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Welcome to the Wellness Dentist Podcast. Join biological and cosmetic dentist Dr. Katie Toe as she explores holistic wellness through trending ideas, real stories, and patient experiences. This podcast will inspire you to make healthy lifestyle choices and take charge of your dental wellness. And now your host, the Wellness Dentist, Dr. Katie Toe.

Hi, welcome to the Wellness Dentist Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Katie Toe, and I can't wait to share with you today our special guest for the program, Dr. Svetlana Yu Sheranko. So as you guys know, as a mom and having young children, we always want to have the best foundations, the best health, the best food for our kid. And Dr. Svetlana is an expert in airways dentistry, both adult and children. And as a person going through this journey herself and for her three children. She has so much to share for us about airway and how's that gonna form the grown developments in our children and how that's gonna have us to have a better healthy life. So I can't wait to introduce to you guys. Here is Dr. Svetlana Yurovchenko.

Hi, Katie. Thank you so much for such a profound introduction. I'm happy to be here tonight.

Svetlana, I know that a lot of the audience probably listened to your intro, but I would like you to make that introduction yourself. Tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you start dentistry? How did you went through this airway journey for yourself and for your children? We can't wait to hear that.

Great question. For me, it's even hard to recall how it all started, but definitely it started with my personal story with my oldest son who is 13 years old now. and I believe he was four when I started to have a lot of concerns about his seasonal allergies, about his constantly stuffy nose, about him not performing well at school, and having some personal challenges. And I tried my best to find the help from ENT, from pediatric doctors, and nothing really worked. The last drop and the really like, you know, the first drop to start my journey was when he got death from allergy. And it was so profound and sudden that I still remember it like it was yesterday. So I called him for dinner and he didn't respond. I walked to his room and called him again and he didn't turn to me. I got closer to him and I touched him, pat him in the back, and he turned to me and I will never forget that blank face, you know, how the person look at you when they don't hear you. And I started to ask him, like, you know, what's wrong? Can you hear me? And he started to cry because he showed me with a body language, like he cannot hear me. And this is how it all started. And we went through a lot of treatments with ENT and with allergologist, and this is how it all started. and then just there and there during lectures, during some personal talk to colleagues, I started to hear more stories like mine. And all of them brought me to the airway awareness, I should say, because I knew nothing about it. But it all started there. And then I realized that my middle son has some problems. And then my little daughter was definitely airway issue daughter. myself is in trouble and my husband is in a deep trouble. So the whole family needs some airway treatment or prevention or whatever you call it, but it was the start to open eyes and be realistic about how serious and how impactful it could be for the whole family.

Thank you, Dr. Lana. I know that's a lot of thing that you go through to get your children healthier and reading better. So would you say that the fact that both you and your husband realized that you have airway compromise, is that something we would think genetic or is something that we should just look into every single kid and screen everyone?

It's a great question. Genetic definitely plays a huge role, but the more you get into that field, the more you realize it's not just about genetics. It's about epigenetics, and it's about environment, and it's about what we eat and how we move and what do we do. And I think, you know, just airway dentistry, it's such a hot topic, but realistically, we need to understand the foundation of that. It's not even about airway or breathing, it's about the overall well-being. It's about how well children sleep to restore what needs to be restored, to grow the right way, to develop the right way, to basically accommodate to the modern life well, and to be able to do that, they absolutely have to sleep well and to sleep well, they absolutely have to breathe well. So it's not about isolated breathing problems, it's about the very fine interconnection with the overall well-being and that's the most important. And just breathing is part of the overall puzzle, but it's a big part. Great answer.

I love that. That is not just one factor, but it's multiple factors, and we have to look into all of that.

Absolutely. So we definitely, you know, born with certain amount of genes and certain amount of phenotype, but We also are what we eat, what we breathe, where we live, what we do on daily basis, and we cannot ignore all those little details to help the child to get the optimum of their development. For me, the most profound expression of that was many years ago during one lecture, I can't even remember what kind of lecture was it, but I've heard the expression that if your child snores six months, you will never know the potential of what your child was created for. And it just shoot me in my head thinking that, how can I ignore it longer? How I can ignore that my child is not using what was given by Mother Nature or God or whatever you believe in. It's just not something I would like to do. I'm the mom who believes that the child has to eat well, has to move well, and has to breathe well. And as a mom, for me, the most important thing is to provide them to thrive through what's giving. And I think that's my primary role as a mom, plus as a professional.

Yes. It's so impactful when we also going through this journey with our children. So when we talk to patients, we understand what they're going through. Now, you've been on this journey with children for a few years now, what changes or improvement that you see in all the three cases?

There is no short and straightforward answer, but what I can tell based on my personal experience, my children are 13, 12, and 7 years old. So I definitely can say it's important to recognize the problem When the child is born, when the child is growing to become a toddler, when the child gets the primary bite, when the child has a mixed dentition. So every stage in the growth has a certain science we have to watch for. And that's what I've learned. And I think it's not just about, you know, dentistry, it's basically about what every single mom needs to know about her children so she knows where and how to find the help. The topic is pretty hot, but at the same time, there is still a lot of controversies. I have a lot of patients who try to find help, who go between, like, you know, different pediatricians, different ENT people, different specialists for allergies, and they still cannot find answers. What I found out a of alternative, you know, doctors, integrative medicine doctors, they are more aware of the problem, they are more mind open to listen to those families. So this is why I think it's not just about what dentists see, it's about how we can educate our patients to look at their children differently, to recognize the problem, and to look for help, ask the right questions, and if they don't get answers, move to another specialist until they find the right answers. And this is, I think, is the whole mission of every Airway Centered specialist.

I'm so glad you bring that up because I do have seeing patients in my practice. I'm sure you see in yours practice that they was told so many times that they don't have tongue tie, they don't have issue with sleep. In fact, they do have all that. So they look at us and they say, how come my pediatricians or my ENT doesn't recognize this. Besides seeing a functional or integrative professional, what other, say, reading materials or where do they can come to or go to check out on the website that is a resource for these patients?

Great question. I wish I have a great answers. There are a lot of information, but there is no one single book I can call which has all answers. It's really about Finding the right group of specialists. That's why I highly encourage my patients, my friends, my family members ask questions and get answers and find someone who would listen your concerns as a mom and who would try to find a solution. The most important group of specialists would be your dentist, your orthodontist, your ENC, your allergy specialist, definitely myofunctional specialist. It's the field of oral pathology. You know, if you never heard about that specialty, the easiest way to understand it's the oral pathology specialist, but they very specifically work with the function of our mouth muscles. I don't want to go very deep in that, but without every specialist in that field, there is going to be a missing puzzle piece. And that's what makes it complicated, but at the same time, it makes us excited to work as a collaboration, not as an isolated specialist. This is what we all working very hard to establish those teamwork, team approach, the group of professionals who know the problem, who stay on the same page, but could Help the child, we're talking about children right now, help the child from their specific professional way. And I think if we find the way to work together, find the way to educate each other, find the way to educate our patients, we all will be very successful in helping our children to live, you know, more fulfilling life.

Wonderful. And I'm glad you bring that up too, because what I noticed Just like what you're doing in your practice, you work with a team of specialists that helping you, like orthodontist or a surgeon.

Absolutely, because without them, you just, I mean, it's always better to do something than nothing. Even if you don't have a team, do the best you can. It could be simple like that. You know, I will never forget, like my daughter, she was suffering from a lot of, you know, different issues since she was Newborn, the first antibiotic treatment she received when she was two weeks old, and right now she's seven. I think it was a huge mistake for me to listen to the doctor and provide her the treatment without getting second opinion. But I didn't know any better. And I remember how we were going to emergency room every week for some issues until I met the wonderful nurse who just took my daughter from my hands and she said, Mama, look at me. This is going to be the most important thing you're going to do for your daughter. And she taught me how to clean the nose for my newborn. And she was number three. So I was mom third time, and I still didn't know how to clean nose for my own child. And let me tell you, it may sound funny, But it was the huge impact just for her to be able to breathe through her nose and me being able to help her to breathe through her nose and get better sleep and became better infant. It was huge change. This is how I realized that the simple things could be very, very important and very profound for the child well-being at any age. It could be breastfeeding issues. Who shares breastfeeding issues? It's not something we, I mean, probably like in your mother's group, but it's usually more like sharing your suffers, but there is no great solution. How many times you meet the lactation specialist at the hospital and, but not being able to get the following up care after that. I was in the hospital with my three children. I've seen lactation specialists, but nobody told me there is a sources you can reach out to those people or those people if you have questions afterwards. And I didn't know what kind of questions. I thought, you know, motherhood is all about suffering. It could be like watching your children's speech problems. I remember how we laughed and videotaped my middle son speaking very funny. I'm bilingual and we thought it's probably why our children speak a little bit different. My middle one was making really, really funny words in English and in Russian and we all thought it's cute. Now I know it was sign of something is not going right with him. My oldest son didn't speak until he was four years old. Four years old. And I tried every specialist at that point, and everybody were saying like, well, we'll see. I mean, I can't even remember what they were saying, but I remember clearly my dad at one point said, okay, we have to calm down. If he is going to be speechless, we're going to love him the way he is. That basically was the solution. And I didn't know who to talk to about it. So, I really believe education, the basic education, what to watch and who to ask and what to ask is the very basic. And we think it's obvious, but it's not. This is why I spend a lot of time with my patients teaching them basic how to clean the children nose, how to position your child when you clean their nose. what to use to clean their nose, how to find the little tricks like using neti pot. And if your child hates it, what could be the solution for that? How to make it happen? And I have my personal experience on that. And what Katie you said, going through that by myself helps me to help my patients because I know how hard it is to make your child to clean the nose. I know how many Christ is there. So when I make my recommendations, my recommendations come from my heart. And this is why I always encourage to see a different specialist. If you know how your child should breathe, how your child should live, you will be asking questions and questions and looking for the right specialist until you find the right one. That's my goal. Because A lot of time people just get the simple answer, oh, that's going to be fine. Or use Flonase, like religiously. Like one of specialists for my daughter said, take Claritin and just to prevent asthma attack, just stay on Claritin for years. And I asked, what do you mean for years? Every single day for years until what? Until you want to try to stop it and see if asthma attacks will come back. Is that the solution? And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but that was a recommendation from the doctor at the children's hospital. So you as a mom assume they're specialists and they know what they're doing. But unfortunately, medical school as well as dental school, we don't have enough training on that. It's a relatively new field, and I don't want to sound negative, but Just because the doctor doesn't know what to do doesn't mean we should accept it. It means we should look for the specialist who knows what to do. That's why I think what you do in your Center of Integrative Dentistry and everything you do for well-being of your patients, it's very important because this is how it's all gonna start work. And another thing I always tell my friends or my skeptical colleagues, it's okay to wait until everything will be protocoLed. But I cannot wait because by the time everything will be in the dental books, my children will grow up and they will be with my adult problems. And what treatment I am going through is nothing to compare what I can do to my children to prevent the adult problems. I went through three surgeries on my jaw and I'm still, I did the two rounds of ortho and I'm still not even close to where I would like to be. My husband, he is also a general dentist. He needs a major surgery. Ideally, he needs, you know, double jaw surgery to fix his sleep apnea. I don't want my children to grow into that because breathing problem in children. It's not a definite disease. It's a spectrum. It starts simply with not being able to breathe through your nose, and it grows with the child until the adult gets the serious problems, which is very hard to fix. That's what I try to prevent, and that's what I'm gonna do. for the rest of my career and hopefully my life.

Thank you, Dr. Lana. And as a biological wellness airway dentist and a mommy, what would our audience look for in their children so they can start looking for the right help that their children need? What are they looking for? The size, is it the eyes? Is it the snoring? Is it the ear infection? What is it you're looking for when you do an exam on your patient and explain to the parents? What is it that you're looking for that other dentists don't?

Great question. First of all, I would say it's age specific. But there are certain basic things I look at every child, regardless of age. The first thing every child on the planet, has to breathe through the nose all the time. When they watch TV, when they read books, when they take tests, when they play with friends, even, you know, doing sports, I keep hearing more and more, even doing sports, ideally they should breathe through your nose, through their nose. some breathing specialists who work with athletes to teach them to breathe through your nose, even at the sport performance. I'm not really familiar with that field, but that's my fundamental basic. That's what every mom should know how to watch for. Look at your children when they play video games. Look at your children when they eat. Are they making funny noises when they eat? Are they kind of like, you know, funny eater? Is it hard for them to keep the food in when they are like, you know, toddler age? We all think it's cute, but try to look at them. What if they try to eat and breathe at the same time? Is the nose stuffed all the time? Is it running nose all the time? look at their eyes. Are they a little bit red? I don't know how to describe it. In my family, we have a specific description of those eyes. We call them wet eyes. And I'm just translating it from Russia. So I don't know exactly how to describe it, but you know how your child gets sick, but not fully sick yet. And you look at the face and you know those eyes kind of a little bit puffy, a little bit glossy, a little bit too wet, and you know something is going on. that kind of allergy looks. And when it's the season, look at them, are they gasping for air? Because snoring is not the first sign. Snoring is the final sign. Snoring in children is already a huge red flag. Let me tell you a different way. It's not red flag, it's ASAP. If your child snores, on daily basis, like every night you hear your child snoring, you need to take action immediately. You need to see someone who can evaluate your child right away because that's already developed to the snoring. Snoring for children is a huge problem and it didn't happen yesterday. It slowly developed from something mild to that blocked airway. Think about snoring like blocked airway. So it's not just, you know, making noises, it's about not being able to breathe the way you should. Another sign, believe it or not, is behavior. It's a huge, and it's a very sensitive topic to talk about because, you know, children are children and children are different. So it's very hard to judge, especially being a dentist. I'm not familiar with those signs, but I always pay attention to what Mom shares with me. Does Mom have any concern about her child's performance at school, performance with children, you know, the social interactions? And as a general dentist, we build up long-term relationship with our patients. and I always try to be delicate, but at the same time ask what exactly the concern is about. Because sometimes children who don't sleep well, they show the signs of ADHD and any other behavior problems which we try to hide, or sometimes we try to start treatment too soon without ruling out other problems. And now ideally every child before putting such a diagnosis of ADHD or anything like that, they need to be evaluated by sleep doctor to rule out sleep problems before putting the child under any diagnosis. How many moms do you know about that? A lot of them try to be good moms and provide the best for children, so they listen to doctors, they start treatment which may not be necessary. Another sign is definitely I already mentioned it's snoring. Snoring is something you are not ignoring. I mean, we'll have episodes like you get the flu, you get the cold or something, but if you snore on daily basis, that's not the right thing. And you need to find the answer to that, like why your child is snoring. and there are a lot of little things we look at from the dental standpoint. Another good thing, every single mom can recognize crowding children teeth. And I'm talking about, like, baby teeth or mixed dentition teeth, which means you have baby teeth and you already getting adult teeth or young adults who already got adult teeth, but not like, you know, fully Establish adult occlusion yet. There shouldn't be any crowding. Crowding is a big sign of small mouth. If I can say it the simplest way, crowding and not because teeth are big, it's because the mouth is too small for the normal teeth. And a lot of families think that they shouldn't worry about it until the child is 12 years old when they see orthodontist. Now, I'm glad we now try to send our children for the first orthodontist evaluation is seven years old. But let me tell you, a lot of time they need to be checked at five, at four, at three. And we see sometimes treatment could be even sooner than that age. So we're all moving toward to not waiting for anything. and take some actions right now, just like you said. For infant, it could be evaluating and treating tanties. It could be intraoral massage that lactation specialists can teach mom to do. It could be professional massage. It could be body work, which is very, very important for a newborn. And it could be like a new special craniosacral therapy. it could be myofunctional therapy for a little bit older child. So a lot of proactive approaches to prevent or to improve the outcome as much as we can. When we go together to all those courses we always share with you, and you remember there are certain signs like looking at your child and looking at profile. You don't have to be a dentist to read profile. And a lot of airway specialists say like as soon as you cannot unsee it. It's such a true statement. When I take my children to hockey practice, I look at their team and I see, oh, how to talk to that mom? How can I politely tell her that something is not right with her child? Or I stay on the soccer field for my oldest son, you know, play, and I always look at and think, oh, that one never closed his mouth. I wish I can, you know, talk to his mom, but not every person, you can just openly walk in and So I can say, Hey, I am so so and I want to tell you. But if that mom here about nasal breathing from your podcast, from another one, from the book, from Facebook, and then she reads some posts on Instagram, and hopefully she will start asking like, is it my child? I have a lot of personal friends who put on the form at the my exam, like no snoring, no behavior problems, no mouth breathing. And when the child is sitting in the chair and the whole dental exam appointment, he or she never closed the mouth. So sometimes we don't know what mouth breathing, how mouth breathing looks like in the eyes of patients' mom. So it doesn't have to be wide open with the tongue sticking out. It could be as small as A little, little opening, like drooling saliva during night is considered to be mouth breathing. How many people know about that? Not a lot. How many people know that if your child watches the movie, the mouth should be completely closed? And so it's such a broad question, and there is no way to answer everything, you know, in such a short time. but those basic things everyone should be very watchful for. Any child should not breathe through the mouth at any time. Nasal breathing, it's what we all been designed for. No snoring. The child should be happy. The child should be happy. Go to the bed and wake up in the morning. the child shouldn't turn around during night, like you cannot find the blanket or the pillow, everything around the room. That's the sign of restful sleep. If the child takes a long time to fall asleep, it's the sign that something needs to be evaluated. If it's really hard to wake the child up, it's the sign. If every morning they suffer from headache, if they are moody every morning. That's the question you should ask your pediatrician, your dentist, get the second opinion, but find someone who have answers. I hope it helps. I can talk about science and what to watch for on and on and on, but I think just, you know, a few fundamentals is good enough to know for everyone.

That's amazing. Dr. Lana, you guys know this, that what Dr. Lana just shared with us, is like she's lectured for hours on this topic. So this is just something that you can look at the child right away and recognize that I need to get help for my children because as parents, we always want the best for our kid. And remember, we're all little ones. So we were there and now we were struggling with energy level fatigue and memory, foggy brain. And now we realize that we also breathing through the mouth and we suffering through all these years with lack of energies and motivations and actions. And so we don't want that. Take that away from our children. The possibility of what they could become. So, Dr. Lana, really appreciate your times. And I'll make sure that we put your contact informations on our blog posts and information how to reach out to you and contact you on social media, on Instagram and on Facebook. And we can't wait, especially audience that in DFW area, you are so lucky. Dr. Lana and her husband is opening their private practice in Dallas that focus on biological wellness, AOA comprehensive full mouth dentistry. So make sure you follow Dr. Lana startup journey. And Dr. Lana, can you please saying a few words with our audience before we?

Of course. Thank you so much for having me tonight. I just remember how it all started. with my journey, I just wanted to help my own children. The more I've learned about it, the more I wanted to help others. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna help children in my close family. Then I decided to help my, you know, friends children, and then it became my professional and personal passion.

So.

As you know, it may start with your own child, but you never know through knowing what's going on with your child, you may help so many other children and families to be better, to be healthier and happier. It's all about that. Thank you so much for having me here tonight.

Thank you so much for listening in. Make sure that you are looking in your kid, and sharing this message with all the moms, friends, and your professional healthcare provider. So raise the wellness and understand that Airway is life. And thank you again for tuning in today. I'm Dr. Katie Toto and you want to have a wonderful day. And don't forget, there's always a reason to smile.

Thanks for listening to the Wellness Dentist Podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please rate and review and remember, there's always a reason to smile.