What Is Vivos?

What Is VIVOS?

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Dr. Micheal Bennett, DDS (Double board certified practitioner) I really feel like VIVOS is one of the great answers to the healthcare crisis that is in America because we are getting to the root cause of what is in a lot of us and that is not breathing well and not sleeping well.”

R. Kirk Huntsman (CEO, Vivos Therapeutics) – if you trace back the journey of a sleep apnea patient, that patient is suffering for years before they ever get diagnosed. Once they are diagnosed they are presented really with 2 fundamental options, you can go into CPAP and wear a contraption over your face every night for the rest of your life or you can have what is called a mandibular advancement device which will actually protrude your lower jaw in an unnatural position to hold you airway open while you sleep and you could wear that for the rest of your life. Either those 2 modalities are going to present that patient with a life sentence of having to wear this contraption one or the other for every night for the rest of their lives.

The interesting thing about CPAP and oral appliances is although they are very effective treatments, if they are used over a lifetime; the person’s condition actually gets worse over time.

Along comes VIVOS that says wait a minute, we have a better option that is all natural noninvasive, non-pharmaceutical. We can say to a patient, you go into this oral appliance therapy with or protocols and you go through these treatments for 12 to 24 months and at the end of that time, there is a high probability that you will no longer have to wear an appliance, or any kind of device.

VIVOS is literally changing my patients’ lives.

It has drastically changed my life – I don’t have to use a CPAP anymore within just a couple of weeks of using the appliance, I was able to breathe through both nostrils, something I couldn’t do my entire life. This was revolutionary, pretty much made me feel excited about life again. She is sleeping better, I am sleeping better! You really feel like you have been given a new life.

It’s amazing! You wake up and you are not in pain. Because she is sleeping better, her attitude during the day is better. Mhmm, I have a better quality of life now! I can’t say enough good about it!

I am getting instant benefit from it, I was amazed I dreamed every night for 2 weeks straight and I told my wife I said it is amazing! I feel sharp now; I don’t feel drowsy all the time. It has been a long time since I felt this good! I would not lay down and try to sleep right now without my VIVOS device!

My asthma has gotten much, much better! Without the VISO I would be outside right now! There is no numerical value you can put on this kind of a change, I smile and I haven’t smiled for a long time!

Right after I started using it I noticed the results really, especially with the snoring, my sleep apnea episodes are a fraction of what they were before, this product is phenomenal – it changed my life.

It is a very comfortable process but I can see dramatic differences. Now I can really open my mouth before it would almost always click.

His ADHD is calming down and he is doing better in school I can definitely see the difference and the change in him, it is a miracle!

I get to do things now that I would not have been able to! I would not hesitate to do it again!

I am 100 percent happy that I did this and I am thankful every day that I have it because I can breathe.

We bring hope to the millions of people and the millions of families, men women and children who suffer from this disease!

It promotes the body’s own ability to heal itself because now the body can breathe and sleep well. That is exciting!


Vivos Case Study: Sleep Apnea

Vivos Case Study: Sleep Apnea

Probably about 7 years ago I noticed that I didn’t sleep very well. It kind of came on quite gradually and as the years went by it got so bad I told my wife that I needed to go see a doctor something has got to change I can’t keep going through life without getting any sleep. I would wake up and get out of the bed and feel just miserable. I feel physically worn out I yawned all day long and after lunch every day I had to fight dosing off. I quit dreaming that was a big problem. Just getting no restorative rest. When you have no sleep you have no patience, you know you can get upset about the least little thing, so I went to a specialist and I had a sleep study – they determined I have obstructive sleep apnea, I don snore I basically just choke when breathing at night there is something in my throat I guess or the back of my mouth that is obstructive and so I started using a C-PAP, really hated it very uncomfortable I tried several different types I could never get comfortable sleeping with a C-PAP. So I wanted another answer so I started to do some research. There were some dentists that had this procedure that they offered, so I contacted a dentist her in town, Dr. Griffin initially – to make an appointment. Well Dr. Griffin she looked at my mouth took some measurements and she told me she thought I had a narrow pallet and that she thought I was a good candidate for the Vivos device and she showed it to me and kind of explained how it worked and that is how we got started. First 2 weeks, I was amazed I dreamed every night for 2 weeks straight, and I told my wife, it is amazing I am supposed to wear this device every day for a minim 12 hours and dr. griffin said it could take a full year – I have seen benefits from the first 2 weeks, I have not had any trouble with wearing the device for the first 2 hours, on the weekend I wear it 16 18 hours, it doesn’t bother me to be in my mouth, no problem, and I am able to pass air and I am able to breathe and sleep and breathe and dream and I am getting that restorative REM sleep so for me I am getting instant benefit from it, so I think I am getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep now and I am having dreams unlike before – you go 6/7 years where you don’t have dreams and you notice it is a big deal when all of a sudden you begin to have dreams again. I tell my wife I’m not having little dreams, it’s like a movie is running in my head so I know I am getting that restorative REM sleep I know because I wake up and I can tell you about the movie that ran in my head last night that we call dreams. Well this is my Vivos and about every 4/5 days I got a little tool that I use to widen the device by just a small amount and about every 4/5 days before I adjust it starts to get lose a bit I can tell it almost wants to fall down and I have to push it back up, that tells it’s time to make the adjustment and one I make it I just put it back in my mouth. The first day it feels a little bit tighter. This puts a little bit of pressure on my soft pallet way back in the back of my throat – this little hitting puts pressure in the back of my throat and I feel quite a bit of pressure there and that is keeping an airway open for me and allowing me to breathe. You feel the pressure for a couple of hours and then you get used to it; it goes away you don’t feel it. They say you can take up to 12 months to solve the problem permanently, the widening of my upper pallet so that it creates a better airway but I have actually seen benefits immediately. Since I have been using the Vivos I feel sharp now and I don’t feel drowsy all the time and that is a huge difference. I don’t fall asleep in my chair anymore I can watch the news I can get on the floor and play with my dogs, take them for a walk take them to the dog park and I think to myself wow it has been a long time since I felt this good. It has been amazing since like from day 1 I would not try to lay down and try to sleep right now without my Vivos device.


Sleep Is Your Superpower | Matt Walker

Sleep Is Your Superpower | Matt Walker

Matt Walker:

Thank you! I would like to start with testicles (laughs) men who sleep 5 hours a night have significantly smaller testicles than those who sleep 7 hours or more! In addition, men who routinely sleep 4 to 5 hours a night, will have a level of testosterone which is that of someone 10 years their senior. So a lack of sleep will age a man by a decade, in terms of that critical aspect of wellness and we see an equivalent impairment in female reproductive health caused by a lack of sleep.

This is the best news I have for you today! From this point it may only get worse – not only will I tell you about the wonderfully good things that happen when you get sleep but the alarmingly bad things that happen when you don’t get enough. Both for your brain and for your body – let me start with the brain and the functions of learning and memory – because what we have discovered over the past 10 or so years is that you need sleep after learning to essentially hit the save button on those new memories so that you don’t forget. But recently we discovered that you also need sleep before learning and now to actually prepare your brain, almost like a dry sponge ready to initially soak up new information and without sleep the memory circuits of the brain essentially become waterlogged as it were and you can’t absorb new memories.

So let me show you the data – here in this new study we decided to test a hypothesis that pulling the all-nighter was good idea – so we took a group of individuals and we assigned them to one of 2 experimental groups – a sleep group and a sleep deprivation group. Now the sleep group they are going to get a full 8 hours of slumber, but the deprivation group we are going to keep them awake in the laboratory under full supervision – there is no naps or caffeine by the way so it is miserable for everyone involved. The next day we are going to place those participants inside an MRI scanner – and we are going to have them learn a whole list of new facts as we are taking snapshots of brain activity and then we are going to test them to see how effective that learning has been and that is what you are looking at here on the vertical axis, and when you put those 2 groups head to head what you find is a quite significant 40% deficit in the ability of the brain to make new memories without sleep! I think this should be concerning given that we know what is happening to sleep in our education populations right now – in fact to put that in context, it would be the difference in a child acing an exam vs. failing it miserably – 40% and we have gone on to discover what goes wrong within your brain to produce these kinds of learning disabilities.

There is a structure that sits on the left and right side of your brain called the Hippocampus – and you can think of the hippocampus almost like the informational inbox of your brain – it is very good at receiving new memory files and holding onto them. When you look at this structure in the people who had a full night of sleep we saw a lot of healthy learning related activity, yet in those people who were sleep deprived we actually couldn’t find any significant signal what so ever so it is almost as though sleep deprivation has shut down your memory inbox and any new incoming files – they were just being bounced! You couldn’t effectively commit new experiences to memory. So that is the bad that can happen if I were to take sleep away from you – but let me just come back to that control group for a second. Remember that group that got a full 8 hours of sleep? We can ask a very different question what is it about the physiological quality of your sleep – when you do get it that restores and enhances your memory and learning each and every day? And by placing electrodes all over the head – what we have discovered is that there are big powerful brain waves that happen during the very deepest stages of sleep that have riding on top of them, these spectacular bursts of activity that causes sleep spindles – and it is the combined quality of this deep sleep brainwave that acts like a file transfer mechanism at night – shifting memories form a short term vulnerable reservoir to a more permanent long term storage site within the brain, and therefore protecting them – making them safe. And it is important that what during sleep actually transacts these memory benefits because there are real medical and societal implications and let me tell you about one area that we move this work out into clinically which is the context of ageing and dementia, because it is no secret that as we get older our memory abilities begin to fade and decline but what we have also discovered is that a physiological signature of ageing is that your sleep gets worse, especially that deep quality of sleep that I was just discussing, and only last year we finally published evidence that these 2 things they are not simply co-occurring they are significantly interrelated and it suggests that the disruption of deep sleep is an underappreciatedfactor that is contributing to connive decline and memory decline, in ageing and most recently we have discovered in Alzheimer’s disease as well – now I know this is remarkably depressing news, it is in themail it is coming at you – but there is a potential silver lining here – unlike many of the other factors that we know that are associated with ageing – for example, changes in the physical structure of the brain that is fiendishly difficult to treat, but that sleep is a missing piece in the explanatory puzzle of ageing and Alzheimer’s is exciting because we may be able to dos somethingabbot it and one way that we are approaching this at my sleep center, is not by sungsleeping pills by the way. Unfortunately, they are blunt instruments that do not produce naturalist sleep, instead, we are actually developing a method based on this – it is called direct current brain stimulation. You insert a small amount of voltage into the brain so small that you typically don’t feel it but it has a measurable impact – now if you impact this stimulation during sleep in young healthy adults, as if you are sort of singing in time with those deep sleep brain waves, not only can you amplify the size of those deep sleep brainwaves but in doing so we can almost double the amount of memory benefit that we get from sleep – the question now is whether we can translate this same affordable potentially affordable piece of technology into the older adults and those with dementia – can we restore back some healthy quality of deep sleep and in doing so, can we salvage aspects of their learning and memory function? That is my real hope now – that is one of our moonshot goals as it were. So that is an example of sleep for our brain, but sleep is just as essential for your body – and we have already spoken about sleep loss and your reproductive system, or I could tell you about sleep loss and your cardiovascular system and that all it takes is one hour, because there is a global experiment performed on 1.6 billion people across 70 countries 2 a year – and it is called daylight savings time. Now in the spring when we lose one hour of sleep we see a subsequent 24% increase in heart attacks, that flowing day.

In the autumn when we gain an hour of sleep we see a 21% reduction in heart attacks – isn’t that incredible, and you see exactly the same profile in car crashes road accidents, even suicide rates – but as a deeper dive I want to focus on this – sleep loss and your immune system and here I will introduce these delightful blue elements in the image – they are called natural killer cells and you can think of natural killer cells almost like the secret service agents of your immune system they are very good at identifying dangerous unwanted elements and eliminating them, in fact what they are doing here is destroying a cancerous tumor mass, so what you wish for is viral set of these immune assassins at all times, and tragically that is what you don’t have if you are not sleeping enough. So here in this experiment you are not going to have your sleep deprived for an entire night, you are simply going to have your sleep restricted for 4 hours for one single night and then we are going to look to see what is the percentage reducing in immune cell activity that you suffer – and it is not small, it is not 10% it is not 20%. There was a 70% drop in a natural cell activity.

That is a concerning state of immune deficiency and you can perhaps understand why we are now finding significant links between short sleep duration and your risk for the development of numerous forms of cancer. Currently, that includes cancer of the bowel, cancer of the prostate, and cancer of the breast – intact the link between a lack of sleep and cancer is now so strong that the world health organization has classified any form of night time shift work as a probable carcinogen because of a disruption of your sleep wake rhythms – so you hpv made of that old maxim that you can sleep when you are dead – well I am being quite serious now – it is mortally unwise advise.

We know this from epidemiological studies across millions of individuals – there is a simple truth. The shorter your sleep the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all-cause mortality.

And if increasing your risk for the development of cancer or even Alzheimer’s disease were not sufficiently – im disquieting, we have since discovered that a lack of sleep will even erode the very fabric of biological life itself. Your DNA genetic code. So herein this study they took a group of healthy adults and they limited them to 6 hours of sleep a night for one week and then they measured the change in the gene activity profile relative to when the same individuals were getting a full 8 hours of sleep night, and there were 2 critical findings. First, a sizeable and significant 711 genes were distorted in their activity, caused by a lack of sleep – the second result was that about half of those genes were actually increased in the activity is the half that were decreased. Now those genes that were switched off by a lack of sleep were genes associated with your immune system, so once again you can see that immune deficiency – in contrast those genes that were unregulated or increased by way of a lack of sleep were genes associated with a promotion of tumors, genes associated with longterm chronic inflation within the body and genes associated with stress and as a consequence cardiovascular disease – there is simply no aspect of your wellness that can retreat at the sign of sleep depreciation and get away unscathed. It is rather like a broken water pipe in your home, sleep loss will leak down into every nook and cranny of your physiology. Even tampering with the very DNA that you click in alphabet that spells out your daily health narrative and at this point you may be thinking oh my goodness how do I start to get better sleep? What are your tips for good sleep?

Well, beyond avoiding the damaging and harmful impact of alcohol and caffeine on sleep and if you are struggling with sleep at night, avoiding naps during the day – I have 2 pieces of advice for you. The first is regularity – go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time – no matter whether it is a weekday or a weekend. Regularity is king and it will anchor your sleep and improve the quality and quantity of that sleep. The second, is keep it cool – your body needs to drop its core temperature by about 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit to initiate sleep and then to stay asleep and this is the reason you will always find it easier to fall asleep in a room that is too cold, than a room that is too hot so aim for a bedroom temperature of about 65 degrees or about 18 degrees Celsius – that is going to be optimal for the sleep of those people, and then finally when taking a step back and thinking – what is the mission critical stem tent here?

Well, I think it may be this – sleep unfortunately is not an optimal lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological nicety. It is your life support system, and it is mother nature’s best effort yet at immortality – and the decimation of sleep throughout industrialization is having a catastrophic impact on our health or wellness even in the safety of our education of our children. It is a silent sleep loss epidemic and it is fast becoming one of the greatest public health challenges that we face in the 21st century. I believe it is now time for us to reclaim our right of a full length of sleep – and without embarrassment all that unfortunate stigma of laziness, and in doing so we can be reunited with the most powerful elixir of life – the Swiss army knife of health as it were, and with that soap box rant over I will simply say goodnight good luck and above all, I do hope you sleep well! Thank you very much indeed!

(applause) – Thank you! Thank you so much.

Host:

No, no, no stay there for a second! Good job not running away though we appreciate that – so that was terrifying!

Matt Walker:

Your welcome

Host:

Thank you, thank you – Since we can’t catch up on sleep, what are we supposed to do? What do we do when we are tossing and turning in bed late at night, or during shift work or what else?

Matt Walker:

So you are right, we can’t catch up on sleep – sleep is not like the bank, you can’t accumulate the debt and hope to pay it off at a later point in time. I should also note that the reason it is so catastrophic, or the reason that health deteriorates so quickly first is because human beings are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reason, and well – I make that point is because what it means I that mother nature, throughout the course of evolution has never had to face the challenge of this thing called sleep deprivation! So she has never developed a safety net so that is why when you under seep things sort of implode quickly both within the brain and the body so you just have to prioritize!

Host:

Ok, so but tossing and turning in bed – what do I do?

Matt Walker:

So if you are staying in bed awake for too long – you should get out of bed and go to a different room and do something different, the reason is because your brain will very quickly associate your bedroom with the place of wakeful ness and you need to break that association so only return to bed when you are sleepy and that way you will relearnt the association that you once had that your bed – is the place of sleep – so the analogy would be; you would never sit at the dinner table waiting to get hungry so why would you lie in bed waiting to get sleepy?

Host:

Alright, well thank you for that wake-up call!

Matt Walker:

You are welcome thank you very much!


Deb's Vivos Experience

Deb's Vivos Experience

I’m Deb Koser, I live in Freeport Florida and I am retired and I love it – my cats are a big part of my life, my favorite thing to do is cook and I cook all the time. Which is why I am on a diet! (laughs) I’ve never really been a good sleeper it has affected my life, because when you are tired you cannot function, you are running on adrenaline you’re living it, you know caffeine – it’s not its – patience is not always there, you are tired, you have to really fire up to try to get things done in the house and things done in your personal life, it is very, very difficult to function with no sleep. I didn’t dream I woke up in pain I tossed and turned, something clearly was not right. Well, I know how she responded to sleep studies she had, and when they attempted to utilize a sleep apnea face mask, I will just say – it didn’t go well! The CPAP mask was a nightmare, I had an issue with a narrow airway but I had been told that before, and I met with an ENT that it was highly recommended, and he opened his mouth and showed me his throat and he showed me mine and I had to say I looked like I had no space in there at all and he had this huge monstrous airway and I’m like okay I clearly see what we are talking about now, but he said primarily what I would recommend is we actually go in and cut the roof of your mouth, cut the back of your throat and I am listening to this just horrified! At that point, I saw an advertisement for Dr. Griffin, you know finding this Vivos device with Dr. Griffin is absolutely a God sent because it gave me some options that I could have without all the pain and discomfort and being cut open, increasing the size of the interior of my mouth and enlarging the airway for me. It wasn’t real long that I started to notice a difference because I was making progress with the roof of my mouth, it was expanding my airway and I put it in – I go to sleep, I don’t roll around all night, it is amazing! I noticed I had t be sleeping better because I was dreaming, all the time! And I don’t recall doing that very often. Put it in, it is like I am ready to go to bed, it is good to great! I sleep much better, so much better – last night I was probably out in I don’t even remember, I put my head on the pillow and I was probably out in like 30 seconds, that was really cool! That just is not something that happened. A big part of this whole thing falls back on the fact that I have extremely bad arthritis and pain is a big deal and when I am resigned and I am not, especially this is a real key to me – especially not constantly turning 40 50 times a night, I wake up and I am not in pain! As opposed to waking up in excruciating pain a lot of times! I never sleep without it! It is just a part of my sleep routine now because I sleep better! I feel better! It is a win-win for me! You can tell one of the things that helps because she is sleeping better is her attitude during the day is better – and a little bit more patience goes a long way with me! (laughs)

This is a much better option it is much more benign, it is much more comfortable, and it is effective – for her it was definitely the way to go. I cannot say enough good about it, it has just really helped me a lot – I have a better quality of life now! I have so much more energy to cook, so I am more rested the neighbors love it when Deb’s baking! It is just relaxing, I am able to stand in the kitchen and I will bake for 10 hours straight! Cookies, and cookies and more cookies!


Dr. Tara Griffin's Vivos Experience

Dr. Tara Griffin's Vivos Experience

I am Doctor Tara Griffin – we are here today in my clinic in Panama City beach – I have been practicing dentistry for over 11 years. before I discovered the Vivos appliance I was suffering every day with chronic head pain, TMJ pain, I was practicing dentistry and then practicing for 5 years and I was already looking for an out – I knew with this much pain I cannot continue to practice dentistry. I had chronic sinus and allergy problems, bronchitis, I was not sleeping through the night, waking up during the night I had severe fatigue and I would actually need to go home and take a nap just to have lunch you know. I was looking for the solution to the problem but I didn’t know what the root cause was until I learnt about the Vivos appliance. As soon as I started treatment with the Vivos appliance within the first 2 nights, I was sleeping soundly throughout the night, my energy during the day was better my pain that I was undergoing took a bit longer to resolve but within the first 3-4 weeks my pain level was reduced by 2/3rds or more. Within a months’ time I was breathing through my nose better I was not having the same sinus problems I was having before and within 3 months of treatment my asthma had improved so much I had no more problems with the inhalers and the frequency I was having to use my asthma inhalers. My overall health started to improve very quickly. I was my own first patient. However as I continued to treat the next patent and the next patient going forward, I was curious to see if they were going to have the same outcome as I had. 9/10 had the very similar outcome I had. So they were sleeping better in just a few nights. Actually getting their energy back, they were less irritable. The pain that they had was going away quickly. The teeth began to straighten and align. So even though there was this kind of problem it can take some time to get the long term results the immediate results. symptoms start to improve very quickly. Comparing my before and after picture with eh Vivos appliance. My smile was not symmetrical my teeth were crowded the gumminess of my smile was a major problem that I didn’t like. I had unevenness in my eyes, also in my nose; my face was more round and less balanced, and that all went to help itself as I went through the treatment. When the Vivos appliance is worn in the early evening while you sleep at night it allows the jaw to relax, it allows the airway to open up it allows the airway to breathe through the nose. It allows the oxygen you need to get to the rest of your body. For your body to heal – while breathing through your nose we are getting much more oxygen in our brain and lungs and we are producing nitro-oxide which is a vassal dilator which allows the blood flow to circulate much better. So a big component is that it forces you to breathe through your nose so that it can go to where it needs to get through the body. If you are interested in learning more about the Vivos appliance, I recommend you coming in to a Vivos center to be evaluated to determine if this is something they can help you with.


Matthew's Vivos Experience

Matthew's Vivos Experience

It definitely changed our lives, the VIVOS system has made him able to eat more food, better foods, healthier foods, been able to give us some freedom of not having to prepare his foods and puree and what have you. Yeah! How about it – hasn’t it been good? Yeah! My name is Julie Bangasser, this is my son Mathew Bangasser, he has spent a lot of time in the hospital when he was born, which caused his palate to be – top palate to be constricted. So his top palate does not – top teeth didn’t match up to his boot teeth and his chewing was not very effective, so we would puree everything – in the blenders and food processors. The gagging was the big issue, especially to let him go to school and choking, and gagging on his food – we had quite a few incidents in our home where we had to jump up and dig things out of his throat because things had got past his chewing to that being too large, and there is quite – there has been a few incidents at school where they had to use the Heimlich on him. We knew that there were palate spreaders out there –most of our dentists that we went to, didn’t want to put the permanent appliances in there, it caused too much heartache on Mathew and he wouldn’t be able to handle it there was one dentist, that because of his job being behind his front teeth being behind his bottom teeth, he wanted to break his jaw and reset it. Yeah! That’s when I looked – and said yeah no you are not doing that to my child. He said that was the only way to do it – we went to Dr. Korfeild, and he recommended the VIVOS system, and we used it ever since and we are getting great spreading of his palate that now his top teeth are meshing with his bottom teeth which makes his chewing very effective, so and the teeth itself are just moving all into place without having to drag them into place with braces, we were able to move – they just automatically moved on their own right into place, so they’re the molars are where they should be – the canines are coming down, that kind of stuff, so just by spreading it all the teeth started moving to where they should be. Oh with braces and stuff that would have been much more painful! Probably taken longer, it is letting the body do what it does naturally and not forcing it, forcing a tooth in one direction or the other, it is just moving it and letting the teeth drop where they should and it is amazing that they do that! That the human body does that. You know the VIVOS system can’t be any easier and the movement, I got was incredible! And just to have him eat on his own, that has always been a big issue with us, and so I’ll know he can eat things in the restaurant, with somebody who is not his parents and worrying about every chew you know – that is a big improvement, now you are chewing dude! You are biting sandwiches you are chewing on your own, the pre-prep of the food is nothing anymore, but yeah the teeth meet better he is more efficient at it, I think he talks clearer, is the Vivos system comfortable? Yes! (Laughs) yes, the Vivos system is comfortable for me. He has never really had any pain that he has told us about, also yeah he is very comfortable with it. Well, I’ve been chewing more like my mom said. It’s been easier for you to chew? Yeah – maybe some from more complex food? You haven’t been able – you’re increasing the texture and stuff that you have been able to choose and not gag on huh? Yeah! Things are falling into place! It’s just a big improvement to our lives to be able to eat normal food! Yes, I would recommend the Vivos – why? Because it really helps me a lot!


Bryan's Story

Bryan's Story for VIA Health Group

I came home, I took Hunter to school at about 7’ o clock and I opened up the door to our bedroom, and my 3 year old daughter was sitting on her mom’s bed grasping her hands, and my 3 year old looked at me and said “Mommy is cold and she won’t wake up.” And I instantly knew that she was gone. I think there were like 7 police cars, and 2 ambulances and 2 fire trucks – those sounds combined with “She is cold and she won’t wake up” it drives me every day.

Carrie Ekinrode died on October 27th, 2015 from Sleep Apnea. We never thought of her Sleep Apnea as a problem, we just thought it was this mildly annoying thing that we had to deal with. No one ever told us, no one ever raised the warning flag and had they maybe I would have made her wear the CPAP thing – what we now know is that her entire tormented life, and all the challenges physically and mentally that she had, are all a direct result of ‘no one figured this out’.

I had a very good friend of mine and he called me one day and he said, “I think I met a new client for you” and then he introduced me to Kirk Huntsman who is the CEO of Vivos. In our first conversation, he told me the story of Vivos. He started talking about the studies that have now linked Sleep Apnea to all these other serious health problems, and I think there is a list of about 30, and Carrie had 9. Literally, the list that he read off to me I was like – this is her story, this is her list. I started crying and I explained to him how I had just lost Carrie, and that she had all of those things. Those core morbidities ultimately is what took her life. I believe if she would have had this treatment she would be here today. She would probably be sitting in this chair telling you her own story of success.

Her entire life would have been different. I didn’t know then that it would be my life’s pursuit to be able to tell this story and to be able to help families recognize and see the changes that can come through this treatment. That is why this is my mission.