't get the benefit of

that function within our body or if it's going to

work, it's competing with another

bodily process. So now you're competing for energy.

So it's kind of like trying to do two tasks at the same time.

That's why it's really important to try to align your system every day. And

sunrise does that. It anchors it. It tells your body,

okay, it's time to get moving. Stop producing

melatonin, stop producing cortisol. Let's go, let's

conquer the day. And what I say to patients is sunrise

is literally the keys to the car. UVA light,

which is one hour after, is where all of our important amino

acids are signaled to be made. That's the gas to the

car. And UVB is the engine.

Well, if you miss any of those signals, the car isn't running. And

here's the key. Blue light at nighttime, after the sun

goes down, is popping a hole in your tires. So you can have

your gas, you can have the keys, your engine can be running well.

But if you have flat tires, you're not going anywhere. And that's ultimately what

blue light does. It breaks the

metabolic signals in our body so we don't

produce the necessary fuels to run our body

properly. And there's a lot of science that goes involved in that. And

depending on how much a patient or a, you know, a

client or another doctor or colleague wants to hear about it,

that I can start diving deep into that.

Blue light interferes with. Blue light causes the

calcium channels to stay open. And when a cell gets flooded with

calcium, it makes Peroxy nitrite, which, you

know, causes cellular damage and DNA damage and

cognitive problems. And what does all that lead to?

Inflammation. Point out that blue light. There are tons of

studies about the incidence of blue light in breast and

prostate cancer. Why is this not being talked about? Why

are people getting sunburns during the day? Because they're not

getting their exposure to the sun done properly.

You know, most people think of melatonin. They think of, oh, that's going to help

me fall asleep. And yes, that's true. The brain makes

melatonin that gets deposited into our

bloodstream at night to help us sleep. That only

counts as 5% of our melatonin that our body makes.

The other 95% of melatonin is made

in our cells and in our mitochondria. And the purpose

of that is it's an antioxidant. It actually seeks

out excess oxygen which is free radical. It

binds to it and it prevents inflammation and

breakdown of the body. So how do we make more

melatonin? We need UV light. Well, that goes against what all the

dermatologists are telling us, that we need to avoid UV light. But

then you look at when did skin cancer really start going up? And it was

1980s. So what happened in the 1980s? We became

inundated with technology. There are, there was a study that was

just released, it's pre printed, so it hasn't been peer reviewed

yet. And one of the contributing authors was a

dermatologist. I think it's the first article that I've seen a dermatologist be

associated with. They studied 419,000

people and found that increased

UV exposure decreased cardiovascular

and non skin care mortality with no increase

in skin cancer incidence. That's a pretty

powerful study. So going outside caused

incidences of all disease to go down.

Yes. And did not raise skin cancer incidences.

Correct. And that's it. That's the second study. There was a study in

2014 called the All Cause Mortality Study

that most of us have been using. This is why this

second study is so exciting, because it's even on a bigger

scale that has shown. They did a study of 29,000 people

in the Scandinavian countries and they had less

mortality when they were outside in the sun more. So we have to

start asking. Glenn Jeffries is a prominent physicist.

He does research. Yeah, he's a research scientist. Research scientist.

And he just had an unbelievable study that came out about the benefits

of red light and how it improves mitochondrial function when done in the

morning. Doesn't have the same effect. In the afternoon. What does that tell

us? It tells us that light signaling and the timing is

so critical to better health. And it's when you first

start, you know, when you start to hear these things and you, you start

to see the breadcrumbs that are being laid out, you can really start

to fact check all of this on your own. And

we just need to have more people start to understand

the implications of this. And why is it not

being talked about? And I think it's not being talked about because the sun

is free. It doesn't cost any money to go outside.

Yep. I think big Pharma would rather us have

Ozempic, which again is a drug that

just manages a problem. It does not fix

etiology. No, it does not. And I think

you mentioned earlier when you bring, you brought up metabolic

health and circadian and quantum biology to your colleagues and

what you were saying was we need to look at the metabolic factor.

And what they heard was what we do. You're saying what we

do, it doesn't matter and we should get rid of it. And it's like

that is the thinking that I hear every single time

someone brings up light and whatever the person's area of

focus is. If you say light is fundamental to human

health, they hear. You're saying, my thing doesn't matter. You're saying

food doesn't matter. You're saying exercise doesn't matter. You're saying

like no one is saying that.

No one is saying that. Right. It's an and. And, and

I'm taking a lot of bullets from people that I really,

really cared about and who were some of my mentors.

And all they're hearing is, I'm saying, oh, blue light

is if you block blue light, you're going to take away sleep apnea. And

that's not what I'm saying at all. You know, what I'm saying is

blue light's going to make your sleep apnea way worse. Blue light's going to

cause inflammation. Non native EMF is going to cause

inflammation. You know, it's, it's interesting. I have a friend, so

I was visiting faculty at spear, so I would go and mentor

other dentists from around the country. And one of them called me up

and she had been sick for the better part of four years

and she's been going to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota

and they have not been able to help her. I mean, it's one of the

top out there. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that

a version of that story. Oh, like, name the top

clinic in the country in the US and they

got nothing. So I'm talking to her, and I don't know

anything about where she's from. All I know is that she's from

North Dakota. And I said to her, I go, is there any

chance that you live near a military institution? And she left.

She almost dropped the phone. And she goes, I'm in the national

reserve. I was transferred to North Dakota, and

that's where the third arm of our nuclear defense is housed.

So she's inundated with radar. So I instantly told her, I said, you got to

get a tri fold meter and you got to see what's going on. There's

not a safe place in her house except for one place, her basement, which is

underground. If she goes outside in the middle of her yard, the

electromagnetic forces in her area are nine times the safe

dose. She has no opportunity to heal. And

she literally called me. She's been doing so much better. She's been driving, like,

you know, in the warmer weather. She's been driving, like, two and a half

hours away from where she lives with her kids to, you know,

get outside whenever she can. And she was doing well,

but she realizes she has to move. Yeah. And

she called me the other day, and she goes, what do you think? And I'm

like, well, I kind of told you in the beginning, like, this is, you know,

it can't be good. We talked about getting a building biologist, but where she lives,

it's hard to get a building biologist out there. And, you know, if

you can't make your sleeping environment as safe as possible,

then you can't heal. And if

that's why this is so connected to what I

do. Yes. Because my field isn't. Is

critical. I have to get patients to sleep

because that's when they're going to heal. And if they're not getting proper

sleep, then their body's not healing, and they're set up

the next day to just rinse and repeat. Yes.

It's all connected. It's all connected. The

light in the morning is connected to your sleep that night is connected to.

To all of the symptoms that you're experiencing

that a person is experiencing. It's funny when you point things out. Well, it's

not funny, but you know what I mean. Yes. When you point things out to

people that are just so. Like, they never connected the dots. So when I

tell people, have you gone down for, like, a beach vacation? And

they're like, yeah, and I'm like, if you're in the sun all day, aren't you

exhausted at night? And they're like, yeah, like, I just thought it was the

sun. I'm like, well, it is the sun that you. You've been producing melatonin all

day long. Like your body has gotten all the proper signals. And

then it says, okay, I'm done for the day. Let's go to bed. Yeah. And

then you wake up and you feel amazing and you're like, oh, it's because I'm

on vacation. Right. And it's not. I mean, that's a component.

Yes. You know, we get to live in a fantasy land for a week where

we don't have any stress, but it goes. You know, maybe the

reason why you feel amazing is because if you get the proper light signals,

your brain starts making dopamine and serotonin on its own.

And now you don't need to get an external stimuli from

like an electronic or a food

or whatever somebody's doing because you're making it naturally.

And that's what is so crushing to me to

see all the kids across the country battle

anxiety and depression and have learning

disorders when so much of this is tied

to light. And the studies are all out there

about how blue light contributes to depression. Yeah,

there's the blue light studies showing that's true. And then

there's the teenage health studies showing that

being on your device is leading to all these terrible mental health

outcomes. But they don't connect the dots. The

conclusion on the kids mental health studies is, oh, they must be

watching stuff that's making them sad or something. And

it's like. Or it's the device itself. I don't, you

know, I'm not going to disregard the idea that there's terrible content out there that

is children. You know, that's not having a good effect. But

you could be conjugating Latin on your phone. But if it's 10

o' clock at night and the phone is on factory settings, you're still

destroying your brain and your ability to function.

And that's exactly when I mean that I meet my patient

where they're at. Okay. If they're not going to not

scroll on their phone before they go to bed, then the workaround

is just wear blue light blocking glasses. Yeah, but we're the red

ones, so we really block out and maybe lower the

lux on the phone a little bit so it's not as bright. And I guarantee

you if you're scrolling and you have blue light blocking glasses on

45 minutes late, you're going to be tired because the blue light

signals are not. You're gonna start producing melatonin. But

if you just try to put a filter on a phone, that's not enough. You

have to block the blue light. And it's. You know, they're being told, oh, I

know I shouldn't do screen time, but they're not being told why.

And that isolated frequency is so damaging

to our metabolic health. Excuse me. Not frequency, wavelength. And it's.

That's my job. I mean, I'm so excited. I have a platform.

Next week, I'm speaking in Las Vegas. And, you know, the first

half. Yeah, the first half of my talk is on anatomy, and

the second half is all on metabolic and. Oh, Andrew, that

is so good to hear. Is this like an industry

conference? It is. It's called the Breathe and Thrive

Symposium. So it's a lot of dentists who are treating

kids, who are treating adults with sleep and airway issues

and all the different. There's my functional therapists that are

there, and it's an exciting time, but I also

have to do it in a way where, you know, unfortunately,

I don't. They. I need to present it in a way that. That they can

hear it. Yeah. And so it's to

start with telling a story, and then if they want to

hear more, I think, you know, this. I'm making a mini

residency for dentists and anyone in the dental field that's starting

in April that dives deep into this so that they can

learn how they can act as an advocate to their patients,

give them strategies to help them start to overcome their metabolic health.

And so they can, in conjunction with their anatomic

procedures that these patients still need, we

can now really try to get to the root of the problem. Fix

foundational help. Yes. And it's tough sledding, but,

you know, I'm. Yeah, people want this. I

mean, you know, if there's anyone listening who's in this industry,

there is a holistic dentist about an hour from me.

And people drive from all over

to go there because they don't want

to go straight to throwing train track on their little children's mouths.

They want something that takes in to account

the entire child. Now, they don't have the light piece,

but they have the anatomy, they have the breathing, they have the food, and they

at least, you know, they're on the right track. And because they're using that word,

holistic, they're open to widening their scope.

And medical people, dental people, the

Public wants this. I have lost

count of the number of conversations I've had that start

with exactly what your friend. My child had these

symptoms. I had these symptoms. My parent had these symptoms. We went to every top

clinic in the country. No one could help. And that because none of

them asked, where do you live? What do you like? What?

They don't even think in those terms. But I'm. There are so many

people who want this. So anyone

listening? If you're a dentist, if you know a dentist, send them to

Andy's program, please. Your practice will explode

like, the public is waiting. We're waiting.

We are reached a turning point. And there's so much

frustration out there. There's so much chronic illness,

and there are so few answers. And it's interesting how you

even just phrase that. So I can't tell how many times I

went to the physician and I know everybody. I mean, I tell this story and

patients laugh all the time where they said, you know, if you could just lose

10 to 15 pounds, you would be so much better off. That is an

absolute fact. Okay. You lose a little bit of weight, it's

going to have a beneficial effect. But what happens when they finish that

statement, okay, we'll see how you're doing in six months. How are they supposed

to implement it on their own when they don't even understand what the problem

is? They think that diet and exercise is going to get them there. They're

like, okay, I guess I'm just eating broccoli and chicken breast for six months. And

then it's not sustainable because that's not where the

change happens. The change has to happen at

leptin. Leptin is the most important thing that we need

to fix in order to really bring about proper health

to your system. Right. Which is start. Which means the change

happens at light. Yeah. And let me just back that

up just a hair and say it's not the most important thing.

I don't want to sound dogmatic, and I tried to avoid making

statements like the be all, end all, but that's an important

piece to the puzzle. And diet and exercise is a little bit more

downstream. Still important. Just like anatomy. Still important.

But if I want to try to make a profound change,

if I can get my light environment, both good light and

bad light, if I can get my sleeping environment better,

those have such profound impacts that the other things

sometimes will take care of themselves. And that's awesome.

It's great to watch that happen. One patient I was working with,

she went from an hi in three months working

with me from 7.1 to 6.1. And

I know in three more months of working with her, I could get her down

into the mid fives and then she won't have to take, you know,

medication anymore. That's awesome. It's awesome. Yeah, I mean

that's. I did a whole episode on the cholesterol

medication situation, especially for women,

middle aged women being prescribed that. I have so many

totally healthy friends and they get their

cholesterol measured and it's like, oh, it's up, better take this. And

they're like, okay. And then you ask them and then they feel bad.

They feel, not only that, do they take it. They also feel slightly guilty, like,

oh, I must been, do I must be doing something wrong. My cholesterol is going

up. Not as healthy. I'm not being as healthy as I thought I was.

Right. Meanwhile, cholesterol is really important for brain health.

Let's knock that down. And what's happened since statins

became the number one prescribed medication in the world, or I should say the

United States? I don't know if it's the world, but the United States and

cognitive decline has exponentially

increased. So, you know, we have to start connecting dots.

And look, you know, I understand the struggle out there. My sister

is head of internal medicine at Penn Medicine in Philly. And you

know, this is like taboo subject. We don't, we, in order for

family function to happen, we kind of have to leave our

camps and leave them at the door because she has a very

centralized approach. And I just try to

chip away, chip away, chip away as much as I can and show them.

And when people are ready to hear it, especially like you were talking

about the average, you know, the patient, they want answers,

right. They want to have to be dependent upon medication and just

constantly feeling sick. Yeah. They don't want to take their 19 year old

daughter to a world famous clinic and be told, yeah, it's

probably just going to get worse and she's going to be in a wheelchair in

10 years. But that's just what it is, is what it is.

You hit on what I fight for and that's time. As Uncle Jack said,

the greatest commodity in life is time. And I fight for time.

Make your time, whatever we have, the most

productive, the happiest, the best quality

and the rest takes care of itself. And you gotta do a lot of

the little things in order to make that happen. Yeah. And it, you know, as

you said earlier, it's a big shift, you know, when we're new to it. And

we all started with baby steps and we're like, oh, oh. That actually

made a difference. Oh, okay. And we added a little more. We added a little

more. And, you know, it's all good. That's. I was talking with

someone recently. I'm like, you know, like, even a little bit of morning light is

better than none. And they were like, yeah. It's not like having celiac disease

where you have one, you put your finger in gluten and you're toast. It's

not like that. Yeah. You know, it's like if you go. Outside when you wake

up, you miss sunrise. Just go outside. You know, over time, you get into a

different habit. Absolutely. I mean, look, when I drive home and

it's 10 degrees, I blast the heat in my car and I open the sunroof

and for that 20 minutes, I'm getting direct sunlight. And

when you blast the heat, it's good. So, you know, I don't have to just,

you know, sit outside, I walk the dog, stick

your head out the window, crack the window. There's all these different things that you

can do to get even a little light is better than

no light. Yeah. Which is like the great good news. Right.

It's like, oh, by the way, the thing that's gonna move the needle

the most is free outside every day of your life,

even when it's cloudy. Like, I can't think of better news than that.

Right. It's easy. You just gotta walk outside, take your phone

that you wanna scroll and check out Instagram and all that

stuff, which, hey, look, I am guilty of doing that, but just

do it outside. Yep. And then it's okay.

I just want to circle back to one topic before we wrap up,

which is snoring. So you

mentioned that you started to notice a relationship between your blood sugar and

whether you snored at night. Yes. Is there any. Is

snoring ever normal or is snoring always

a sign of something? Yeah, so I'm going to come

at that. So there is a spectrum of sleep

disorders. And at the most left would

be like, insomnia, late onset

insomnia. Then you would have benign snoring, where it's

not causing a sleep disturbance per se, to

systemic snoring, to urs, which is upper airway

resistance syndrome, to sleep apnea, to like, you're not

waking up in the morning. So there's a spectrum. And it

goes back even further if you go to children,

which would be your child, that's a tornado sleeper, where

they wake up with their head at the bottom of the bed or they wet

the bed past the age of four or you hear them grinding their teeth.

I know up until 2017, I thought when

a parent came to me and said, my kid is grinding their teeth, I'd say,

don't worry, they'll grow out of it. Well, yeah, they grow out of it, but

what have they grown into? So any child that makes

noises at night, that's a sleep disorder. And

yes, they get bigger. But how many nights of

improper oxygens supplied to their brain is too many

for your child? For me, it's one. Right. I want my child to be able

to breathe properly. And this watchful waiting

is not helping anything because they're just growing more into the

problem. So when it comes to snoring, if you're snoring,

download the app Snore Lab. If it's over 10,

follow up, because the question would be, why are you

snoring? And there has to be some inflammatory component

where the snoring noise is made. When the soft tissue is too close together,

the air becomes turbulent and it makes the snoring noise.

Are you doing it because you can't breathe through your nose? Well, if you're not

breathing through your nose, you don't filter the air, so you're getting more

pollutants through your mouth. If you're a child and you're breathing through

your mouth, you grow vertically. And when you grow vertically,

the towel gets more narrow and then the soft tissue will droop.

So there's a lot of cause and effect. The tongue is

critical in growth and development for a kid. As an

adult, once you've missed that window, your tongue

can't make a proper seal. So you never do nasal breathing and you

do mouth breathing. And then when you fall to sleep, where's your

tongue go when you get on your back, goes in the back of your throat,

can't breathe, you become more inflamed and this never ending

cycle starts. So snoring, to try to

answer your question without going off on too many tangents, which I

tend to seem to do, snoring is a sign of a potential problem.

Let's figure out if it's something that's benign or it's

something that's causing an issue, and most people think,

oh my God, if I go find out that I have a

sleep issue, they're going to put me in that cpap. Well, no,

that's not what I'm recommending. I literally had a woman that

came to me that's been in a cpap. She just had a sleep

study. And her sleep study showed that she had

moderate sleep apnea. And when I did my examination on

her, she couldn't breathe through her nose. And I told her, use

intake breathing and a little medical mouth tape. And the last three nights she

hasn't started at all. That was her fix. Nasal breathing and

mouth tape. But she had been given CPAP for the

last year and she feels awful on CPAP

sometimes. The answer is the solution is simple

if we know where to look. Correct. And that's what I

hope to give more information, you know,

starting in April. It's at Airway Health Solutions.

The course just went live, so we're doing it

on April 17th. Okay. And this is the dental

residency. Yeah. Okay. So for all the

dentists out there are the dentists. If you know a dentist, you have a dentist

in your life. Say the link again for the dentist. It's at

Airway Health Solution and it's a solution.

Airway Health Solutions. And it's not. It's

myofunctional therapists, speech therapists, sleep

physicians, dentists. They really. Oh, wonderful. Okay. Oh, yeah.

It's not just for dentists. It's anyone who is in the field

of treating any type of sleep disorder. Okay.

So sleep disorder residency. You want to bring this into your scope

of practice. Excellent. Now, what if someone wants to

work with you as a client? Where should they go? Boy, that's a good

question. So you can reach me on Instagram. That's one place.

Which is Andrew Cohen, dmd. You

can reach me at my office website, which is

sleephealthypa.com and there's

all information to work with me and then I can reach out with you. And

I have a whole separate platform that we do,

zooms. I provide information and education on

how I can help. Be an advocate for you to start

walking down and getting answers through code

diagnosis. Fantastic. Andrew, thank you so much for the work that you

do. I also want to mention we're delighted to welcome Andrew onto the faculty

at the Institute of. Of Applied Quantum Biology. He will be

doing live calls going forward. And just, you

know, it's so great to see you put your tremendous energy

and intellect in this direction. It's so needed and you're going to make

such an impact. And thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure.

I was so looking forward to joining you. It was just

a great time. We're going to have to. We'll probably do it again. It sounds

good. Oh, yeah. For sure.

This has been the Quantum Biology Collective podcast.

To find a practitioner who practices from this point of view,

visit our

directory@quantumbiologycollective.org

if you are a practitioner, definitely take a look at the

Applied Quantum Biology certification, a six week study

of the science of the new human health paradigm and its

practical application with your patients and clients. We

also love to feature graduates of the program on this very

podcast. Until next time, the QVC.