How Low Level Laser Therapy Improves Behavioral Issues in Children with Erinn Askin

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda 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 another episode on the Holistic Dentistry Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Sanda Moldovanova, and I'm very excited to talk to you today about a very interesting therapy that is done actually with a low-level laser. And as you all know, I'm a big fan of low-level lasers. I've been using low-level lasers in healing for TMJ, for any head and neck, like attention. So this is something new though that I learned about in the last few months. So I invited its founder, Erin Askin, to talk all about that. So Erin, welcome to the show. Thank you. So we're going to be discussing your neuroadaptive therapy technique, but before that, I want to tell everybody a little bit about you. You are the founder of OT-EIM, Occupational Therapy Empowering Individual Minds, and you created this therapy, correct?

Yes. Well, it's, it's my interpretation of multiple modalities, let's call it.

Okay. And what neuroadaptive therapy is, it's an integrative approach that blends occupational therapy, speech therapy, functional neurology, and innovative neuromodulation technology. To support children with developmental, sensory, and regulatory changes. With over 16 years of clinical experience, 16 years, and a background in teaching anatomy and physiology, Erin, you are now known to be pioneering intensive therapy models designed to accelerate progress for children with complex needs. But tell me, how did you get started with this? So as an occupational therapist, is that something that you learn in school?

Definitely not.

Yes, lasers are not common in school.

Definitely not. So I was a professor and my eldest daughter, I have 4 kids, they're 10, 9, 7, and 5 now. But ever since I had my first daughter, she's just always been trouble. She is just, she's trouble with a capital T, this girl. And, um, you know, she's just always been really difficult, which is okay, um, at home, but When she got to school, that's a different story. And so we were really struggling when she got to school. And at the time I was working as a professor and I was getting phone calls left and right, like, come pick her up, come pick her up. She did this, she did that. And it was kind of during COVID so there weren't a lot of options. It was toward the end of COVID let's say like 2022. Um, but still not a ton of like So they said she needs social skills groups and stuff like that. And there just really weren't a lot of options. So I decided to quit my professorship and open a clinic focused on social skills groups. And in doing so, you know, I, I collected a lot of clients and families and friends that wanted, um, occupational therapy. And in that, one of my friends, um, I knew her child was also struggling and I saw them after kind of a while and he was doing really, really great. And I was like, oh my gosh, what are you doing? Whatever you're doing, I need to do that. And she was like, don't tell anybody, but I went to this woman and she uses low-level lasers and she does neurotechnology and she does primitive reflexes and holistic diet and all this stuff. And I was like, I can do all of that. You know, I had been doing bits and pieces of that, but not as like a holistic approach. Right. And so I'm like, okay, tell, like, show me everything. Tell me all the devices. And so I kind of assembled it all myself, like a ragtag kind of, um, watching YouTube. This was before everyone had a course and all that kind of stuff. Um, and I assembled, you know, this kind of kit and I already knew a lot about the brain. So I, one night I bought a laser. Um, and I came up with an emotional regulation protocol. I used it on my daughter and it was the first time that we didn't have to really chase her around to, you know, get ready for bed and go to bed. And so we immediately saw some sort of results.

So just one treatment?

Yes. Wow. After just one. So that is not a typical response for everyone. It is a typical response for some people. There's different reasons that people might benefit from utilizing laser. One big one is neuroinflammation. So lasers have been used for a very long time to decrease inflammation, and that can also, um, translate into neural inflammation, inflammation of the brain. And so for some kids, especially kids with behavioral stuff related to like PANS/PANDAS, AKA autoimmune encephalitis, some kids will respond quite quickly because it's that immediate decrease in inflammation. And so maybe that's the reason that she responded So quickly, I haven't had her tested, um, for autoimmune encephalitis or neuroinflammation because she had this good result. I didn't feel that we needed that further testing.

Very interesting. So what exactly is traditional occupational and speech therapy approach? Like what would you do?

Yeah, so in traditional occupational and speech therapy, it's gonna be a top-down approach. So a family's gonna come into the clinic and they're gonna look at everything that's kind of going wrong or everything that's just not going great, right? And they're then going to try to address that from the skill level. Now, for a lot of families, that's not gonna be successful because the underlying necessary components, for, for example, you know, the brain being healthy and having, you know, efficient neural communication, If we don't have that, then this top-down approach of practicing skills over and over is not gonna be that successful.

Makes sense.

And so for a subset of kids, you may be in therapy for a very long time and they may be great skilled therapists that are so smart and, you know, really expert, but because that child is not in a learning ready state for whatever reason, it might be neural inflammation, it might be the gut, it might be, um, just extreme central nervous system dysregulation. There's a lot of different kind of, um, cups of, of what may be hindering that traditional progress. But if we don't address it from the root cause and we don't go from the bottom up, then there's gonna be a subset of kids that are not really gonna benefit, uh, in a short amount of time from traditional therapy, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it makes sense. Like, and I love going to the root cause. That's what this podcast is all about. We've gotta get to the root cause. How can we decrease inflammation? Otherwise you're just like feeding information to an inflamed, inflamed brain, basically.

Yeah. And it's not gonna, and, and I feel like part of the reason that I started doing intensives is I feel like everyone, and I was the same, you know, like you would give a kid back after an OT session and you're like, it was great. Everything's great. And maybe it was a great session. Maybe it was a positive session, but did it move them functionally forward? Forward. I think that there's a big disconnect of having a great session and did it move a kid functionally forward in their life, like in general? Because for that to happen, we need to have, you know, really efficient neural communication. We need to have as little inflammation as possible. We need to have a healthy gut, you know, just a lot. We need to have, um, central nervous system regulation, and then we can put higher-level learning on top. Right. And so I think that there was just, for me and for a lot of therapists who decide to, to start doing this kind of more bottom-up work, you're just not reaching down deep enough to make that functional change. And so kids are just coming session after session, year after year, and the progress is very, very slow because all you're doing is teaching a learned behavior.

Makes sense. Do, do you find a lot of kids today have, uh, issues like with social behaviors like your daughter had?

Um, I think that's a really hard question to answer. I think the majority of kids that I see, like at my kids' school, including my own kids, have a hard time with, um, appropriate social behavior, let's call it. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. Number one could be environmental. It could be toxic, it could be the food, but it's also differential parenting, right? And screens. I think screens have a huge thing to do with that because and I talk about this a lot and I struggle with it myself. When your child is acting up or you know that you're going to go into a stressful situation, let's say airplanes, for example, it's highly acceptable for kids, even kids who don't get screens, highly acceptable for a kid to be on a screen for multiple hours on an airplane. Okay. Right. That's normal. It seems normal, right?

Absolutely.

I see it a lot, but even just Yeah, even just in that, you've taught your child anytime that you gotta go and do this thing that's like really long and kind of annoying and stressful, don't worry about it because you're gonna get a screen. Even if you're a kid that doesn't get screens, you're gonna get a screen. So you've never actually learned how to be on a long-haul flight without a screen. And that translates to all kinds of other situations. That's an extreme, right? Because it's very socially acceptable to have a screen on, on a long flight. And I think that's fine in general, but what it does is it takes away that cognitive and emotional learning of how to stay calm in a stressful, annoying situation. And I think that parents in 2026 are just doing that all the time, constantly for every situation, including myself. I struggle with it too, you know, and I, I have to consciously impede myself from allowing them to watch something or do something digital.

Definitely. And I see my friends, you know, even if we're out at dinner, in order to kind of give themselves a break from their child, oh, here's a screen. And that way I get a break, but I don't socially— yeah, exactly. But I don't think they're aware. So what can happen is if a child is too much on their screen, like what are some early signs that Oh yeah, tangents.

I mean, this is a whole episode in itself. Um, so you can actually test for anti-dopamine 2 receptors in the brain, and what that tells us is that someone needs more dopamine to become satiated and calm than they should. And in a lot of kids that have unrestricted screen use, you can actually test and see that they have higher anti-dopamine 2 receptors And it's actually changing their brain chemistry because they are not satiated in a typical way because they're used to scrolling, scrolling, hit, hit, hit, hit, dopamine hit, dopamine hit, dopamine hit. And you can actually test this. And so what does it lead to? It leads to extreme tantrum behavior when they don't have a screen in front of their face. And we've even seen children that have multiple screens that will watch something on a large screen and a small screen or listen to something and watch a screen. And it's not to shame parents. It's not to say you're doing something wrong because the addiction is so strong. What are you gonna do if your kid is screaming and clawing at themselves? Of course you're gonna give them a screen to, to, you know, decrease that type of behavior. Um, but it, it can become extremely, uh, a negative situation and like an addiction.

Yeah, I could see that. And, um, So when parents see tantrums, is that a time to say, okay, now I need to see somebody like Erin to help them? Is that be the right time?

Well, that depends. I mean, we all have to take with a grain of salt tantrums because tantrum behavior, I think that's kind of like the opposite side of what we were just talking about, right? It is okay for your child to tantrum. It is okay for your child to be upset. It is okay for a 3-year-old, 2-year-old to kind of get on the floor and wah, you know, we've all seen these kind of caricatures of kids doing that. That's normal. I think when it gets past the age of what's kind of socially appropriate and we've got like a 7, 6, 7, 8-year-old kind of tantruming on the ground, right? Throwing themselves on the ground, injuring themselves or others, disrobing in public, unable to handle any social situations without crying, screaming, disrobing. These are all times to see, you know, an occupational therapist. I think most parents have some sort of baseline of tolerance for a little bit of tantrum behavior, but of course, if your child is injuring themselves or you in any way, then immediately you should seek the help of your doctor first, of course, always. And then maybe a referral for some sensory testing. I would also say, you know, gut testing. You can look at neuroinflammation, all of those kinds of things. It really depends on like how extreme extreme it is. I think it also depends on the age. So my daughter was diagnosed with ADHD when she was about 6 years old, but she had had extreme tantrum and meltdown behavior since she was born.

Hmm. Now let's say, you know, somebody brings their child to you. How do you individualize treatment for, for children on complex ADHD? Yeah, so there is a lot.

We have a lot of, um, proprietary things that we do here. We also have standardized, um, assessments. So the way that it works when someone comes to us, we're usually not the first stop on their journey. Not usually. I would say maybe like 10% of people were their first stop, but 90% of people have been many other places before. Um, so what we do is we do a full proprietary intake looking at every functional area of the kid's life from talking to walking to eating, to playing, all kinds of things like that. Um, then we use standardized assessments, um, that also look at all those domains. Um, we look at a cognitive hemisphere checklist. So we look at how's the right brain doing compared to the left brain, and are they, um, working symmetrically together, or is the right brain taking over, or is the left brain taking over? And then we also do a sensory profile. So we're looking at their sensory processing behaviors, and then we put all of that together. And then when they come in the office, we have some physical things that we look at like primitive reflexes and cerebellar testing and basal ganglia testing and also ocular motor function.

Interesting.

And then we also, if appropriate, we do a qEEG. So we have a dry cap qEEG here, um, which is really great to look at how is the brain functioning in comparison to other children their age. And so it can tell us, is it overactive? Is it underactive in all the different areas of the brain, frontal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobe? And that gives us some really great information as well as it can tell us if they are dealing with any anxiety and depression, which is really interesting because a lot of the kids that come here are nonverbal. So it's very difficult for parents to ascertain this without some type of, um, brain mapping.

Oh, very interesting. Is, is that so? Yeah. And you talk about primitive reflexes, you know, for some people listening, like what are those? And how do they impact attention regulation and learning in children? Yeah.

So their primitive reflexes are reflexes that we're born with that help us assimilate to like kind of being humans. And at first they help us get out of the birth canal. So we're kind of going like this, we get out. Now kids that are born C-section, they might skip that and then they might have delayed reflexes. That's kind of like the first, um, kind of trigger for reflexes not being integrated.

Nice.

There's rooting reflexes, which is with your mouth. Um, and sometimes that can impact speech. Um, there's ATNR and STNR, which is, has to do with tracking. Um, and we'll have some impact on how you're doing in school. There's spinal gallant, which is your connection to your lower body and can have an impact on potty training. There's the moral reflex and the startle reflex, which can have an impact on emotional regulation. And so what's really cool about testing primitive reflexes is it is a pathway forward. So sometimes parents are a little disappointed and they're like, oh, these reflexes aren't integrated. But I'm like, actually, this is a good thing because this gives us a big area that we can work on improving. And if we get them integrated, when we get them integrated, we should see functional improvement with these other things that they're correlated to. So it's actually a good thing if your child is struggling and then you get a Primitive Reflex Test and they're not integrated. It gives you a really clear path, one path to moving forward because it's things that are very concrete that you can work on.

Yeah, makes sense. And you mentioned oral health for a moment there in the mouth. Now, is there a connection between like oral function, oral health, and neurological development?

I would say the other way around. So like neurological, like kind of efficiency and development.

And we, we're looking mostly at talking, not so much oral health, but like the shape of the mouth, maybe the way, 'cause if you're not efficient, right, positioning your tongue right, then your teeth and your jaw doesn't develop properly.

Absolutely. And we do have kids who come that, you know, do have tongue ties, do have lip ties that are kind of retracted and all of that impacts speech. And we can actually use our lasers to stimulate the cranial nerves that can support neutralizing that. And then that will help with speech.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. Let's take a look at the laser. I think you brought one with you.

Yeah, sure. So we have different wavelengths. So the colors are called wavelengths, and what that correlates to— different colors can penetrate at different lengths. Red and green are shallow. And one thing that's, that's kind of funny is people always ask me, you know, if I get a green laser, how come red isn't coming out? Because it has infrared. But infrared is actually colorless to our eyes. We can't see it, but it looks green or red depending on what kind of laser you have, because there is a green or red diode in here and the clear is passing through. But I think that when people see these handheld lasers, they're kind of like, oh, okay, that's not, you know, when you hear laser, it kind of sounds a little scary, I guess. Not for me, but this is what it looks like. These are Avant lasers and we love using these lasers for a lot of different reasons. First of all, because we can very specifically pinpoint different pieces of the brain. So if I want to target the prefrontal cortex, I can just go right here.

Amazing. Oh, how deep does that penetrate?

Green? I couldn't tell you right off the top of my head, but the, the total depth of penetration for the near-infrared is 1400 milliwatts.

Okay.

I can't remember.

Does it go through this call?

It does. Okay. So a percentage, a small percentage. So it also depends on what frequency we're using and what power, how much light energy is coming out. It can penetrate the skull, but again, you have to remember it's going through skin, hair, skull, and then, you know, your brain is like an onion, so it's gotta go through some different levels of the brain as well to get to certain pieces.

Yes. Amazing. So, but what we're really, go ahead.

What we're really trying to do is, is kind of energize the cells that are in the brain in a certain area of the brain. If that makes sense.

Makes sense.

So energize and oxygenate cells with this laser, with the light, light energy. And then we're doing traditional therapy at the same time so that we're stimulating from the top down and the bottom up. And there's really no other way to energize like brain cells in a particular area of the brain while we're stimulating them with activity, right?

Totally.

We can try with certain supplements, things like that. But a truly targeted approach to different lobes of the brain or different regions of the brain, you really can only do that with a laser.

And the other color laser that you have, does that use it in the same area, the prefrontal cortex, or—

Yeah. So they have a little bit of— Yeah. So they have a little bit of different properties. We like to start with red and infrared. It's the most studied, it's the most researched, it's the most versatile. Green for us with this brand of laser, again, like I said, we only use Avant here in the office. It is a newer color. And so we're still studying what those effects are. Just anecdotally and like clinically, what we've seen is that potentially it has some kind of more potent vascular properties. So we're using it a lot intraorally. We have an intraoral probe so we can put it in the mouth. And what we're seeing it do with respect to having like more vascular properties is really stimulating the mouth in a way that kids are like kind of exploring their mouth more, kids that maybe are nonverbal. And once you explore your mouth more or you feel your mouth more, uh, it's, it's easier to get the words out, form the words with your mouth. So you can— these, this is why we love these lasers. You can take the head off, then you put this one on just like this. And I'll show you what that looks like. And then you can—

Wow, that's cool. So somebody like the families that, you know, you're helping, this can be used at home?

Yeah. So we actually have trademarked a program called HomeTensive. So it's like a home intensive. And what that is, is we send you the right laser for your child and then you work with us for 3 months over Zoom on a highly customized program for your child. We're also the only clinic that reprograms our lasers. And so we want it to be really, really easy for families to be able to use this. So for example, if your child is struggling with emotional regulation, I went to our proprietary emotional regulation protocol. And if you can see here, um, it's telling you exactly where to point the laser. There's already a timer on and it's already set with the frequency. And alternation and all the things so that all you have to do is follow the instructions on the screen.

That's so easy. Amazing. And, and typically, let's say a session is how long?

So here in the office we do intensive, so they're 2 hours, but in our home intensive and like a home program, each protocol would be around 10 to 15 minutes. So we encourage families to do around 15 minutes of laser a day if you're doing an OT protocol like emotional regulation or a parasympathetic protocol, a frontal lobe protocol that might be about 10 minutes. And then maybe later in the evening you might do a speech protocol or a swallowing protocol. It really depends on what your child's working on.

Phenomenal. This is such a great treatment and I know you also training practitioners. Yeah.

So we have providers all over the world in many countries and we do in-person trainings, we do on online trainings and Yeah, there's, there's a lot of interest in really just digging deeper. And I think it's really gonna be with everything moving to AI, with everything moving to technology. I think traditional providers, we have to get with this kind of stuff that families can actually do in their home and see, you know, a, a kind of faster result. Everybody wants everything fast. Right. And so I don't think that in 10 years' time the traditional therapy model will even exist. That's just my opinion, because I don't think that it is going to, um, coincide with how people are living and how people are working to be trekking to a therapy office multiple times a week, um, paying whatever they're paying for multiple years on end. I just don't see that model surviving in AI software, you know, online climate that we're moving towards very quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. And, and if we can have a therapy like this one that doesn't involve drugs and, and it just, it, it's at the energy level, which is at the, you know, the core of our cells. I think it's really incredible what you're doing. Where can people find you? Let's say we have clients out there listening. Where can they find you from a client perspective?

So we are on Instagram at @oteimpeds or oteim.com. Um, and to become a client, everyone has a consultation with us. So we walk everyone through, you know, what's going on with their child and match them with one of our programs if it is a match, you know. So we really wanna make sure that we're matching families with the programs that fit for them, whether it's coming in the office, whether it's working with us online, whether it's just doing an evaluation and then making something where they can just implement at home. There's a lot of different ways to work with us. You don't have to have a laser. There's a lot of different aspects of this therapy that, that families can access.

Amazing. And if somebody's interested in, you know, becoming a provider and learning to do what you do in their area, where can they find you?

Same thing. They can just DM us on Instagram or they can email us at info@oteim.com.

And if there's one thing that you wanna leave everybody listening to this, like one piece of advice for their children, what would that be?

I would say start at the bottom, right? Start at the bottom and not at the top. We have to have emotional regulation. We have to have sensory regulation. We have to have a healthy gut. We have to have efficient neural processing or, you know, as neutral inflammation as possible. Or we're not going to make the progress that we want to see in these traditional therapies. And some of them are gonna be kind of a waste of time unless you start at the cellular level.

Great. Yeah, that's great advice. Always start at the root cause at the bottom. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for being with us, for teaching us about neuroadaptive therapy. You know, I, I see a great future for this and I think it's definitely needed.

Thank you.

And, you know, great job with everything you do.

Thank you so much.

And everyone, thank you so much for listening. If you loved this episode and you know somebody who can benefit from neuroadaptive therapy, please share it and leave us a comment on Instagram or on our YouTube channel. Until next time, keep smiling.

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 you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.