#104 – Daniel Grafton – Choosing the Right Airway Treatment Without Guesswork (CFD Explained)

Daniel Grafton is a public health specialist with the UN who taught himself computational fluid dynamics (CFD) after 9 soft tissue surgeries failed to fix his sleep-disordered breathing. In this episode, Daniel runs CFD on Ron's pre and post-MSE CBCTs, revealing pressure maps, velocity data, wall shear stress, and turbulence patterns a standard CBCT cannot show.Daniel Graftonhttps://www.remetrics.org/https://www.instagram.com/rem_rebelhttps://www.youtube.com/@REMRebel1:1 Coaching with Ron (Now Inside The Joint)https://jawhacks.com/coachingJawHacks Newsletter (Substack)https://substack.com/@jawhacksAnd More on the Websitehttps://jawhacks.com/Chapters00:00:00 - Intro00:00:48 - UARS since childhood, 9 surgeries: How desperation led him to CFD00:05:25 - Why patients who shop for their own treatment often out-know their doctors00:06:36 - What CFD actually is and what it reveals that CBCT, rhinomanometry, and DICE can't00:13:01 - CFD origins: aerospace, nuclear reactors, and the Navier-Stokes equation00:17:33 - How CFD entered sleep medicine and where it stands clinically today00:20:44 - CFD variables explained: pressure, velocity, turbulence, wall shear stress, and heat flux00:26:54 - Wall shear stress as a degenerative force: why airway soft tissue relapse after surgery00:30:53 - Heat flux and Empty Nose Syndrome: the thermal neurons that tell your brain you're breathing00:35:21 - Case overview: Ron's CBCT anatomy and why head posture corrupts scan data00:47:21 - Superimposition reveal: Ron's pre vs. post-MSE skeletal changes side by side00:55:05 - Posterior expansion: does MSE actually widen the back of the nose near the PNS?00:58:18 - The pterygomaxillary disjunction problem: how some surgical cuts eliminate posterior expansion01:03:02 - Nasal aperture numbers and why that single metric misleads01:07:32 - CFD results revealed: Ron's airway pressure maps before and after MSE01:15:19 - Nasal slice analysis: exactly where in the nose the pressure drops most01:20:11 - Velocity findings: airspeed dropped from 3.6 to 2.7 m/s post-expansion01:26:37 - Turbulence analysis: the tongue-off-palate dead space that mimics snoring mechanics01:32:43 - What Ron's CFD actually prescribes: his single highest-yield remaining intervention01:35:19 - Poiseuille's Law: airflow improves to the fourth power of tube radius (2mm)01:41:04 - ENS risk from over-expanding: can too much nasal volume become a new problem?01:46:01 - Options for Ron's retropalatal constriction: soft palate surgery vs. maxillary advancement01:48:57 - Why MMA alone may not pull the soft palate forward01:50:57 - FME + FMA protraction as the theoretically optimal path forward01:54:04 - Facemask compliance reality and why Ron is waiting for the field to mature01:58:31 - Physical exhaustion as underrated sleep medicine02:00:28 - Mental health, nervous system activation, and PTSD's 80% UARS co-occurrence rate02:06:15 - Ron's sleep wind-down routine: why prayer beats seated meditation for his anatomy02:10:53 - Counting back from 900 by 7s: the mental arithmetic trick that slows your breathing (from Lisa Kush)02:14:22 - Diaphragm training with IMST/EMST: is the breathing muscle itself maladapted?02:17:33 - How to reach Daniel: Remetrics.org, @REMRebel on YouTube, and the JawHacks Joint Q&ANO MEDICAL OR DENTAL ADVICE. Ronald Ead and JAWHACKS, LLC, dba JawHacks (collectively, "we") does not give medical advice. We are not licensed medical professionals. The information provided in this video is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice. Always seek the guidance of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding your health or a medical condition.