Airway

By Dr Cristina D Bender DDS

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Three years ago, I read a book called “Gasp:  Airway Health:  The Hidden Path to Wellness” by Howard Hindin and Michael Gelb.  This book has forever changed by life as a person, as a mom, and as a dental professional.  Since then, I have challenged myself to seek out the “root cause” of dental diseases… something that modern dentistry currently does not do and become an airway centered practice. 

We have heard or used the word pandemic quite often this year and there is another pandemic that is currently affecting us and our children:  crooked teeth.  So, what the big deal?  Everyone has crooked teeth and gets braces.  Well it signifies that the human facial structures are shrinking.  When our jaws do not develop properly, our facial features cave in causing a high narrow dental arch with no room for our teeth.  To overcome this problem, we have been using orthodontics since the 1960s to pull and drag teeth back in place without questioning the cause.  We have lost that there is a connection to the jaws and how it forms the structure of the faced.  In short, crooked teeth in children and impacted wisdom teeth in teens reveal skeletal starvation and collapsed airways.  

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So, going back to being an airway centered practice, my team and I have been transforming ourselves to access and detect, diagnose, and treat patients with infective airways and its overall effects it has on our oral and systemic health.  This is so important in our youth as the most important growth stages for the upper and lower jaw occur during childhood.  When a child’s airway is narrow, underdeveloped or constricted, it can prevent the child from getting enough oxygen as they sleep, preventing healthy restoring sleep called REM sleep.  Children without proper REM sleep lack the necessary oxygen to their brain which can huge effects on academics and behavior as well as many other symptoms.  

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Air is life and at Pearl Care Dental we truly understand that concept.  We literally want to help our patients Breathe New Life into their bodies.  So if you or knows of somebody who breaths through their mouths, clenches or grinds their teeth,  has crooked teeth, or has chronic headaches, neck aches or backaches, stop and think of the root cause and that there is a solution to address the root cause.