Shownotes Links:

• Dr Robert Hurst WEBSITE 


• Dr Robert Hurst BOOK: Life’s Fingerprint

YouTube Timestamps (Concise & Key Points):

00:00 – Welcome & Intro to Dr. Robert Hurst

03:20 – What is Birth Order? A Holistic Look

08:44 – Sibling Spacing and Double Birth Order Explained

14:24 – Using Birth Order in Orthodontic Practise

21:01 – Family Dynamics: Ancestral vs. Modern Families

28:44 – Traits of First, Second, Third, and Fourth Children

32:20 – Birth Order and Romantic Compatibility

36:28 – The Power of Only Children

39:24 – Where to Learn More: Life’s Fingerprint

40:58 – Biggest Health Challenge Today: Managing Stress

42:00 – Closing Thoughts

How Birth Order Shapes Your Health, Stress & Relationships – Dr. Robert Hurst

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:01 ] Hi, Dr. Ron here, and I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health Community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&As on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel. Now we’ve done hundreds of podcasts all worth listening to, with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders, but with membership, we have our Unstressed Lab podcast series, where we take the best of several guests and carefully curate specific topics for episodes, which are jam-packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health community. If you are watching this on our YouTube channel click on the link below or just visit unstresshealth.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Now, when we are in conversation with people, just casually, socially, we often want to get to know them and part of the, one of the first questions apart from what do you do, is something about their family too. Have you got any brothers or sisters? Where do you sit in the family? What’s the age difference between your brothers and sisters?

Well, birth order. Both order turns out to have a lot more significance than just a social interaction. Although those social interactions give us a clue that we instinctively feel there’s a kind of relevance there to it and fascination by the dynamics of it. Well, my guest today has explored that personally and professionally for 50 years. Dr. Robert Hurst, a Harvard graduate who served on the dental schools of both Tufts University and Louisiana State University. He’s run a private orthodontics practise, yes, he’s an orthodontist, for over 50 years in Covington, Louisiana. And it was during his practise that he decided to study the birth orders of his patients and their behaviour patterns. Now he’s written a book called Life’s Fingerprint, Your Birth Order. And now Dr. Bob Robert has had the opportunity to see functioning children in the real world on a day to day basis over the last 50 years adjusting to life and its challenges and he’s seen the expression. This is where it gets really interesting. He’s seen the expression of birth orders firsthand and has learned that your birth order impacts every part of your life. Now, the information is said allows you to better evaluate your own behaviour. And the behaviour of others by understanding those various nuances of birth order. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr. Robert Hurst. Welcome to the show, Dr. Bob.

Dr Robert Hurst [00:03:20 ] Thank you, Dr. Ron.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:03:23 ] Bob, you know, we were just talking before we came on about the fact that we’ve been in dentistry for quite a few years, several decades, and, and I’ve been a holistic biological dentist for almost all of my 45 years in practise. But birth order as it relates to dentistry is a whole new area. I mean, obviously, everybody When you meet somebody, are you brother or sister? Which are your oldest, youngest? Birth order is part of our conversation. But tell us from your perspective, what is birth order?

Dr Robert Hurst [00:04:00 ] Well, the simplest explanation is your order of birth in your family, but that’s way too simple. Because, you know, as you say, you’re a holistic dentist, I might say I might be a holistic orthodontist because I have to look at the patient and the family, and that’s the whole picture. And just because you were the first born or the second born or the third born, that really doesn’t cut it. Because there are extenuating circumstances that change your relationship to your brothers and sisters in the family. But the simplistic way to look at birth order is, well, let me back up a second and say, it really started with Alfred Adler, who was a contemporary of Freud. In fact, they were in the same psychoanalytical society. And Freud felt that your personality was developed from your relationship with your parents. Adler said, you know, I think your relationship with your parents isn’t as important as your relationship with your siblings. And that’s what I think develops your personality. Well, of course, they didn’t get along. They had two different views. And believe it or not, Freud was the oldest in his father’s second family and Adler was the second child in his family. So they weren’t about to get along anyway. So they split and they separated and Adler went on with his with his ideas, and of course, Freud went on with his. But what I said was, the simplest way is to look at your relationship with your siblings. And there are a few things that happen that will change what your real birth order is. For instance, the spacing between the children. If it’s just individual spacing, a one has one characteristics and a two, well, first of all, the one starts life as an only child. So he doesn’t become or she doesn’t become a firstborn until the second born is born. And that’s when sibling rivalry shows up. Because the secondborn wants the firstborn’s position, and the first born wants to protect his position. So he wants to the throne. And so these first two birth orders can be very antagonistic to each other. And that is good in a way, but too much is not good. Because if number one just crushes number two, number two doesn’t have a place. And every child wants their special place in the family. And if number two dethrones number one, he’s just lost and he can just drop out. So it’s best that there’s some competition, but not too much. So that’s the first characteristic we have to look at. What is the spacing between the children? Now the next thing would be, what if there’s stepbrothers and sisters in the It just depends on their age and their relationship to the family structure. So you can bring a stepbrother or sister into that family if they’re living together, and that changes everybody’s birth order based on their ages. And then you wanna see where the children are living. Sometimes a child ends up living with the grandparents and they’re not in that family structure, so that changes it. And of course, what if there’s handicapped siblings? That changes the relationship of the children. In other words, if number two is a handicapped child, number one doesn’t get the attention that they thought they should be getting, but they can’t say anything, so they have this deep resentment because they’re caught and they can