Episode 127: Is Your Child’s Sleep Affecting Their Behavior? with Karese Laguerre

Dr. Deb speaks with Registered Dental Hygienist, Karese Laguerre, who uncovered sleeping issues in her children and it changed their lives! Now she shares with our audience what you can do for your kids and yourself to get the restorative sleep you deserve. 

Do not miss these highlights:

[05:58] How a Pediatric dentist saw oral-facial muscles impacting Karese’s children sleep

[09:44] If you haven’t gotten restorative sleep during your youth, that’s going to compromise your health and your immune system

[10:44] Signs that you may have issues with sleep

[13:41] Do sleeping patterns or habits impact breathing?

[16:49] What is the difference between a home sleep study vs sleep study in a facility 

[18:00] There’s over a 70% overlap between sleep deprivation and those signs and symptoms in ADHD children 

[18:44] Few tips that parents can do at home that might help them start to make some sleep changes 

[22:43] Benefits of using humidifiers in a dry room

[23:52] Dietary changes that can help sleep better

[25:32] When you’re eating so late at night, your body is so focused on digestion and not on rest

[26:46] What is myofunctional therapy

Resources Mentioned

Serenity U – Gain access to a searchable library of health tips and strategies with Dr. Deb – https://debra-s-school-1b7e.thinkific.com/courses/serenity-u 

About our Guest:

Karese Laguerre, like many parents, suffered in silence while her children struggled with the symptoms of undiagnosed sleep and breathing issues. One visit to a pediatric dentist changed the trajectory of their lives. Already a Registered Dental Hygienist (RDH), Karese, trained with Sandra Holtzman, Lois Laynee and Sarah Hornsby to establish her orofacial myology knowledge. With this initial training and numerous others, in a few short years she has not only resolved all her children’s issues but helped hundreds of patients, children and adults alike, discover how great life can be functioning on full. Her private practice, The Myo Spot is now a leader in the quest for myofunctional therapy awareness and public education.

Her latest published book, Accomplished, delves into how to sleep better, eliminate burnout, and execute goals. Karese’s mission is to transform and positively impact as many households as possible through dynamic breath, brain and bodywork.

Connect with Karese:

www.themyospot.com

www.airwaymatters.blog

Book: “Accomplished: How to Sleep Better, Eliminate Burnout,and Execute Goals”

Transcription of Ep #127:

Debra Muth 0:02
Welcome to Let’s talk wellness. Now I’m your host, Dr. Deb. This is where we talk about everything wellness, and learn to defy aging and live our lives on our own terms. Welcome back to let’s talk wellness. Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb.

Debra Muth 0:20
I have a very special guest with me today Karese, who like most parents she suffered in silence while her children struggled with the symptoms of undiagnosed sleep and breathing issues. Once she visited the pediatric dentist, it changed the trajectory of their lives. She was already a registered dental hygienist and crease trained with Sandra Holtzman, Louise laning, and Sarah Hornsby to establish her oral facial myology knowledge. That’s a mouthful, guys, but this is going to be an amazing training for you. So her initial training with numerous others in a shoot few short years, she had not only resolved all of her children’s issues, but helped hundreds of patients, children and adults alike discover how great life can be with functioning at their fullest. She has a private practice called the Myo Spot is now a leader in the quest for myofunctional therapy, awareness and public education. I’m really excited to have priests with me today as we talk about the benefits of oral dental appliances and various therapies that you can use to help obtain better sleep, which will eliminate burnout. So much of what we talked about here on the show. And her mission is really to transform and impact as many households as possible through her dynamic breath, brain and body work. So I am going to turn this show over to crease and let her tell us everything she knows so that we can all sleep better, and have healthier, happier and more fulfilled fulfilled lives. While we are getting improved sleep.

Debra Muth 2:12
I’m Dr. Deb, founder of Serenity Health Care Center. I want to thank you for joining our let’s talk wellness now podcast, it has been such a pleasure to share our knowledge. With so many people. We are averaging about 25,000 downloads an episode. And that is amazing because it’s showing us how much people want to learn about health and wellness. Outside of the health care center, we have had the pleasure of changing lives for over 8500 clients, both men, women and their children. As a result of this, I have created serenity you a university Learning Center where you can access all of my knowledge that I have developed over 25 years of practice at your fingertips in an easy to find index library, you will have access to this dashboard 24 seven, it will be like having your own personal natural path at your beck and call any time a day. I’d like to encourage you to check it out at Serenityu.com.

Debra Muth 3:28
Everybody, this is Dr. Deb from let’s talk wellness now and I have Karese Laguerre here with us today. And we are going to talk about sleep and what she’s done with her children. And this amazing center that she’s created as a result of something that she went through. So welcome to the show.

Karese Laguerre 3:49
Thank you for having me. It’s so such a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Debra Muth 3:53
So Chris, tell us your story. I always love to start with people’s stories, because that’s where all the meat and potatoes is. Tell us about your story and your children because they were they suffered some sleep issues. And that’s kind of what got you on this journey. Correct?

Karese Laguerre 4:08
Yes, absolutely. So I think that as a parent, that’s always going to be the Spurs so many wonderful adventures we wind up on is definitely the children. But I started my career as a registered dental hygienist and in working as a registered dental hygienist. I was working for this fabulous pediatric dentist who kind of put together some dots for me. So what I think as parents we tend to do is we hold a lot inside so somebody will come by and they’ll ask, you know, how’s everything and you tend to just give them all the good stuff like yay, Johnny’s doing great and soccer and you know, we’ve got ballet on Monday for Susan, something that’s so light and fluffy and it makes your world sound amazing. But the reality of my personal situation was that my son, my eldest and my only son had a big issue with impulse and behavioral control ADHD and for a long time, we ignored it. And it got really bad to the point where now we had to medicate it and really pay heavy attention to it. And then my oldest daughter had every sleep issue under the sun. I mean, you name it, she suffered with it. So whether it was sleepwalking, sleep talking night terrors, bedwetting, everything and it was consistent every single night, there was something going on for 10 years, the first 10 years of her life, it was major. And then the younger two, we just felt like we you know, my husband, at one point told me that we should just ask for a keg on the prescription for the antibiotics because we’re just back and forth so much with them with the year and throat infections and constant constant congestion. But it was my pediatric dentist that actually was the one who kind of put together all that. So while there were a myriad of things going on in my home, and it manifested in different ways. He was the way in which they were breathing and using their oral facial muscles that were really impacting their upper respiratory system, their sleep, and therefore everything else declined as a result with their health. So that sent me down a rabbit hole, and got me into what I do now. myofunctional therapy and helping both children and adults alike, discover functioning on full from better sleep better breathing.

Debra Muth 6:27
That’s amazing. And you know, so many times we don’t ever think of our oral facial muscles impacting our sleep. So it was really just kind of a blessing that your pediatric dentist saw them and kind of uncovered this.

Karese Laguerre 6:44
Yes, absolutely. Working with a lot of stuff, so a lot of different appliances and so forth. Because right now, I think dentistry is going on that trajectory where they’re starting to work more with sleep and different appliances. But very little do we think about the impact that that might have as a youth, on children, their sleep matters to their at these critical stages where, you know, they don’t get in that stage three of sleep, that’s the only time when human growth hormone is secreted. And so they’re missing a lot of their growth potential. There’s a lot of impact and be just on their sleep or their behavior, but actually their growth and development if they’re not actually cycling through the way that they should in their sleep stages.

Debra Muth 7:29
Absolutely. You know, and there’s so many kids that struggle, like you said, with the bedwetting and the walking and the night terrors and all of these things. And we keep looking for infections or neurotransmitter imbalances, or are they on the spectrum somehow, but we don’t look often to what’s happening with them while they’re sleeping, and how they’re breathing and what’s happening there.

Karese Laguerre 7:53
Yes, and it’s very unfortunate, because it all starts up in that area, it’s on the upper respiratory system. So when we’re talking about the oral facial structures, when you think about it, you lie down and you go to sleep and you’re ready for really restorative sleep, your body is going to relax, that’s the first thing it does is the wall, the muscles start to relax. But what’s up here in the oral facial structures, that’s all of the stuff that’s surrounding all of those muscles and tissues are surrounding your airway. If all that is relaxing too much, or we’re not moving our tongue, which is a very long organ, people think of it, it’s just one muscle, it’s actually innervated by eight different muscles and pair. So there’s 16 muscles. But if we don’t have all of those engaged, we get that tongue that can go as far down as like C six. So if you’re thinking about our spine, a tongue very long, we don’t get that tongue up and out of the airway. And we don’t get all these muscles to be well toned, so that they’re not collapsing so much. And we’re able to actually get good air, we can’t oxygenate to restore the ugly sleep, we’re only going to be oxygenating enough to just keep us out of light rest and we won’t ever really hit that really good stage three or deep REM.

Debra Muth 9:10
That is so amazing. Because you’re right most of the time. You know we don’t think about this sleep issue and TiVo people are in their 40s or 50s or 60s. And or they’re morbidly obese, then we think about it, but we don’t think about it in younger people. And I see so many clients that complain of poor sleep that you know, they can’t fall asleep, they can’t stay asleep. They’re constantly tossing and turning, they’re not waking up refreshed. And we never think about sleep issues, structural issues as being the cause of that. But it sounds as though we should be looking at that much sooner.

Karese Laguerre 9:44
Absolutely. Because when you don’t start early, it really all compounds as you age. So if you haven’t gotten restorative sleep for the better portion of your youth, that’s going to leave you a bit compromised, especially with your health and your immune system. You’re not going to To be able to fully restore as you are young adults going into actual, you know, mature adulthood, that’s going to impact a lot of your critical thinking abilities, your performance as you wake up in the morning. Are you waking up prepared and ready for the day? Or do you need a few cups of coffee to actually propel you through? Our sleep is very critical to a lot of our performance, be it in work, or at the gym or in life? We need good restorative sleep.

Debra Muth 10:29
Absolutely. So how, how can you start to notice that you may have issues with sleep? What could parents look at early on to change their child’s sleep? sleep patterns and some of their behavior during the day? I would imagine?

Karese Laguerre 10:44
Oh, yes, what I think is a big big sign that people tend to ignore or they don’t ignore, and they think it’s adorable is snoring. snoring is a very common thing. But common is not normal. And normal, is really good function. Right? So snoring, if you think about what snoring actually is snoring is just the sound of air meeting resistance as it’s going through that upper respiratory system. Nothing about that sounds healthy at all. So it might sound adorable that little Jimmy is snoring, you know how cute he sounds like his dad. But if you think about it, both dad and the child at that point, are struggling, the air is struggling to get through the passageway. And that’s the sound of that air vibrating against those tissues pushing its way in. So I think the first sign to look for is to have a non silent breathing pattern. That’s something you want to make sure you’re aware of you shouldn’t hear your child breathing, breathing is meant to be inaudible that air just that we don’t see it, we don’t want to hear it either. Second thing to look for are very narrow small mouths and children. If they’re requiring braces or need expanders, most likely there’s already something going on. So when we look at the roof of the mouth, let’s say you have a very narrow mouth with crowded teeth. If we look at the roof of the mouth, the roof of the mouth on top of it, that’s the floor of the nose. If they don’t have a big broad roof of mouth, they definitely don’t have a big broad floor for that nasal passage. So they’re already compromised at one level there. And then frequent tonsil infection. So like strep throat, and it was really repetitive. Like I mentioned with my children, how my husband said that we should have the keg of the amoxicillin if you’re having those frequent infections. So tonsils blocking up that airway is going to be a major major sign to that they’re not going to be able to breathe appropriately, they can’t have that part of the upper respiratory system really congested in blocking that area so frequently. So I would say look for signs of any sort of audit, auditory breathing, you don’t want to be able to hear the breathing, you definitely want to make sure that they’re not really small in the mouth, no narrow dental arches, because that’s going to impact the width of the floor of the nose and that their tonsils are not frequently infected.

Debra Muth 13:19
Those are such great tips because I think we don’t think to look at our kids. And in that way, we don’t look at their mouths, we don’t look at that kind of thing. What about sleeping patterns or habits, like sleeping on a certain pillow or sleeping without a pillow or sleeping with the bed full? Do any of those things impact their breathing or their ability as well?

Karese Laguerre 13:41
These are really good questions. So I would say that, typically no many of those aren’t going to impact. We do like it if the children are not restless sleepers, right. So we don’t want them to be tossing and turning, they shouldn’t be all over the bed, all over the bed, that’s a good sign that they’re definitely not getting a good amount of sleep. But if they’re sleeping on their back or their sides, and they’re relatively still or they might move maybe one time or two times during the night, it’s it’s pretty good. But they like to sleep with a little teddy bear or a bunch of teddy bears on the bed, it’s not going to really impact their breathing too much unless they have you know, allergies or they’re very allergic children, especially to dusk. Some of these big teddy bears that they don’t get washed very often will cause them more frequent congestion. So I would look into that if that is a symptom that your child is experiencing. definitely avoid the dust buildup on having a lot of those things in the bed with them. But outside of that no many of those aren’t going to really affect the psychology or the physiological aspects of the breathing.

Debra Muth 14:52
Awesome. What about devices that we can use to track our sleep? I know adults we use our Fitbit and then we look and we see okay, how Many hours of sleep that I get, I get good REM sleep. And I know there’s the aura ring that people can use, can they use any of those kinds of things to help identify if they’re not sure what their child’s sleep pattern is like,

Karese Laguerre 15:13
you can definitely use a lot of those things. However, I would say that we use those all with caution, right, because they’re not going to be like standard sleep study materials, it’s not going to monitor everything in the same exact fashion, it is a good guideline. So if you’re seeing that your child is having a lot of movement at night, or if you’re seeing that they’re having lower respiratory events, so if they’re seeing that you’re wearing something like aura ring, or you’re wearing something that is going to track their pulse oxygenation, and you’re seeing that it’s going down, and you’re getting in the 80s at night for them for their breathing, we don’t want that at all, we want optimal oxygenation to be 97 or above, and not to dip down too low, because that’s going to be detrimental to their young growing flourishing minds. So absolutely, make sure that you’re tracking it. But that would be something that you’re going to take with a grain of salt, and definitely take that to a professional. That way they can get a really good sleep study, because that’s going to give you a myriad of information that you absolutely need to get them treatment going forward.

Debra Muth 16:26
That’s awesome. And for kids, when they do a sleep study, I know adults, we can do sleep studies at home, and it’s not so bad. But when we want to see what they’re actually doing, like how restless are they? How many times are they moving? What are these night terrors, like? Is it better for them, then to do that sleep study in a facility where they have somebody that watches them the entire time, they’re sleeping

Karese Laguerre 16:49
Significantly better, because then they’re going to get that 24 hour monitoring that you’re not able to do as a as a parent. I mean, we’re tired too, we have sometimes ourselves, right, they’re going to get that monitoring in many different facets. So they’re going to monitor the brain activity, they will monitor also, the heart activity, they’re going to monitor respiratory respiration, they’re going to monitor their movement, and they will monitor anything that’s audible. So they’ll be able to get all the different views that you won’t actually get from a home study at home with the child is the most comfortable. I’ll tell you, my kids didn’t love it when they had to do it. But it does give you so much data. And it’s such valuable information because there’s so many cross links with things, especially when it comes to children and their behavioral impulses, that we definitely need as much data as possible. Give them the best resolution,

Debra Muth 17:44
Especially if they’re acting out and they’re having some ADHD type behaviors. And that could be correlated back to sleep. There’s so many more positive things we can do for sleep than medicating them for ADHD if we’re not actually fixing the problem that they have.

Karese Laguerre 18:00
Absolutely. And I think the big thing to know about ADHD is that it’s not something that you go and you just get tested for, right, it’s based off of the signs and symptoms. And there’s actually an over 70% overlap between sleep deprivation and those signs and symptoms in children and ADHD manifestation. So when there’s that big of an overlap, I’d much rather rule out the sleep as a possibility and do a sleep study than having to medicate off of, you know, an assumption.

Debra Muth 18:32
Absolutely. I agree with that. I think that’s so important. So can you give us a few tips of things that parents can do at home that might help them start to make some sleep changes for them?

Karese Laguerre 18:44
Absolutely. So the first thing that you want to do is make sure that you’re implementing some form of a nasal hygiene routine. Not the most fun thing your family will ever do. But it is something that’s incredibly important. You want to have a sailinw rinse and preferably, I really like the clear brand because they have xylitol in it. So the xylitol is going to help it really uptake. The salient rents once a night, just like you would brush their teeth probably before you brush their teeth. You just squirt some saline up there, they’re not going to love it. I promise you, they’ll get used to it, my children did, but it’s the first step in making sure that everything in the nasal passage is nice and clean and clear. That way they are ready to intake oxygen all night. That’s the another important thing too is that they have to be breathing through their nose. If you’re getting a lot of mouth breathing at night, it’s going to be detrimental because that air quality is significantly less poor. A significant more poor I’m sorry, then nasal breathing, so our nose was designed for breathing. When the air goes in the nose Not only is it warmed, it is filtered with the nasal hairs. It’s filtered out And actually optimized so that we can get all of the nitric oxide that we need. So they can bind to the receptors and really get that oxygen in the blood system and flowing through to all of our vital organs. So we don’t want to mouth breathe, because you’re missing out on significant portion of good quality oxygen when your mouth breathing. So clean out the nose, that’ll get it nice and primed and ready. That way the child is prepared for a good night of sleep, the first few days you do, it probably won’t be fun. But after that, they get used to it. And it’s just like brushing their teeth, it becomes just part of the routine. And it’s something that traps them nicely before bed. My second tip, I would say, absolutely make sure that you’re being consistent. So we talked a lot about it when we are parenting younger children. So when we have babies and toddlers, we talked about keeping a routine and being consistent. But we actually need that in childhood, even as adults, we need it as well. It’s important to have a routine because our body’s circadian rhythm is going to normalize itself off of that. So if we’re having issues with getting the kids to fall asleep, or to stay asleep, it’s very important to start to program your circadian rhythm by keeping a very consistent timeframe of when we go to bed. When do we start to prep for bed? When is it that we’re in bed and maintain that? See if you can do it as a family because it’ll improve mom and dad sleep as well, to be consistent. We need that as children all the way into adulthood. So keep a good nasal hygiene routine and maintain consistency with your bedtimes. It’s going to help a lot.

Debra Muth 21:45
That’s great tips. I love those because even as adults, if we’re not consistent with our timeframe, it’s easy for us to say, oh, I’ll go to bed in an hour, then you’re on the tablet or you’re on something or you watching movie and then it’s I’ll go to bed and another half an hour. And so before you know it, it’s two, three hours later, and then you still have to get up at the same time. And that’s hard for us.

Karese Laguerre 22:06
Yes, yes, it definitely does delay our ability to be able to wake up refresh. And that’s what we need. We need the wake up ready to start today. Because when you’re starting off at asleep does deficit, it’s really hard to catch up. Your body actually never does catch up, right?

Debra Muth 22:23
Yeah, we can’t make up that sleep as much as we say, sleeping on the weekend, I’ll catch up on my sleep. We don’t make that sleep time up. What do you think about using humidifiers in a room? When it’s dry? Like I live in the north? So we have the heat on more than we have the air on? What do you think about things like that?

Karese Laguerre 22:43
I think that’s really good, it’s definitely good to make sure that we are monitoring what’s going on as far as the air quality, right. So when it’s very dry, we do need to add a bit of humidity. And that’s going to help, especially a lot in the north when it’s cold in the winter is for that dryness. And that’s going to help keep that nose nice and moisturize so that we don’t lose out on a lot of the quality that we would get from that hair when it’s being humidified naturally through our nose. So that’s very important, incredibly important to make sure that you have but with that make sure that you’re doing the nasal hygiene routine that we can balance out everything.

Debra Muth 23:23
Yes. And I will add, make sure you’re washing your humidifiers out. So you don’t develop mold in there too. Because otherwise then you’re breathing in more things that are not good for us that we don’t want to have there.

Karese Laguerre 23:35
Oh, yes, absolutely.

Debra Muth 23:37
Yeah, absolutely. So is there anything people can do as far as dietary changes that can help them sleep better? Or when they eat or how much they eat or how late they eat anything like that we can do?

Karese Laguerre 23:52
Yeah, that’s a really great question. I love that. So it’s very important that we keep down our inflammatory foods. So a lot of times and you know, people don’t like this information at all, a lot of times dairy is a big inflammatory food, love their milk in their cheese, but you’ve got to cut back or eliminate please, that let’s dairy that dairy is going to cause a big problem. But if you cannot delete eliminate it out of your diet entirely, make sure that you’re not having it for at least five hours before bed. It takes a long time for the body to process and break down these dairy products. And we don’t want to have our digestive system having to work while we are sleeping. Because that’s going to take away from a lot of the restorative functions that your organs should be doing. So we want to have our dietary on our digestive system I’m sorry, clear before bed, so dairy avoid significantly and before any sort of inflammatory gluten is very inflammatory. can be inflammatory for many corn products can be inflammatory and sugar in some ways, very high sugar content can be very inflammatory as well. So we want to eliminate those at least five to six hours before bed. But try to avoid eating any food, even if it’s a light snack that you need to have before bed, eliminate eating any time in that window two hours before bed. So that that dietary system is able to eliminate itself and just sleep and restore.

Debra Muth 25:32
Yeah, our body takes a lot of time, you know, it’s a lot of energy for digestion to happen. So when you’re eating so late at night, your body is so focused on digestion, it’s not focused on rest, and we need that rest phase in there.

Karese Laguerre 25:46
Absolutely, that’s the only time actually that our brain is actually so our brain is working more than it ever does when we’re sleeping, which is surprising, right and eat it all day to function. But what it’s doing is it’s actually doing that restorative function of cleaning itself out, it’s cleansing, it’s putting in all of those memories that we’ve attained there. During the course of the day, it’s really doing all of the most important tasks at night. And that’s the only time is when we’re sleeping. So if we’re having other priorities, like our gastrointestinal system has to now function, that our brain is not going to get to do all the important stuff that the only time it does is when we’re sleeping.

Debra Muth 26:27
Such a great point. Can you tell us a little bit about your center that you’ve created to help people with this?

Karese Laguerre 26:34
Yes, soI have my own private practice the Myospot, it is a wonderful place where we do a lot of myofunctional therapy. So to answer a question, I don’t get asked a lot. What is myofunctional? therapy? Yes, functional therapy is kind of like working with a personal trainer. But I work with all the muscles below the eyes, and yet above the shoulder. So I’m working with a lot of those oral facial and some of the oral pharyngeal muscles to help strengthen the awareness and the coordination of them. Because when we don’t have good proper use of these muscles, and many people don’t even understand what that good proper use means. So it’s like really getting Personal Training, because you’re learning along with it, you’re developing new neural patterns on how you should use these muscles. That way you can sustain really good breathing, really good chewing and swallowing, it’s going to help in so many ways with overall health. So not only will you get better sleep, because you’ll be breathing better. But your digestive system will be working a lot better, because digestion actually starts in the mouth, not the stomach. Yes, no lie was where everything starts to break down. It’s the first step in the digestive system. So you’ll be getting a lot of that digestive stuff worked out as well. And then a lot of really great benefits that happen with a lot of the neuro cognitive things. So we help a lot of people who suffer with anxiety and depression and so forth. Because a lot of that really stems back into the way that they’re breathing. And all of that goes back into the way those muscles are working.

Debra Muth 28:16
So do you do implement something that we call myofascial therapy? Is it similar to that where you’re actually working physically to release the tension of the muscles? I would assume there’s a little bit of that. And then there’s some exercise things that you teach people to do with their facial muscles.

Karese Laguerre 28:34
Yes, so there is a little bit of overlap, but they are two different modalities. So there are a lot of manual manual therapists that do actually do that physical manipulation with myofascial. I do do some oral facial myofascial release. I wouldn’t say I do the whole body, but there are some manual therapists that do the myofunctional. Where it differs is that yes, it is more instructional where we are giving you exercises where we are helping to isolate various muscles and get strength and awareness in different places that you wouldn’t necessarily be getting physical. With, you’ll be kind of getting more instructional.

Debra Muth 29:15
And how often do people have to do these types of exercises to elicit a change?

Karese Laguerre 29:22
I would say on average, it’s going to take at least about four to six months in order to be a really good change. And that’s because all good things in time, right? So they’re very easy to mold and very flexible. You can get a lot of really fast and rapid results in children and adults. We’ve had these patterns for 20,30,40, 50 however many plus years, it takes a little bit of time to start changing all that around.

Debra Muth 29:53
Absolutely it does. And do people can people do these types of exercises. Is anywhere at any time during the day? Or is it something they do before they go to bed?

Karese Laguerre 30:06
I think that a really great time to do them is when you’re at home and you’re comfortable setting because there’s a lot of you need that, that reflexive. So you’re going to be looking at yourself, it’s reflective, you’re watching yourself as you’re doing it, the word is slipping my mind. But you’re getting a lot of reflective feedback. So you’re going to be watching yourself in a mirror and you’re doing these exercises, I wouldn’t say that, you know, do them in the middle of the day while you’re in the office in your

Debra Muth 30:41
on zoom, we’re going to be looking at ourselves and doing exercises, right?

Karese Laguerre 30:46
During the work meeting on zoom, you’re comfortable, and you’re just sitting on zoom and zooms your mirror, that’s a great time.

Debra Muth 30:55
There you go. That’s awesome. This is such great information. And I love it because it’s it’s things that empower people to be able to make lifelong changes for themselves without having to take a pill without having to, you know, change their entire lifestyle around and they don’t have to use a machine, right? If they make some of these changes, the hope is that you won’t need to use a C pap machine down the road as you age and you have more structural issues and obesity and health problems and things like that. Right?

Karese Laguerre 31:27
Exactly, exactly. That’s a very big goal. And actually, there’s a lot of people who are currently on C paps, perhaps who can’t tolerate them who have a hard time keeping them on for the entire duration of the night. A lot of that is due to the way their oral facial structures are functioning, they cannot withstand having something there. So we do provide like a really good help in being able to either tolerate, sustain and use or eventually for some eliminate. That C Pap.,

Debra Muth 31:59
that’s wonderful. I love that because I have so many patients that start on a C Pap, and they’re just like, I can’t do it. I’m ripping it off in the middle of the night. Or I feel like I’m suffocating. I can’t do it. And so they suffer. But there’s so many health complications that can arise from us not getting enough oxygen at night that it’s not a healthy thing for them to do at all.

Karese Laguerre 32:21
Exactly. In that case, I would say absolutely. The benefits of doing something far outweigh the risks of wearing it.

Debra Muth 32:31
Yeah. I agree. This has been such a great conversation. And I think that there’s so many people that are listening to us that are going to say, I need to get this for my kids, how do they reach out to you and how do they work with you.

Karese Laguerre 32:46
So the first step is from my website, so you can visit my website, themyospot.com. And on there, you are able to book a free consultation, because multifunctional therapy is not necessarily for everyone. We talked about what happens and what’s occurring every day and how you are experiencing life and whether or not it would be a good fit for you. So if it is a good fit, then we work together, I see a lot of people all over the world with teletherapy over a platform very similar to zoom. And we’re able to get phenominal results for many people that myofunctional therapy is really good for.

Debra Muth 33:23
I love that. So for those of you who are driving or working out while you’re listening to us, don’t worry about that we’ve got her contact information, you’ll see it in our show notes, you’ll also see it in our social media. So reach out and have this conversation to help you and your kids heal from problems with sleep and maybe even heal some things you never thought you would be able to because it may just be an oxygen deprivation or sleep deprivation that’s causing some of the behavioral things that are going on.

Karese Laguerre 33:54
Absolutely.

Debra Muth 33:55
So any last tips or tricks that you’d like to leave our listeners with?

Karese Laguerre 34:00
I think the only thing I think is really important is that you have some form of awareness as to your sleep and the sleep or those that you love. So if it’s your children, keep note of how they’re sleeping. Are you finding that they’re getting good quality sleep? Can you hear it? If it’s a spouse or another loved one in the home, keep good track because sleep is the most important thing that we do throughout our day. We spend a third of our life doing it. We want to make sure that we’re doing it right.

Debra Muth 34:33
Absolutely. I love that. Thank you so much for being with us today. This has been just a fantastic conversation. And any of you that are listening please reach out and check her out and get some help for your kiddos or yourselves.

Karese Laguerre 34:47
Thank you Dr. Deb, I had so much fun.

Debra Muth 34:51
Hey, it has been really great sharing this time with you guys on the let’s talk wellness now podcast. If this episode has helped you or you feel is Though this episode would help someone else we’d love for you to leave us a review, share this podcast. And if you don’t want to miss the most exciting episodes we have coming. We’d love for you to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play. Until next time, live every day to the fullest.

%d bloggers like this:
search previous next tag category expand menu location phone mail time cart zoom edit close