Beyond Braces: The Holistic Path to Kids Orthotics Well-Being

Hi everybody.

I'm Dr. Sandhya Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way. Welcome to today's show. I'm so excited to have here Dr. Sherry, Sammy and I do want to tell our listeners a little bit about you because it's pretty incredible, you know, that you're a dual specialist. We don't see many of those in both pediatrics and orthodontics. Which one came first for you?

It was actually a dual specialized program at ucla, which unfortunately no longer exists. But yeah, it's like a three and a half year program that they had. So you, you do both of the degrees together? Both. Both specialties together simultaneously.

Yeah. I can only imagine I've only done one, but I can only imagine two and three and a half years and.

Then between the departments a lot.

Yeah, exactly. You stayed there as a clinical instructor at UCLA for both medical and dental program, and it was during that time that you became one of the creators of the children's health advocacy training curriculum. Chat. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Yes. So I started teaching at UCLA right after I finished residency. I love teaching. So I went into it and everything kind of fell on my lap. You know, another amazing colleague that was my professor, she went for maternity leave and kind of all of these things fell on my lap. And I started learning a lot about health policy and became a fellow for American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. And then we started with the pediatricians to kind of shape this healthcare health advocacy training, children's health advocacy training, which really looked at a lot of things like breastfeeding and foster homes and nutrition and. And really looking at children like what does it mean for them to be healthy? You know? And so we started a lot of different programs inside actually preschools and some in the Venice Medical Clinic. And we would go and see the children all together with medical and dental residents, pediatricians and pediatric dentists. They would see the kids together initially and then they would learn from one another and they would learn all aspects of so many different things about kids that normally in the pediatric medicine or pediatric dentistry is not even talked. Talked about. So that was a really. And then simultaneously I was teaching at the craniofacial clinic at UCLA where the patient comes and each practitioners from all kinds of different specialty. They all evaluate the patient one by one. And then at the end of the day, they all get together around a round table and they start talking about like, this is my perspective. This is what I saw. This is what I saw. So I started asking the question, why don't we look at other children like that? Like, why are we such a disintegrated kind of a. Oh, I'll just send them to you. And I don't really know what you're doing, but, you know, you're perio, so you would know how to take care of it, but not really understanding the collaboration, not really understanding what you can do for patient, and not even knowing half of the time that I can send them to you or to somebody else. So I think that discussion and that conversation kind of intrigues something in my consciousness that we are looking at children, especially as a disintegrated pieces of organs or different things that's like, oh, there's the eye, there's the nose, there is the mouth, there is the teeth, there's the tmj. Even, you know, it's like most orthodontists, they don't even think that the TMJ is their. You know, it's their business. You know, if they're putting all of these appliances in the mouth and it's actually injuring and compromising the tmj, they're like, no, no, no, no, that's not my. That's not my business. That's not my problem. Send them to somebody else. I think that when I decided to leave UCLA and kind of come into the private practice, I wanted to see how can I see every single child as a whole and evaluate them from not just physical. Also, I have a degree in a bachelor and a master in psychology. So also look at the integrations of their, you know, their home psychosocial aspects. You know, the. The relationship between the parents, like, how is the home life? How is the mom's trauma? You know, and so I was really interested in all of these things, so I started, you know, doing what I love. And. And it just kind of turned into this magnificent, purposeful life that. That I look at and evaluate every child with the wholeness of their being rather than what's missing or what's. And I think their teeth is like the last thing actually, when it comes to all that. Not. Not a lasting but a way of, like, if there is something on the teeth, it's also a manifestations of everything else that is going on inside the body. So how can the whole aspects of these things.

Yeah, I agree with you. That's the way I look at the mouth. You know, if something's going on in the mouth, you know, whether it's a stagnation that's manifesting in a chronic inflammation or inf, there's usually a problem elsewhere in the body. Also, it's not just the teeth. And it's really incredible that you were able to practice that way, even at the Venice Clinic, to work with pediatricians, because I think that's also needed in adult dentistry as well, for us to be able to, let's say, as a periodontist, I would love to spend more time with cardiologists to learn about the effects of the mouth on the heart and looking at EKGs and things like that. So hopefully that's coming. I think that's a brilliant thing that you did with the CHAT curriculum.

Thank you there.

But another thing that's special about you is that at your office, you like to create this healing environment of customized care where education for families is a priority as well. You understand that basically learning and healing only happens when your patients are supported by a nurturing sense of compassion. And you like to get the whole family involved, which is so important, I think, in every aspect of healing, but especially so for children. And you are a parent yourself, and you know the challenges that families face, and you encourage parents to share their knowledge and experiences because a stronger community means healthier children, right?

Absolutely. I think one of the things that I noticed once I became a parent is how many questions are out there about parenting and how little answer there is out there about parenting. And I think, like, starting actually as a conscious parent and a holistic parent, I want to call it, there is so many things that you have to become mindful about, you know, that it becomes really, really overwhelming to be. To figure it all out by yourself. So one of the things that I really enjoy in my practice is like, all of the moms and the dads, they're like, Dr. Sammy, have you. Have you heard about this thing? Have you heard about that? You know, it's like, oh, there's, you know, I have. I. I have a little store called a healing fairy store. And it, you know, they come in and they're like, oh, you know, make sure that, like, none of the vitamins, they have this ingredient. And have you noticed, like, about this other vitamin? It becomes a perpetuating community that, like, you don't have to figure out everything all by yourself. You literally learn as you go through how to protect your child. And unfortunately, I think, as you and I know, like, our world, especially nutritionally, has become so deficient, and our soil and the way that we do our farming and the way that we are. We go about our farm food and nutrition, it's so depleted that we have to be able to look at every single thing to protect our children. You know, from the glyphosate to the. To the dairy to all the additives that they add to our food. I feel like it's a very different world than our parents. They. They parented us. You know, it's. We have to be so much more mindful so that aspects of not just educating the parents, but the parents staying humble enough, where the parents start educating you. I think it's essential for all of the practitioners and doctors out there, because so often we just think we know it all and we have figured it all out, and we are the one who have gone to school. And then when you actually create a community, then the community learns together. And each one of us, we have a part that we teach one another, and it's so much more powerful than us trying to navigate through everything and having all the answers. So I have. I feel like I've become a much better parent since I became a holistic practitioner because it's. I created that community where, like, during the zoom, you know, I create. During the COVID I started a lot of zoom stuff, you know, where we put, like, little pots together and started having all these classes together for kids, you know, so they can still socialize within a smaller group. You know, I started putting a lot of zoom calls, you know, in terms of educating them about what's, you know, how to. What are some of the holistic ways that they can take care of themselves, what are. Some of the way that they can take care of their children. So I think all of them then the same thing, you know, the parents would kind of come in like, oh, yeah, I know this. This teacher. I can offer this, and I can come and teach everyone how to make fermented sourdough, you know, and I'll have that on the Zoom for everyone to offer. I can, you know, teach you how to, like, make. We have. We have a little farm, so how to make, you know, goat yogurt, you know, so get your goat milk, and then I'll teach everybody how to make goat yogurt, you know, so it's just. It's a very, very sweet community of parents that. That I just feel so blessed to be able to. To Serve in a. In a much more profound way than just the teeth.

I love that. And community has been around for thousands of years, and that's how a lot of people got their knowledge passed down through generations from their community members on how to raise children, for example, how to make sourdough. I know I have things passed down for my grandmother in Romania. How to make fermented sourdough, for example. But I would love to know about your farm. What things are you growing on your farm?

Sure. So the whole farm actually kind of came about again, like, a little bit before COVID but then fully functioned by Covid. And part of it was. I felt so disconnected, you know, when I was looking at, okay, how could a virus do so much damage? And how could. Like, it just shuts down the whole world? And I'm like a why kind of a person. I ask a lot of whys. And to me, me, that part of that, the why was the fact that we're so disconnected from our food source and including, you know, me. Even though, like, yes, I eat organic food, but then I go to, like, a grocery store and I get all my stuff, or maximum, go to a farmer's market and get all my stuff. But I didn't know anything about, like, how to grow your own food, how to have, you know, how to take care of chickens and quails and ducks, and we have sheep and goats. And then I have an organic garden. So I started kind of asking different people. And we started with, like, you know, I think 18 chicken that somebody needed to get rid of and brought it to our house, and then with two goats and then two sheep, and. And then we started with, like, a few, you know, vegetables and herbs. And so now it's. It's just a full growing, like, in one year. Actually, we didn't know anything about birth control in sheep and go goats. So in one and a half year, I think we had, like, 25 goats and 30 sheep. It was just like every day there was two more, three more, two more, three more. It was very overwhelming at one point. So we started getting away and. And I had a. I had a tiny. I started a farm school in my house. So it was 10 kids, and they. They were literally coming, and my daughter was part of it. We found, like, three amazing teachers that they would come in and they teach the kids how to milk the goats, how to make all kinds of different things out of that, and how to shear the sheep, how to dry it, how to basically, like, get the whole sheep wool completely with avocado. Seed oil, kind of colored, and then how to spin it and how to make all kinds of stuff. You know, my daughter is. Both my daughter and my son, they're quite handy, unlike me, you know, they can make shirts and hats and socks and all kinds of stuff. And when I look at it, I wanted to see, like, how can we prepare a different kind of future, not just for our children, but also prepare a different kind of a child that is much more in unity with mother Earth and with everything else around. So both my kids, they know how to shear sheep. You know, both my kids, they know how to spin and, you know, milk and make all kinds of stuff. They know how to garden, they know how to. When they go through. I had like a person that would take them hiking once a week, you know, like the whole group of kids and teach them, like, what are some of the herbal medicine that they were hiking, you know, what did they use this one for? All the natural stuff. So just kind of creating a very, very different education that they're used to and then applying all of these things. For example, like the math class was about making a coop. So all the kids, they had to learn measurements, they had to see, like, what's like the, you know, the rectangular area and how much, how much do they need per square inch, you know, all of that stuff. So they applied all of these things into actual problems and they built everything themselves, you know, so they build a coop themselves. And it was very sweet to see that. Yeah, very sweet to see the skills that they're developing, that instead of sitting just in front of the computer or sitting just in a classroom setting, they're actually learning how to apply all of these skills into the real life situations.

Yeah, that's really amazing that you have that and you've implemented that in your household. Because I think it's so critical, especially moving forward with the world that we live in, to learn these things and how to work and get things from the mother Earth to be able to sustain living. And you also, together with your husband, you co created a nonprofit organization. Yes, Global. Okay, tell us a little bit about that.

So both of us, we kind of were sitting one time and talking about what is the essential While we were doing the. Our master in spiritual psychology. What is the essential thing? Ingredients that it's missing in the world. And we looked at education, we looked at prisons, you know, we looked at schools, we looked at hospitals, and we felt that every single place it's missing this ingredient called love. You know, it's. That's a hot commodity. It's used in a way that, you know, the word is not used correctly. We just, quite often we look at it as romantic love, but, but how much healing can actually be done with. From a teacher that really sees the child, really hears the child, really holds a space for the child. And the same thing goes into when, you know, as a doctor, how often we just, we're just too, too busy writing and we never really see, look at this patient and really ask deeper questions like, okay, you know, you have a few mouthful of cavity. You know, I had a, I had a mom couple of days ago and as I was examining the, you know, the one year old, one and a half year old child, I noticed that she had a tick. You know, like she started like with a little bit of a tick. So. And I know that wasn't there before, you know, so instead of like just focusing on the child, you know, and the one and a half year old and how can I, you know, count her teeth and what is happening in her mouth, which already she's like sucking her thumb so badly, you know, that everything is completely collapsing. All the teeth are already crowded and. And she has a lot of anxiety at one and a half. So I looked at the mom and I said, what's going on? Is everything okay? And she's like, yes and no. I said, you know, what's happening? Like, and I just kind of like asked one of my staff to just play with the child so I can take mom to the, to the room. And then she kind of said, yes, we're going through a really bad divorce and it's been very stressful. And my husband and I, we used to do this thing where we helped out a couple with conscious uncoupling. And you know, we kind of wrote some articles about that and. But we don't do that anymore. We like working with couples, you know, but we don't do that as much anymore. But I was like. So I said, are you consciously uncoupling? It's like, no, it's far from consciously uncoupling. It's a very angry, angry uncoupling. So I'm looking at this mom who's holding so much stress in her body and so much that it's going on with her. And if I just treat the child and look at the teeth, I'm missing on the whole aspects of this matrix that the child is held and I'm missing. And then mom's like, she hasn't had a cleaning. She hasn't really she's been very busy. She's been very stressed out. And so it's a. It's an opportunity that. That gets missed in quite often as a healer. If we look at that and hold that space with love, so many beautiful things can. Can nourish and can come like that. Mom just feels, oh, my God. My holistic pediatric dentist or integrative orthodontics actually cares about how I feel, you know, and how often we go to our pediatricians and they never ever ask anything about us, you know, and it's. Right. Especially when you just give birth, you like, your OB GYN doesn't want to see you anymore and your pediatrician is not really interested in you. So about, like, you know, you're depressed, you're overwhelmed, you're. You're so, you know, there's so much hormones going around. So that's when we started this, this course called Art of Loving. And, and for each group, it started something different. We've done. We've gone to medical schools and trained medical. Medical students. We've gone to prisoners and trained, you know, prisoners. We've done, we've worked with some, with the foundation of Gustavo Dudumel and trained musicians, you know, so we've done it like, in different capacity and different ways. But it starts basically with wearing a button that says, I believe in this thing and I see you and this is the conversation that I want to have with you. Because everything else to me is just chit chat and useless, you know, way. Because if underneath it is not that loving and the whole conversation is not grounded with this universal language that we so brilliantly has been ingrained in us. And I really believe it's ingrained in us because every time that I look at, like, I see a lot of babies, you know, five to seven babies a week, and every time that I look at their eyes, it's just like melt, you know, I have never seen one baby that. It's not just the eminence of loving. So I think somewhere we lose it, but we were already wired for it. So how can we get that conversation back and how can we ground that in. In so many ways? So we've done a lot of different things and a lot of. We have a gratitude basket every year that we, we create like these bags for thousand bags for like, kid, you know, people in the homeless shelters or people in the temporary housing, women's housing. So we do different things, but they're all the same conversation.

Yeah, you bring up a good point about, about having the conversation as A healer with the patients where they are, and especially as practitioners, you know, people, you know, that go to doctors who have to see a patient every 10 minutes.

Yeah.

There's no chance of establishing that connection and really understanding, okay, what is in the way for this patient? What is in the way that they're getting in the way of their own healing.

Yeah.

Because I have those patients, until they resolve some of their, you know, personal problems, it's hard for them to go into a healing space.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

The love button. I'm gonna have to get one of those for sure.

Some. I will. I will make a note to send you. To send you a gift package.

Thank you so much. I would love to join in this movement. I feel like I'm already there, so.

Definitely, absolutely. What you're doing with the show, I think it's already an eminence of the loving, because you're coming from your own time and your own effort, and you're putting all of these, you know, different resources and just for having a conversation, you know, having an education for people that they might not have the opportunity to. To have this conversation. So I think that that's already, like, your loving act and your loving contribution.

Yes. Yeah, Sherry. And, you know, my mission is really to put holistic dentistry on the map as. As the mainstream, because for the longest time, you know, in dental school, we're just taught to drill and fill. Look at the tooth. Oh, it's got. Okay, there's a hole fillet. You know, just without thinking about the consequences that it might have on the whole human body.

Right.

So I think it's really time for a change in dentistry. And that's like, my big, audacious goal is to really put holistic dentistry, biological dentistry on the map, is to open up also the dentists who are listening to this podcast to understand that there is a way that's much more fulfilling for both you and I and for the healer, for the practitioner, as well as for the patients.

Right. I remember that, you know, I had a professor, God rest his soul. His name was Dr. Moss. You know, he came up with the moth hypothesis. And him and his wife, they had, like, three doctoral degree. Like, really, really intelligent. And he always. He would, like, scream in the thing. He's like, don't become a tooth carpenter. You know, it doesn't take a genius to make a hole inside the tooth. You know, you are doctors of the mouth. You should be able to take a look at somebody and know exactly how teeth come together without even them opening the mouth. It was very interesting. It had such a profound effect on me. And especially because my husband is an osteopath, I kind of went further where I started looking at people like, oh, how does the jaw. What's happening with the neck? What's happening? How is the relationship between the neck and the sacrum and, you know, with the feet? You know, it's like, it's so crazy. Like, I just took an osteopathy course in foot, in feet, and I. Do you know how many ligaments we have in our feet?

No idea.

One hundred and seven ligaments just in one foot. So it's. It's so phenomenal. And I was sitting with all these osteopaths and, you know, 26 bones. And it's like, it was. And he was talking about all these things, and then he looks at me, he's like, finally, an orthodontist is taking my course. So I said, you know, he looks at me, he says, do you know if this bone is off because their foot kind of had, like, a little accident or just kind of slipped wrong. And then the foot is off. It actually creates open bite because it pulls the whole sphenoid up, and then it creates an open bite on this side of the body, you know, do you know that? And then, like, this is what happens with, like, you know, if this bone is off in the cross bite of the body. So. And then he was explaining the whole relationship of it, and it was so interesting because I had this girl who has a lot of hyper laxity of her joint and super flexibility. And it was almost six months that I was trying to close her. Her bite, her open bite. She did myofunctional. She did cranial work. She did all kinds of stuff. And I don't use a lot of forces. I don't believe in a lot of forces. So I couldn't, like, scratching my head, like, what's happening? Why can't I close the bite? And I like, you know, this woman, this girl has been in, like, almost a year in myofunctional therapy. It's not like. It's not the tongue. And we have done all kinds of different things. So the next time she comes in, you know, after this osteopathic course, I'm like, take off your shoes and your socks.

And I love it.

So I was like, stand over here. And sure enough, that bone was off. So I look at it, I was like, wow, okay, well, I have a craniosyncratal therapist. Let me take you to her. And I went. And I Said, I want you to adjust this bone. You know, can you, can you actually like get this one done? And she, and she did have like a little slippage and you know, one day and like, she's like, yeah, like my, my toes kind of standing up since then and I have a little bit of, of ankle, you know, that, that hurts, you know, time to time, and it's uncomfortable. In two weeks, her bite was closed automatically, like on its own.

Wow. You know, so that's unbelievable.

But how, how much do we not know, right? How much do we just kind of like think it's all here and. Okay, let's get the tongue to work out. Let's do this. Let's, let's, let's fix this. Let's put an expander and all of these things, they do work. But if we don't understand how this.22 bones and then the whole spine and the sacrum and the knees and the ankle and the feet, they're working together. As you kind of like, I was listening to some of your podcasts and I love the fact that you were talking about like how the, the microbiome of the mouth, it actually starts kind of going into the knee and it's. And the whole thing with the ozone and how you're kind of changing the biofilm of the knee. And this is like they get some of the bacterias and thinks that this causes inflammation. So many people, they don't understand and even physicians, you know that they are orthopedic surgeons. They are ents. They are, you know, they have, they are extensively trained. They only understand one part. And because they understand one part to me and including me, that's how I was. Right? Because I only understood one part. Then I was like this, you know, the blind man, the 12 blind men touching one part of the elephant and think, this is the whole elephant. And as I bring that curiosity and that enthusiasm to more like, how is the relationship between MTHFR and tongue ties and what is the relationship of that with early premature birthing and what happened with this cyst, you know, on how. I have another story. Can I share that with you?

Yes, of course.

I had, I had a mom with seven kids and she had. But she was basically, she came to me when, with the second, third one. By the time, she only had the third one. So I had the blessing of treating her through all of these different pregnancies and her children. So every single child, like this tooth was out, you know, like, it was kind of like. Right. And I'm looking at the parents and the grandparents, and it's like none of them, they have this tooth out. So I told her, I said, I have a crazy, crazy, like, hypothesis. Would you go with me? And she's like, yeah. They said, can you find out, like, the last part of your pregnancy? How you know, what does. I know? You get. She. She got a kind of like polycystic ovarian syndrome. So your cysts, they start growing. Can you find out through the ultrasounds or through osteopathy, how does the child sit in comparison with those cysts? Sure enough, at the last part of her pregnancy, the last month, the cyst would start pushing and the child would sit in the same way in every single pregnancy and pushing on the face in that aspect. Aspects. So the last one, the last three, I said, and this might be a hypothesis. I don't know if it's true or not. You know, I've only had one. One family like that. But the last part, I said, I want you to go and see a craniosacral therapist and an osteopath every single week in. And then I also want you to wear a CGM monitor, you know, like a glucose monitor, because I want to see how your. Your glucose works, you know, and really, really, like, monitor those cysts and everything and kind of change that and then see osteopath, like once a week in the last month of your pregnancy and get your child to be treated as soon as they come out by an osteopath. Sure. The last three kids, they didn't have that tooth sticking out, so that's amazing. Maybe by accident, but, you know, it's just you kind of those things, right?

Yeah, that's. It's important. And I remember myself, I took the osteopathy. Osteopathy class, and I was trying to feel, you know, the breathing in the back as you hold the head. But it's. And it's so amazing if you actually get to feel that movement.

Yeah. The first time, it's so exciting. You're like, wow. What do you mean? The head moves?

Yeah, exactly. How do you incorporate osteopathy with orthodontics in the work that you do?

I have to say that I cannot do orthodontics without osteopathy. So I have a craniosacral therapist that's. That's osteopathically trained in my office. So as. As you might know, I use the ALF, you know, Dr. Nordstrom's advanced light Wire Functional Appliance. I can feel myself, but she Kind of goes beyond that a lot. So she treats the patient, I come in, I adjust the ELF with her and she gives me feedback about the rest of the body. Like oh no, it's kind of like making the sphenoids rotate this way or no, it's not doing really good for the shoulder. And then so we adjust that. Or sometimes like I have osteopath that they treat the patient right before and then right after my alpha adjustments. And then if there is anything that it's not resonating with the rest of the body, they kind of like send me a note. Can you please like adjust the off this way? Because this is, it's kind of causing this or it's exacerbating that. And so everything from orthodontics to, you know, frenectomies. I don't know if I can ever do it without the osteopathic approach because the body, it works so much together that. And then we have been, you know, sore the oath of I do no, no harm. And I see like when we do regular orthodontics without the rest of the body's concern, without looking at the rest of the body, we're just like, okay, let's put an expander screw type expander and just like push everything this way. Okay. At one sense, most of the time patients are asymmetric and when you're pushing equally on both sides, what happens is the side that was a little bit deficient doesn't move and the side that was already moving moves too much. So you're creating a little bit of septal deviation. You're, you're actually getting the vomer bone to deviate. You're getting the neck, you know, the spine, possible scoliosis, especially in patients now that they, that I see with a lot of hyper laxity and super flexibility of their joints, which I don't know why but I see, feel like I'm seeing more and more of these patients. It's not the right thing for their body. So like that mindfulness about how are you expanding and then you're not just expanding this way, but you can expand this way and this way. So like you're three dimensionally and you're expanding asymmetrically and you're, you're looking at things with the airways and the postures and the spines and everything else. I feel it's almost, it's our responsibility. I know we, we haven't been trained in it unfortunately, but just like you, I hope that one day this will become like the normal way of looking at the whole body and everything that we do in the mouth, it would be in support of the rest of the body, because from not only osteopathically aspects of it, but also neurosensory and even, I would say, like, our breath and our sympathetic parasympathetic. There's so much that happens in the mouth that it's completely overlooked. And I feel like sometimes we're doing more damage than good by not knowing what we don't know.

I agree. But let's go back to the alf, Because a lot of people that I talk to have no idea what an alf appliance is. So tell us the difference between, let's say, traditional braces and number one, do you still do traditional, you know, braces with brackets and that? Okay.

But not traditional, so.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't do a traditional braces mechanism. So I use brackets for mindful movements of the teeth. I always stay in the light wires and I. And I always have an elf in there Because I want to hold and support the cranium as I'm moving things. And I don't keep the braces for a long time because if I'm obstructing the midline, I don't want that midline to be obstructed For a very long time. Right. So I want that movement to happen. So.

Yes, that's a great point that I do want to bring this up Because I run into this midline obstruction with bridges, you know, for adults that go across. So now we're talking about orthodontics. And I have patients that are really bothered by a lock that's cross arch.

Yes.

And some patients don't feel it at all. So what do you see in young patients when you have this midline that is. That is now constricted with an arch wire?

So I think what. You know, I think one of my patients actually kind of talked about it on, you know, in an interview. And the interviewer, who was. She's quite famous. So, like, the interviewer is like, what this thing that the put. The permanent retainer that you put. It affects your neck. And they were kind of like, you know, frowning upon it. It is because if things are not moving and it's just like one solid block, as you and I know, if, like, there is the cranial movement that happens with the cerebral spinal fluid going up and down. I mean, we're not just this one solid bone in the head. There is. There's fluid dynamics that it's happening. So if we are like Basically blocking everything and just kind of having it in one block. Then it becomes at the expense of the neck, and it becomes at the expense of the nose, and it becomes at the expense of the spine. So many different things. So they might not notice that this is bothering. They might come to you and like, like, oh, my neck has been, you know, bothering me for so long, or I have back pain. I have. And they don't even know the relationship. But I can't tell you how many of my moms and dads that the Kim's like, you know, I don't know what to do with this. And I was like, okay, we're going to, you know, if you are okay with it, that you understand that your things, they might move, you know, which is. That's another conversation. If we are adjusting the teeth to. At one place that they have to wear a retainer in order to stay in that same place for the rest of their lives. To me, it's like you break your bone and you have to wear your cast every single night. So, like, your bones, they don't move. So something is not in that equation. Hasn't been addressed where the body naturally keeps the straight teeth in a. In a place that it's harmonious to the rest of the body, you know, and it's. And your tongue and your lips and your breathing and your posture is actually keeping your teeth rather than like a retainer for the rest of your life. Right. So we take that out and it's like, oh, my God, I feel like I can breathe and like, my neck pain went away or like, you know, I had these, like, recurrent sinus infections all the time, you know, that went away. And so there's a lot of, like, subtle and yet profound things that happens with, you know, some of those stuff that we kind of put forever inside the mouth. And especially in osteopathy, midline is critical. It's so, so important. So anything that crosses the midline and locks the body, it doesn't allow the body to just do and maneuver in the way that it's supposed to be doing it. So.

And the way if everything's in harmony, once you straighten the bite and the teeth, it should stay there. Is it without retention?

Yes.

That's pretty incredible. So do you have. Do you still have your patients wear retainers for a little while or a little bit?

Yeah. While they're kind of going through their growth and development and while they're going through some of, like, if they're playing sports, you know, because when they get hit. Things, they change, you know, if they are going through, like, if they're having habits like all the time like this, things, they change. So I have them to wear it for a short period and then I say, now it's going to be a really cute thing on the side of your bed. I don't want you to wear it every single night. I want you to wear it once in a while after a few months and just see how it is. And we going to be looking at some of those functions and some of the things that it's not working. For example, when a patient goes through divorce and anxiety and trauma, you know, and this was, this was something. You know, my patients are like my biggest teachers, right? So I had this girl that the mom kept coming and insisting, well, are you sure you don't want to put braces on her? Are you sure she doesn't need anything? I'm like, I'm 100% sure. Everything looks fantastic. Save your money. Put it somewhere else, you know? And she's like, but everybody has braces in her class. I said, yeah, but look at her. Like, her teeth look fantastic. You know, why would I to put braces on it?

Just, you don't have to do.

And then she went through Covid, and I saw her after two years, all the teeth, and she was 14, so it wasn't like, you know, I saw her at 16 afterward. So it wasn't like she. She had. She's still growing a lot. I mean, she was kind of like, you know, she already had her cycle, she was already grown, all the permanent teeth were there. She went through Covid, and two years later I'm seeing her and all the teeth are crowded, like significantly crowded.

Wow.

I'm like, what happened to you? Just, I. I don't know. I mean, just like I was noticing this, but so we kind of like did a little dig in. Significant anxiety. Sitting for hours and hours on her bed, slouched in to do the. Her zoom calls. You know, as you and I know, beds are horrible because like the whole sacrum completely gets thrown off and then the rest. And I always talk about like, this is one plane. This is one plane. Your diaphragm is one plane. Your sacrum, your knees, your ankle, these are all planes that they match with each other. They can't be one of them like this, and then the other one doesn't get affected. So if one part of it gets affected, that's why I'm like looking at the whole body. Like if a shoulder is like this, I'm sure, in that what happens then? There is tightness in the neck. Then it starts pulling the face from one side and it starts kind of developing very differently on one side than the other side. That's why they say babies with turticolas do not release that tongue tie until you're actually. The baby has worked with the osteopath or a craniosacral therapist to treat that neck simultaneously. Otherwise it reattaches on one side more than the other. So there's all these, like, subtleties that if you don't know, then we're just kind of looking at, like there's all these people, they just go in there and make these symmetrical tongue tie releases and they don't even look at the rest of the body. Some parts of it, you know, they get reattached and you're like, okay, why did they get reattached? The patient go for one year through myofunctional. And they went through this and they went through all of that. They did everything right. But the rest of the body wasn't really treated. And because of that, it kind of pulled it from one side.

Yeah. I love to talk about dyslexiopathic frenectomy concept because I was taught, you know, as a periodontist, have a tongue tie, go ahead, take a laser, a blade, whatever, you know, and release it. We were just zooming in on the mouth. But how do you pull in osteopathy with that? And how early would you do a frenectomy on a child?

My youngest has been three days old, so.

Oh, wow.

So three days old. I think that's my, my daughter was also three days old that, that I did her frenectomy. But it's. The sooner you do it, actually, the better it is and the easier because they don't, they don't get acquainted with the wrong swallowing, right? So because then they, they accommodate the swelling. Like our whole purpose is to survive, right? So if the, if the milk is not coming in the correct way, you know, then like we just going to accommodate with pinching the nipples or like changing our neck, you know, one breast more than the other, whatever it is that we, that the baby does in order to be able to survive. So the sooner that you do it, the better it is. You don't have to do all of those things. And then also when you do it as a baby, you don't need myofunctional because the breastfeeding is the myofunctional. But the way that when you're looking at like, I do not do the frenectomy without cranial work. So the person, like, I actually had a certain religious group that they say, we don't believe in any of these stuff. Like we can. We don't believe in going to doctors. We don't believe in doing anything. The only reason is just because my baby cannot breastfeed and we really want to breastfeed. We don't believe in formulas. We're here for you, but we would not do the cranial cycle. I said, you know, if I don't do, if I accept and do your frenectomy without that, I'm doing more harm. Because then when it's. When actually asymmetrically, it reattaches, then what happens? The tongue on one side goes up a little bit more than the other. So it starts forming the roof of the mouth a little bit differently. The palate is a little bit higher on one side than the other. Then what's above the palate? It's the sinuses. So the sinus they start developing asymmetrically. What's above the sinuses? The eyes, they start developing asymmetrically. And then like the ears, they start becoming asymmetrically. It's all these consequences that happens that you kind of have caused in some ways, right? You know, because you release the tongue without really understanding everything else. The other thing that it's like, you know, you said like the things that we don't want to talk about, but it's kind of like, I know a lot of people, they're going to disagree with me on this one, but I actually think that every time you have a tongue tie, you have a lip tie, because it's a midline issue. And there is no tongue tie without an upper lip tie. And unfortunately, the upper lip ties, they don't get released as much because people, they cannot feel them osteopathically. If you feel a lip tie osteopathically, you see how it completely like pulls the whole mid face and it doesn't allow the mid face to open up that much. So those are the kids that they are. Their turbinates are very big. They can, they start, you know, they kind of like when they breastfeed, they sound like that they get sinus issues a lot. Some of them, they're like very serious looking, you know, so just kind of like the, the eyebrows are very squinted, you know, because of that. So I believe that every time that there is a tongue tie, there is a Lip tie, and there's a lip tie, they might have different severity, but they always come together. But when you're looking at that and also like the sequence of things, you know, what do you do first? I don't usually release everything all at the same time. I kind of look at, like how the body opens up and then there is a sequence. So if the tongue, like, let's say you have an adult patient and the palate is so small, like the whole, like all of the teeth are very congested. The tongue doesn't even have any space. Like it's sitting on top of the teeth and it has those lateral bordering, you know, because it doesn't have space. If you release the tongue, it's going to get reattached. Or if the. The jaw is really far back, you know, if you release the tongue, because it's still going to have all of that, just miraculously, things are not going to come forward after you release the tongue. So I always like, address those before I actually release their tongue. So, like those major stuff, you know, I start expanding and making room for that tongue first. I start lowering down the palate so the tongue can actually feel the roof of the mouth. You know, I start making. Making sure that the jaw comes forward and there is lip closure before I. And there is no mouth breathing that it's happening. So these are some of the things that I make sure that I do before I actually release their tongue or upper lip. And it's actually my favorite thing. It's one of my favorite procedures to do.

I feel it makes absolute sense what you're saying in terms of checking everything else and create the space.

It makes such a difference. I mean, if you actually start studying fascia, it makes such a difference in the whole body. Like, I had a mom that I just released her upper and then she starts walking out and she's kind of like, you know, like limping a little bit. And I'm like, why is she limping? You know, and she takes out one shoes and she takes like a wedge out, you know, about an inch out of her shoes. And then she starts walking and she's like. And then the osteopath calls me, he's like, oh, my God, I've been working on this hip for like 10 years. And it just, I couldn't stabilize it. What happened with like the release? It's the fascia that gets completely like, pulled in one side, pulled in another side. I don't know if you've ever seen those videos of, of the way that the fascia actually constrict. I just had an opportunity to go to Western University and, and like being in the anatomy lab and it was so fun because at the time I did an anatomy. Nobody talked about fascia, you know.

Yeah, we actually had a fascia expert on one of our shows recently. Oh, really? Yeah, because it's so important. She was talking about how tight quads, you know, the fact that being tight in the quads is going to cause PMJ problems.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

So, so important. But first, we have a lot of moms that are listening. You know, they have young kids, newborns, and is a way for them to kind of look at the tongue and see if they need, you know, their children need help. Like in terms of. With the splenectomy.

Absolutely. So first of all, actually go inside your child's mouth, you know, like kind of put your finger, wash your hand, go cut your nails. Don't put those gel, gel stuff. Otherwise use a glove. So underneath and like literally pull their lip and the side of their cheek and see how much space there is. And if. Does it feel like like a little guitar string or, you know, like really tight or. No, it's soft. But you have to like pull the lip a little bit, you know, and also sometimes on the upper lip, like, because the tension is so much that you actually see the clefting. You actually see like this, you know, so because it's pulling so much, sometimes it goes all the way down. That. That's. Those are the gummy kits that in the future they're gonna. They're gonna have a gummy smile. So kind of like get that first. Then when you're going underneath the breastfeeding, without a doubt, it's either the neck or the tongue. So you have to see if they have breastfeeding issues and they have mastitis. You know, there is something wrong with the breastfeeding. So most of the moms, they just blame themselves, like, oh, I didn't have enough. I was one of those moms. This is how I got into it. Because 16 years ago, like, my, you know, I had a natural birth and I wanted to breastfeed. And then no matter how much, 17 lactation consultants and pediatricians and all kinds of different people, they're like, ah, no, maybe like, you know, you don't have enough milk. Maybe you don't have. Maybe there is this maybe that, you know, maybe like one pediatrician is like, maybe you're not spending enough time with your son because you're a working mom and he's punishing you for not doing that. Like, so bad advice. But when once actually, Dr. Nordstrom, the inventor of the Alfie is like, he came in, it's like, no, he has a posterior tongue tie. As a UCLA professor, I had no idea what that was. I mean, I had never heard of it, you know. Yes, ankle glossia. But what's the posterior tongue tie? Posterior ankle, ankle glossy. It's when the tongue cannot lift up. So they still stick their tongue out, but the back of the tongue doesn't lift up. So what. Those are the kids that they turn into the mallampati. Score four, three. Right. Like that means like you can't see the back of their throat after a while. Or they start getting really large tonsils and then they start becoming mouth breathers. And then the whole. And they wake up and they come to your bed at two o' clock in the morning every night. And, you know, and then there's kind of sequences of all of these things that happen. One thing that I really want to emphasize, if just because you were able to breastfeed, that does not mean that your child doesn't have a tongue tie, lip tie. If you were one of those mothers that had a lot of milk, the child starts actually drinking out of the breast, kind of like almost like a bottle. So instead of using these cheek muscles, they start using the mentalis and the masseter muscle. So it's very different. Like the bottle feeding is a very different muscle usage than the breastfeeding muscles. So just because you, you. Oh, yes, I breastfed until three years old. That does not mean that your child didn't have a tongue tie and left tie. And then go to someone and check with someone that understands the whole aspects. Because a lot of pediatricians, they don't know. They think only if it's stuck at the tip of the mouth is the tongue tie and they miss it. Most people, they don't know how to look at the upper. Like they don't even look at it. And then I think the buckle ties are completely missed, you know, because we have seven, you know, freedoms. Yeah, I don't usually like. I very, very infrequently end up, you know, doing the, the buckle ties by the time that I actually get the, the midline corrected, maybe one of them, you know, if it's kind of creating like that, that side of the face is not opening up, but most of the time it just kind of like with osteopathy and cranial work, they start opening up, but just learn how to look inside, you know, go underneath the tongue. Can they, can they, can you, you know, lift up the tongue in the back part or no? So being in your, your child's mouth, it's really, really important, like, so you can understand some of those, those things.

Yeah, that is so important because it does affect later on also breathing and airway sleep and everything.

Adhd, you know, they, they kind of, they label it as adhd, but a lot of times, you know, when the child is not sleeping there, they exhibit symptoms just like adhd, you know, so they can't sit still, they are disruptive, they can't focus. You know, you and I, we know, like when you're. When we weren't sleeping because we were getting. Waking up every two hours, breastfeeding, you know, like there is. You're not a very nice person. Like, you can't be very focused and sitting and, and really paying attention to learn anything because you're just so tired, your body's so tired. These children, they are, you know, they never go to deep sleep a lot of times because the tongue goes into the back of the mouth, they mouth breathe, you know, when they're mouth breathing, it goes to the back of the mouth. And then since they can't breathe, it keeps waking them up from the deep sleep. You know, so these are the things that it gets missed, unfortunately, a lot. Or they hire someone that they sleep training. And if the sleep trainer doesn't know anything about these things now you're creating actual trauma for the rest of their life in the child because like, oh, it doesn't matter how much I'm gonna cry, nobody's gonna come to help me out. So those are the aspects of it that's like, okay, if you're having someone that's like sleep training, like, first understand the whole body and make sure there's no issues. And then after that kind of to go and create some kind of a structure that would support the whole family, but not in a way that you're putting a three months old already in another room and just making them cry out. And then you're missing the airways or you're missing some aspects of things.

Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. Wow, Dr. Sammy, you've given us such amazing information about how everything's connected. Amazing talking.

I get really enthusiastic. So.

Where can people find you? Where is your practice?

My practice is in Agoura Hills, which is north of Los Angeles. You know, it's a little for, for the people, people that they're in the west side, they feel it's far but it's not. And it's lovely to be able to, like, you know, see the hills. And so I have a lot of my patients, they actually travel to get to me. But yeah, it's in Agora Hills. And my husband and I, we actually have a practice together that's like a freestanding. He's a osteopath, so he's on one side and I'm on the other side. And we have a lot of incredible practitioners that they support us, you know, from acupuncturists to myofunctional therapists, breathing re educators for him, massage therapists, nutritionists, you know, so we have, we have a group of people that they are incredible and they, we get to learn from them and support our patients with them.

Wow, that's like a dream practice for sure to have everybody to work together.

Thank you.

What's the website? What's your website?

Happy Kids Dental planet dot com.

Okay, we're gonna put that down in our show notes as well. Happy Kids Dental Planet. I think it's amazing what you do and, you know, how you develop this practice. It's like a dream come true as well.

I'm so impressed and thank you so much for everything that you do. So grateful for that.

Oh, yes, my pleasure. Okay. Well, with that, we conclude our show and we look forward to have you again and have another conversation. I'm sure there's so many things I could talk to you about.

Absolutely, absolutely.

All right.

A pleasure.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question, question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @Dr. Sanda. This is Dr. Sanda. And remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health. So take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.