The Top Warning Signs You’re One of the Millions of People Suffering from Undiagnosed Sleep and Upper Airway Disorders with Dr. Oliver Zolman

Dhru Purohit (0:00)

Hi, everyone, Dhru Purohit here. Today, we're diving deep into a topic that affects millions, and yet, almost always goes unnoticed, undiagnosed sleep and breathing disorders. And here's the myth that I want to break right away. If you've heard of breathing disorders, if you've heard of undiagnosed sleep disorders, you immediately think sleep apnea. And if you know anything about sleep apnea, you might be picturing that this is an issue that primarily impacts older people, often men, who are heavyset and is something that seems very extreme, that's met with extreme snoring. And those are the ones that are suffering from this issue. But that's not the case. Young people, women and people that are at a perfectly healthy weight are suffering in silence, millions of them from these breathing disorders. And if you're someone who's thinking, okay, does this conversation apply to me or someone that I know or someone that I love? If you're someone who knows someone who snores regularly, who grinds their teeth at night, that's a big one, who clenches very hard, who has maybe even TMJ at night, or breathes through their mouth very heavily while sleeping, these can all be real warning signs of an underlining airway problem and are worth investigating. Now, this one's personal for me. I've always been a great sleeper. Sleep is always something that I've done well, and I haven't had to think about too much beyond a lot of the basics. But in my early 40s, and I'm 43 now, in my early 40s is when I noticed that things started to change a little bit. I wasn't sleeping as great, but, you know, it wasn't bad enough to do a deep investigation on it. But it was my dentist. Shout out to my dentist, Dr. Ross Jin, here in Santa Monica, who was the first person to tell me that, hey, I'm noticing you're grinding your teeth a lot. Are you stressed out? And that's one of the first things that people will say if they hear that you're grinding your teeth. Are you stressed? And I've had different moments in my life that have been more stressed than, you know, my normal baseline. In general, I'm probably the least stressed person that I know. And many people tell me I'm the one of the least stressed people that they know. So that didn't in itself explain everything. And through meeting different colleagues and people in the space, like Dr. Mark Bahena, Ask the Dentist and other individuals that are experts and having James Nestor on this podcast, what I uncovered was that part of what I was navigating were upper airway issues and upper airway breathing disorder that was tied to a combination of gaining weight. I was pretty thin growing up in my 20s and early 30s and started to put on a little bit more weight to be at a more normal weight in my early 40s and I have my natural jaw genetics that are there, slightly narrow jaw and having really bad orthodontic treatments when I was younger, including an orthodontist that pulled teeth out, which actually crowded my jaw even further. And all these things were part of the puzzle that I was putting together of why my sleep was not as great as it could be. You know, and that's why I'm excited about today's episode because we're going to be diving deep into this topic. I'm going to tell you a little bit about our guest today and then why he's the perfect person to talk about it. So we're interviewing Dr. Oliver Zolman. He's one of the world's foremost experts in biological aging, whose work over the years and partnership with Brian Johnson and designing Blueprint has led to all sorts of advancements in how we think about biological aging and how people can step into different organ systems and try to optimize them by really focusing on the basics of exercise, lifestyle, diet, sleep, and a whole bunch of other things as well too. But what many people don't know about Dr. Oliver Zolman and his story is that this topic is actually extremely personal for him as well. For years, as you'll get into on the podcast today, he's been battling chronic fatigue, trying to get to the root of what exactly has been the primary contributor to it. He's gone down a bunch of different channels and ultimately land on this idea that these upper airway issues that he's been navigating have been a massive contributor to poor quality sleep, which not only leaves him just chronically fatigued, but also, as we talk about here, undiagnosed sleep issues can increase your risk of dementia, increase your risk of heart disease and cancer and everything else that's there. So if sleep isn't great, we want to get to the root of it. And obviously airway issues is one part of why sleep might not be great for some people. And it's a part that's not talked about enough. So we're excited to dive into it today with Dr. Oliver Zolman. I'm excited for this podcast. Let's jump in.