Alpha-Stim and Sleep Medicine - Interview with Dr. Shirazi - Issue # 9

Dr. Shirazi DDS MS LAc MA FAACP D.ACSDD RPSGT earned his DDS degree in May of 2000 from Howard University College of Dentistry, in Washington D.C. He continued his studies in Oriental Medicine, earning a Masters degree from Samra University. He is a California State Board Licensed Dentist and Acupuncturist. In 2007 he received the prestigious Fellowship Award from the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain. He has also completed hospital mini-residencies in oriental medicine at the China Beijing International Acupuncture Training Center (CBIATC), and another at Kyung Hee University and Medical Center, in Seoul, Korea, both in 2005. He has recently completed a Master of Arts degree in Spiritual Psychology, and he is the founder of the Bite, Breathe and Balance study group. He is the first dentist or acupuncturist to be licensed as a Polysomnographic (sleep study) technician.

Alpha-Stim and Sleep Medicine

Interview with Dr. David Shirazi

I recently visited the TMJ and Sleep Therapy Centre website and I was very impressed with how holistic and cutting-edge your practice is. For example, you’re not only treating TMD, but you’re also taking into consideration that the majority of people with TMD also suffer from depression. It seems to me that you and your clinic are paving the way for the future of sleep medicine. Is that something that you are consciously trying to do?

Surely. It’s not like I’m inventing something new. I’m only standing on the shoulders of my mentors, and the people who have come before me who really educated me and supported me when I went and learned new and wonderful things. 

I am a dentist; I am a licensed acupuncturist, an Oriental medical doctor; and I am a licensed sleep technologist. In my practice, I don’t do any dentistry – any general dentistry I should say. We treat jaw disorders, headaches, migraines, snoring and sleep apnea, and the Alpha-Stim has been a great asset to have. 

Do you use Alpha-Stim to treat pain, insomnia and anxiety? 

All of the above. Chronic pain patients typically have trouble sleeping; they typically have a lot of anxiousness, and a lot of depression. There are plenty of studies that corroborate insomnia as being directly related to depression. For these patients, I do a motor reflex test that is taught by Dr. Steve Olmos, and the test can actually help show if a patient is in a form of sympathetic dystrophy. You know how we have the autonomic nervous system, para-sympathetic, and sympathetic?  When someone is in dystrophy it means their autonomic system has shifted strongly over to the sympathetic side, which changes their cortisol levels, which changes the adrenal levels and how much the adrenals can support, which ultimately will affect sleep. It is hard to break this cycle, because the causes of it can be so wide-spread. So what we do in my office on these kind of pain patients is if I feel that someone is absolutely in dystrophy, I’ll recommend that they get an Alpha-Stim on their own. If they are on the borderline or just chronic pain, I will use the Alpha-Stim on them at each and every visit in addition to the acupuncture, in addition to orthotic therapy, in addition to many things. 

So you are doing acupuncture in your sleep medicine practice? 

Absolutely.

That’s amazing. Did your interest in dentistry lead to your interest in acupuncture? Or did you already have an interest in acupuncture? 

I really did. What happened was, when I was about 18, I had a cold, which is not a big deal, and I have a neurotic Jewish mother who insisted that I go to the doctor. And so I went to the doctor – and I should tell you that everyone in my family is either a doctor or a dentist – I went in there and the doctor prescribed antibiotics. So I asked him, “Well, this problem is in my nose, right?” and he goes, “Yes.” And I knew about rhino viruses, so I said, “Well, if it’s in my nose, isn’t that a virus?” He said, “Most likely, yes.” And I said, “If it’s a virus, why are you prescribing me antibiotics?” And he said, “Well, the theory is that the antibiotics clear the bugs in your body so your immune system can focus on the virus.” So I called up my mom, and I said, Mom this is what he’s telling me, I don’t know if it makes sense, what do you think?  (And she comes from a period where whatever the doctor tells you to do, you do. You just don’t question it.) She said if the doctor tells you to take it, you have to take it. So I took it, I got better, but I don’t feel like I got better because of the antibiotics. 

When I did my research and realized about possibly building a resistance to the antibiotics by taking it needlessly, et cetera, I just decided that when I have my own family I will have studied something in the holistic, yet scientific, realm where I can help my family and treat them in a safe way. I feel allopathic medicine is very effective in emergency medicine. If we’ve got large open wounds, bullet holes, knife wounds, sudden shock, syncope, near death situations, I really think allopathic medicine is at the top for that. For everything else, however, I find it to be rather inferior. And I say that in relation to the other kinds of medicine out there, like Chinese medicine, like naturopathic medicine, et cetera. Those systems are both very scientifically oriented, believe it or not, they have double-blind studies, they have research behind them, and we clearly see them working. 

So your experience as a 18 year old with a cold, and being prescribed an antibiotic for a virus, led you down the path to find other sorts of therapies that would be more effective than giving someone an antibiotic and just hoping that it works. 

Yes, exactly. 

Interesting.  Not only are you practicing an Eastern or Oriental form of medicine, but you also implement lots of different types of technology. It seems like one of your goals is to find a drug-free therapy first and foremost before you do anything else. 

It’s not actually my intention specifically to have a drug-free protocol.  It’s to find the cause of the problem, and to treat to that cause. That’s my intention. Now, medications are great when we need to treat something in a temporary way. Sometimes, for example, in the case of pneumonia and antibiotics, they are extremely effective in treating the cause of the problem, and other times they can actually cause more harm than good. So my intension with medication is to use it when I see fit, but I don’t prescribe very much. 

I’d like to hear more about how you use Alpha-Stim in your practice. What indications or other conditions do you see respond most beneficially from an Alpha-Stim treatment?

Again, for a person that has chronic pain, I go for that because it needs to be “unlocked” and the faster we unlock it, the better. So I have them wearing the Alpha-Stim [earclips] while I’m doing acupuncture on them. They seem to go well together, they don’t seem contradictory; they seem supplementary in my experience. I’m not a licensed therapist in any way, but if I see a patient and I’m concerned that they might have an underlying depression, I will surely use it on them because I have certainly seen the research that supports how Alpha-Stim works. Anxiety, of course, and insomnia, if they have either kind, primary or secondary insomnia, I’ll have them wear their Alpha-Stim in the earlier hours of the day to balance out their circadian rhythm and cortisol levels, so that I can get them to bed and actually sleeping. Patients have seen the results, it just speaks for itself. 

Do you typically have people come in to your clinic for their Alpha-Stim treatments, or do you find that after seeing the benefits of it that people are more willing to purchase them for home use?

Absolutely, and I do both, home use and office use. Sometimes I will say, you know, I really recommend this device for you, and they’ll say “What is it?” and I’ll go, “I’ll tell you what, we’ll put it on at your next visit, and you can see for yourself.” Usually the experience alone is enough to convince them. 

If you don’t mind me asking, do you use the Alpha-Stim yourself?

I have, if I ever have trouble sleeping, I’ll wear it. I just came back, I did some training on lasers in Italy, and I had the Alpha-Stim the whole time I was on the plane. I’m not going to say that I had no jetlag, but it was minimal. 

I know what you mean, I love bringing it on plane trips. It’s one of my main uses for Alpha-Stim, I love to travel with it. 

Yeah, I feel the same way. 

I am also very impressed that you are using it for anxiety, pain and insomnia, when usually practitioners like to focus on one indication that we have. But as a sleep dentist, you’re able to implement it into your practice with protocols that are broader and all encompassing. 

Yeah, and one thing I forgot to mention is the use of it in fibromyalgia patients, because I find it to be very helpful in reducing their pain and especially helping them sleep. Once it has gotten to the state of fibromyalgia, it is no longer a peripheral nerve problem, it is now a central nerve problem, and the Alpha-Stim works directly on the brain. I believe it goes a long way in helping these patients. The medications treating fibromyalgia elevates both 5-HT and NE levels apparently, which are also the functions of the Alpha-Stim, only with the Alpha-Stim, it is releasing the body's endogenous levels of both 5-HT and NE, rather than artificially increasing it. I have not seen the research that supports these medications, let alone supports them over the Alpha-Stim.

I thought that fibromyalgia was more a disorder of the sympathetic nervous system, but it’s the central?

Well, the sympathetic is part of the central nervous system. It is a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, but what is happening is there is a phenomenon called “central sensitization.”  Essentially, what that means is if we have multiple areas of our body that go to the same portion of the brain, the wires can get crossed. Let’s say you have pain on your right thumb, your right thumb hurts you, and you don’t do anything about it. You are getting signals of pain from your right thumb, and you just ignore it, you just say, oh that must be my arthritis, and ignore it. Well, whether you ignore it or not, every time you use that thumb that stimulation is going to the brain talking about pain. So what will happen is something else in the brain that is also connected to your thumb, let’s say your other thumb, will start hurting – even though there is nothing wrong with it. You might say, well why is my left thumb hurting? You go have it x-rayed, MRI-ed, and you can’t find anything wrong with it. There have been plastic changes in the brain that have caused other parts of the body to hurt – and that’s what central sensitization is. We’ve only known about it for about 20 years, it’s really cutting edge. In my opinion, that was one of the biggest paradigm shifts of the last century. Now, rather than focusing on the thumb that the patient complains of, we can now focus on the origin of the pain, and in this case the right thumb.

 

Well, we definitely do hear about acupuncturists that are using Alpha-Stim 100 with the probes to essentially treat a person the same way they would with needles. 

You can do it. And the brilliant thing is that is it down-regulatable to your staff, because you are not breaking the skin, and as long as the doctor is the one making the diagnosis and telling them what to do, it’s completely legal. 

It’s always wonderful to talk to a doctor that knows so much about Alpha-Stim and all of the different indications that we are cleared for, and it sounds like you have a great grasp on it, and you know exactly how to use it in your practice. That’s just wonderful to for us to hear, so thank you for talking with me today. 

Thank you for letting me talk about what I love doing.