Episode 294: The Hidden Impact of Wisdom Teeth Removal on Overall Health with Brianne Lee

Hi and welcome to episode 294 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Brianne Lee joining us. Brianne is a mother on a mission. She believes that children deserve far better than what today's current childhood landscape has to offer. She's an advocate for homeschooling, homegrown food and gardening, homemade childhoods, and a natural unplugged lifestyle. Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified myofunctional therapist, feeding specialist, podcaster, business owner and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, airway tether, dural tissue and pediatric feeding therapy space. If you're new here, I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to spread this message far and wide. If you've been at around since June 2019, thanks for being a loyal listener. As we jump into today's episode, remember to listen with correct oral rest posture, tongue up, lips closed, teeth apart, breathe through your nose. Let's get started. Brianne, welcome to the podcast.

Hello. Hallelujah.

I am excited to chat today. I know we've been chatting for a little while before hitting record and I recently found you online through Greg, a mutual a mutual social media friend. And I know the rest is history but I want to dive in and I'm going to let you share your story and we'll talk all about all these fun connections that, you know, I think we have and and whatnot. But you've been through a lot. The story that really caught my eye was when Greg was screenshotting and sharing people's experiences with having their wisdom teeth pulled and like finding out later in life that a lot of chronic illness that you've experienced could very well be tied back to some infections, you know, related to that. That procedure. Right? Stepping back to your childhood. And so I'm going to sit back and kind of let you tell your story, but it made me start thinking like, oh my gosh, I had my wisdom teeth pulled and you know, they were supposedly two were supposedly impacted, two are supposedly fine, but all four were pulled. I've been recently diagnosed with Mast cell activation syndrome this summer by Functional Medicine. I'VE been now working on healing that with another practitioner. And it just kind of made me stop in my tracks when I read this. And I was like, Greg, I was like, can I contact this person? I need to know her story. And here we are, like a week later recording. So again, I'm going to turn it over to you, but you start wherever you want to. I just think this is a very fascinating topic that we have not discussed on the podcast, at least not from a wisdom teeth perspective yet. So, Brianne, take it away.

Okay, Hallie, so let's. First, we have to travel back in time. So I had my wisdom teeth removed almost 30 years ago. So I'm 43, and they were removed when I was 14. So from a clinical perspective that actually for that procedure, I was actually very young. In the US Most wisdom teeth are not removed until late adolescence, early adulthood. Think like the college years. Most people are like, 19, 20, 21. The reason why they were removed at such young age is because they were all four impacted. Right? So I think your listeners probably know that means that they were growing in sideways and that it was going to cause a pretty significant clinical impact on my jaw development and maybe cause big problems. So at the time, my parents were advised, your daughter needs surgery. All four need to come out. Now, 30 years later, I have a completely, I have obviously compassion for the decision that my parents made. I'm not, like, upset or anything, but I have a completely different perspective on oral health and how that ties into holistic health for the whole body. Because so much of, I think how almost all of us were raised is that everything is siloed. So like sinuses, oral, dental, you know, lungs, like respiratory, digestive, everything, you know, was siloed. And there was not 30 years ago as much of an awareness of holistic health. And so what I know now is so much different than what my parents knew. And I have been on my own personal healing adventure. For me, it's more than a journey. It's been like a wild adventure because pretty shortly after my wisdom teeth were taken out at 14, it was really about four years later. I was really only like 18 years old. Pretty shortly after that, I was in the medical system, and I had already been diagnosed with two different autoimmune diseases. So this connection that I'm now making 30 years later, believe it or not, your audience is listening to me parse through this in real time. So I have been doing all the things. I have been doing all the things for almost 30 years just in terms of that Slow peeling of the onion. Looking at this, looking at that, looking at this, looking at that in terms of recalibrating myself back to homeostasis, like, back to vibrant, radiant good health. And I'm only just realizing that my wisdom tooth surgery may very well be playing a much larger role, if not could be one of the drivers, the very drivers of my chronic illness, maybe like, explosion that happened so shortly after, in my adolescent years. I went to a biological dentist in September. So it's really only been about six weeks since this information even hit me. I was not expecting it. The biological dentist was actually the very last piece of the puzzle in terms of, like, my practitioner roll call. Do you know what I mean? Like, I had already kind of scratched off all the other practitioners over the years. You know, pediatricians, functional medicine practitioners, you know, acupuncturists, you know, like myofunctional oral therapy, like, just so many things, right? And I think your listeners can probably relate and appreciate to that. But dentistry was the very last piece that I hadn't switched over to, you know, holistically. And I knew, I knew that I needed to do it. And it was just one of those things where I had just been putting it off probably for like, at least two or three years, because I have been on social media and I follow so many different functional medicine practitioners, holistic health advocates, nutritionists, just people in the alternative health space. And I had been learning about the connections with oral health and health in general, and that there can be some red flags. There can be issues with wisdom teeth removal and with root canals specifically. Like, those two things were the big red flag issues that kind of kept coming up, whether I hear it on a podcast or I saw, you know, a real, like maybe a biological dentist had made it or something. But I. I knew that I needed to do it. And so six weeks ago, I went. And sure enough, when the dentist took my full medical history, he afterwards said, brianne, based on all of this criteria, based on the symptoms that you're dealing with, based on your medical history, I really think it's important that we do a cone beam scan. Do you know what that is? And I said, I do know what that is. Yes, I'm happy to do it. Let's do it. And he said, I do have a suspicion that some of the problems that you're having, the high, high levels of, you know, chronic inflammation, some of your autoimmune conditions, they may be related to a hidden or stealth infection, but let's see. And sure enough, that's exactly what he found.

Like, I have chills. This is like, it's just crazy. I mean, it was crazy to me.

So I have to be totally honest. I. With your listeners and with you, I actually got extremely emotional at the office. A part of me knew that maybe this was a possibility, but at the same time, I didn't want like, one more thing. I didn't want there to be one more thing that I had to deal with because I've been through so much already. And he looked at the cone beam scan and he said, brianne, I'd like you to come back into the office and we have to go over these results. He said that all four, like, cavitations were some of the most severe he's ever seen. And I was like, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised based on, you know, how, how I feel and a lot of just like the ups and downs that I've had over the years with chronic illness. And he, he explained to me, he went in depth about what the cavitations are, how they form, what the risk is for removing wisdom teeth and, or root canals when you, you know, when you remove the, like the ligament, I think it is the ligament and the nerves. And when you leave that empty cavity, unfortunately, you do open the door for infections to set in. If the immune system, if the innate immune system or the body, for whatever reason, doesn't have the ability to regrow the bone and, you know, keep it, I guess, sterile. Right. And it's difficult because at this point I'm left with another big choice. Do I have, you know, jaw surgery on top and bottom? Because I'll need both. And just to let your listeners know, it's definitely not something to be taken lightly because it's, I think, a four to five hour surgery. So it's a long surgery. He said it's like about an hour to an hour and a half on each site. So I mean, it could be like four to six hours. And you have the choice of being put under general anesthesia, which carries its own risks, of course. And again, I think your listeners are going to be really sensitive to that. I have a lot of, I wouldn't say I have a lot of anxiety about general anesthesia, but being in the holistic health space and listening to alternative practitioners and understanding what, what these drugs do in the body and just the risks associated with it. You know, for someone that lives with an impaired immune system, chronic illness, autoimmune issues, that's not something that I take lightly. Right. So there's also, unfortunately, the addition of required antibiotics. So you've kind of got this double whammy on the system where in order to fix. Right. In order to fix the problem, you do have to sort of, like, take a gamble. You really do have to take a gamble. And so I'm just to be totally transparent, I am working through it as we speak. Right. I've been having conversations with my husband, been having com. Well, I've been having a lot of conversations with God, to be honest. This is something that I think really has me leaning deep into my faith and looking for discernment. I'm really looking for that inner discernment to know what is the right healing path for me to take and just ultimately having trust and faith in God that I will be led to make the right health decision. But I think the biggest reflection that I have now as a grown woman and as a mother is to make the connection and go back in time and to look at the way in which palate development and childhood development carry such an enormous, enormous impact throughout our whole entire life. And when we miss childhood palatal jaw, skull, craniofacial development, when we get it wrong, and most of us are getting it wrong, and you know this, and I think your whole audience knows this, when we get it wrong, I really, truly feel that almost nothing else can go right. And that's what I really, truly have come to believe. I see that and in my own body. And I'm now living through it a generation later as a mother raising three children. My children are currently 10, 13, and 15. So I'm. I'm right in the thick of the orthodontic world now. For most people, it's kind of like, oh, well, you should be done by then. And unfortunately for me, I got tied up with practitioners who missed just like what happened to me 30 years ago. A lot of, like, the red flags were missed and a lot of the what we now call airway development and airway focused dentistry and orthodontics, that was missed in me 30 years ago. And unfortunately, I was. I was with practitioners for the last several years raising my children, who also missed all of the red flags. And so now my children are kind of on that later stage of development and I'm having to play catch up. But I am hell bent. I am hell bent on salvaging and repairing and getting my three children everything that I possibly can so that they are spared the surgical trauma and the sort of immune trauma of what happened to me 30 years ago. Because the truth is if we look back in time, if my palate and my jaw had simply been addressed or caught when I was a child and I just got some simple interventions, my wisdom. My jaw would have been full enough. I would have had the ability to have my wisdom teeth come in. They wouldn't have been impacted. I wouldn't have had to go through the surgery, and I wouldn't have had 30 years of a hidden stealth infection in the bones in my jaw. So when you think about it that way, when you can zoom out and you can see the consequences of this huge issue, I think it really, like, I think it becomes real. And I. I was saying to you, you know, I can joke about it, I still have a sense of humor despite everything I've been through. Like, I really think that I'm a cautionary tale. I really do. And I want your listeners to know that if they find themselves in a similar position to me and they're, you know, they're grown women and their mothers, and maybe they have some health challenges, I would say just don't overlook the piece of your oral and dental history, because it does really have an impact in our overall health. And so I think the bottom line is, no, it's not a silo. Like, it's not. It's not separate. And this actually brings me into such an interesting topic that I wasn't sure we were going to talk about, but now it just popped into my head. Yes, everything is interconnected. No, nothing is a silo. And when we talk about going back in time and we talk about, like, the surgical trauma, we also have to talk about the fascia. We have to talk about the impact on the fascia, and that, like, the fascia remembers. And so I don't know. Hallie, have you interviewed Dr. Barry Gillespie yet? Has he been on the show?

I have not had him, but I've had others who teach and who have taken his courses on the podcast. Yes. Cft, cst, cfst, you know, all of the above. Yeah, yeah.

So I think that that is also such an important factor for us to remember, because anytime there's surgery, anytime there's a trauma, no matter where it is in the body, there's going to be a fascial impact. And what I've learned, which is so fascinating to me, is that our fascia, right from the base of our skull down to the tip of our toes, is all connected. And when I. So I had an appointment with Dr. Gillespie last year, and I called him on the phone, and so he's taught Me so much. And by the way, he is such a character. I absolutely love him. And if you could ever get him on, you should. He is like a riot. He's got such a great personality. But I called him to make an appointment, and we wound up talking on the phone for, like, 30 minutes. We were just chatting, he and I. And maybe that's just because of my personality. I love to talk, but he was literally. He just started teaching me. He just started teaching me things on our phone call, and he was asking me questions about my three children. And I had told him, as of last year, I said, Dr. Barry, my three kids are all current. They all have metal in their mouth right now. They're all currently in orthodontic care. And he said, I can't. I can't in good conscience. I can't take your money. I can't see them. He's like, I really can't work with children who have metal in their mouth. And he kind of explained to me the reasons why, his kind of philosophy, his background as Right, because he spent. I'm not sure he started his career as a periodontist. He was a periodontist first. That's where his background was so, like, very conventional and I think similar to so many of us. And I think the reason why so many mothers, like, gravitate towards him in the holistic health community is because he mirrors that same trajectory so many of us had. He started out so conventional, and he saw the fallacies and the letdowns and the problems, and he had his own revolution, he had his own transformation. And he has seen everything from both sides of the spectrum. And so I feel like he really understands and has such a unique and fascinating perspective on, like, how the body works, because he has that surgical medical training. But he also is. I mean, he's a genius, like, and he's so inventive, and he created this therapy. And so I think it's a wonderful marriage. And I think that so many of us. And I can speak for myself, but you and I, before the show, hit record, we shared some, you know, a little bit of our history as moms. But I think a lot of us started out that way. I think a lot of us were more conventional. And it was unfortunately for us only through suffering or some kind of trauma or some kind of negative impact that we had to go through our own heroine's journey. We had to go through our own transformation. And we had to say, oh, huh, Maybe there is another way. Maybe there is something else for me to look into. So. So Dr. Barry Gillespie. So back to him. He. He explained to me that, you know, no, in good conscience, I can't take your three children on as clients, because what I think they need and what I want to give them is going to be very limited with the fact that they have their nervous system and their jaws locked. Right? And that's what. At the time, I had one child in an expander and two children in braces. So that to me was really, really fascinating. And we'll jump forward a year. Where I am now is. Well, we'll get to the practitioner saga, but I fired the orthodontist that I was currently using, and I took both of the children out of braces. I took the third child out of the expander that she was currently in. And I, you know, I prayed a lot, and by the grace of God, literally, an angel was dropped into my lap, and I'll have to tell the story. So the founder or one of the founders of Toothpillow is now our practitioner, and I did not contact them. By the grace of God. This is only, you know, truly, I think divine intervention, they reached out to me. So it's a wild story, but that's essentially how it happened. So my. My one daughter currently has nothing in her mouth, and she's now able to be seen by Dr. Barry. So I am going to be traveling to Pennsylvania to get her a little bit of craniosacral fascial work to hopefully help with that fascial strain. And for your listeners, I don't know if you've talked to, like, if you've gone down, you know, if you've had, like, midwives or, like, birthing professionals, talk about the impact on traumatic deliveries, but really just any. Any delivery, whether it's C section or vaginal, and how that impacts the fascial strain. So I'm excited to get that done for at least one child. And then as soon as the rest of them are out of metal, we are definitely going to see Dr. Barry, because I think the biggest takeaway for me is that all of this starts at birth. And unless you can address it at birth, everything else that happens downstream, it's like you're fighting against the tide. So why not just start at birth? And I think for any of your listeners that are younger moms or pregnant or not yet delivered, I would say definitely start to look into, like, the fascial network, craniosacral. I'm also a proponent of, like, osteopathic manipulations. Personally, for me, And I've had conversations with other girlfriends, like my holistic moms. Personally, I'm not a big fan of chiropractic. I'm a fan of osteopathic manipulation because it's just very, very, very gentle. And I think it follows a little bit more in line with the craniosacral and the craniosacral fascial network. So that would be. I think, a big takeaway is for younger moms, like, if I had to do it again, or I had a big sister or I had a friend, or if there was social media 16 years ago when I was pregnant, I think that would be so huge, because regardless of what type of delivery you have, there is. There is a strain on the baby. And it's like the way Dr. Barry was explaining it to me was that the pelvic. It's usually. Always starts in the pelvic area, right? And the pelvic strain pulls into the abdominal cavity, right? And then he talks about how that causes colic, and then it pulls up into, like, the esophagus. And he says that's a lot of times what causes, like, the spitting up and, like, the acid reflux. And then from the esophagus, it pulls into the head and neck and jaw, and that causes a lot of, you know, sometimes tongue restrictions. So the fascia. I think the fascia is a huge piece, and it's so important for moms to hear this. And then lastly, what also blew my mind and what I will say is the tongue. And I don't know if moms know this, but embryologically, the tongue develops between four and five weeks. Does everyone understand that? So, I mean, that is truly, truly, truly. Right at the beginning. Right at the beginning. So embryologically, that is such a delicate time, and it's such a complex process like tongue development. And I'm gonna say something. I don't know if anyone else has said this the way that I'm about to say it, but it will definitely bring me into my next topic that I'm so, so passionate about, which is this. Tongue ties. And, like, medically, they're called. How do you pronounce it? It's like ankyloglossia.

Yep, you got it. You got it.

Okay. So medically, so if you go to, like, PubMed or you're, like, talking to, I don't know, like, an ENT or something, maybe they'll say, like, oh, does Angelo glossia, Right? So that's like, the medical term for tongue tied. But if we look at the medical literature, there are about, and this is what I've researched myself, it looks like there are about 10 different embryological, essentially defects, like defects of the tongue that are listed like in, in the medical literature, ankyloglossia or tongue ties, like being one of the most common. But what I want moms to hear is that if we know that the tongue is embryologically developing between four and five weeks and we now see a huge rise in tongue tie defects, we need to talk about why. We need to talk about why is that happening. And the truth is it's a birth defect. It's a birth defect. And I don't know if anyone has like, just said it out loud like that, but that's the truth.

And so we call that like a midline defect oftentimes. And you know, there's even.

But it's kind of like a euphemism.

Yeah, right, Totally.

Isn't that totally a euphemism? And like, for me, people who know me, like, my personality is like, tell it like it is, call it like it is. That's what it is. Our children are being born with birth defects. And yes, while it may not be a severe birth defect, and oftentimes it's not because it's an internal organ, right, or muscle, it's not something that you necessarily always see, but it has huge, huge, outstanding implications for whole body health, not only at birth, but for the rest of the child's life. And so my call to action is our children are being born with birth defects. Now, it's very common. And on the one hand, we can talk a lot about the downstream treatments, but from my perspective, I'm so much more interested in talking about preventing this from happening. And the only way that we're going to prevent this from happening is also, as mothers especially, this is not where practitioners are going to come into the conversation. But as mothers specifically, we need to understand what the sort of like, antagonists, what the troublemakers are that are disrupting embryologically the fetal process. And I think we all know what they are. And you know, you and I, Hallie, you and I can probably go through a long laundry list for, from endocrine disruptors, phthalates, fragrances, you know, wearing, what do you call it, like wearing polyamides and polyesters and having microplastics in our bloodstream to non organic food, the pesticides, the herbicides. I mean, we could go on and on and on forever. I mean, it's literally to the point where, like, I know Floss like, floss is toxic because there's forever chemicals in floss. Then it gets in your bloodstream. It's like, you know, the Teflon pans, what you cook with, what you wear, what you eat, what you drink, what you buy, the mattress you sleep on. I mean, it's enough to drive you crazy. It is. And I have such compassion for all of my mom friends, and I have girlfriends who are. They exist in different universes. I have girlfriends who are like Maha. I mean, we are like OG and we've been in this fight for 15 years. 10. 15 years. And I have friends who don't know what I'm talking about, and they have no interest in what I'm talking about. But, you know, I think my message is for those who have ears to hear. Before we. Before we use me as a cautionary tale, we should look at ways in which these issues can be prevented first. Because that's truly. That's my lane, and that's what I care so much about. And obviously, there's so many wonderful, you know, speakers and role models and, you know, peers that we have in our generation, like millennial moms who are picking up their, you know, picking up their banner and waving it and sharing resources about how to reduce all of the offensive, inflammatory, dangerous, toxic things that we come into contact with. Because the truth is, we are under assault. We are being bombarded, and our children are the ones paying the price. And the tongue tie epidemic is. I mean, it's caused. Right? It's caused by all of these agents. And so I think that's me getting on my soapbox for a minute, but definitely had to be said.

I love it, though, because that's. You know, in my pediatric feeding course, the two topics that I teach, the two modules are tethered oral tissues and myo and how to apply that at birth. Because as SLPs and OTs who do feeding, we need to be looking at this when the baby's born, because you touched on a couple really great things. Everything around the epigenetic conversation that you just, you know, highlighted. But also, we are. I always say we're connected from the tip of our tongues, the tip of our toes. Right, right. And, you know, so that. That's something that is just so incredibly accurate, but something that I didn't know 10 years ago. It wasn't until I had children and both my kids were tongue tied and they both had high, narrow palates that I fell into all of this and started to go, oh, my gosh, how many other patients have I worked with that could have had a very different outcome. But can we. Can we go back, or can we start here now with these patients that we're already working with and start to shift our approach? Right, But I love that you're taking it back to the root cause, because we are very much so like root cause practitioners. And I talk about root cause on this podcast all the time and how everything, like you said, is interconnected. We don't exist in a silo, but that's how the traditional medical system operates, Right? That's how traditional medicine works. And I think there's a time and a place for everything, Eastern and Western. Right. And, you know, just like your own journey, you're kind of figuring out, like, what direction am I going to go? Because there's all of these pros and cons to going with, you know, and obviously I won't. I won't give you advice on that. That is your journey to kind of figure out right now. But I do think it's so fascinating because a lot of us are in that same space, right? And in different ways, but. But similar ways right now. And our mouth is our window into health. Like, health starts in our mouth. And so when you were talking about that, I was like, yes, everything from where our tongue rests, you mentioned that, you know, the tongue develops between weeks four to five. Well, by week 12, 12 and a half, right? We are swallowing already. The way that we swallow at the end of the first trimester is the way that you're going to swallow when you are born. And so not going to change. That's not going to change. Right. Between 12 and a half weeks in birth, you've already got your swallow pattern down. And if your tongue is not resting on the roof of your mouth, forming the natural U shape of your palate, guess what happens? It starts to collapse. Right? And so that happens in utero. So there's a whole host of, like, things that snowball in utero that people are not. Right. I mean, we all know that amazing things happen in utero and that there's just so much growth and change happening. But it comes back to some of the most crazy, critical growth, and that is the tongue and the palate, because that impacts our airway, which impacts our sleep, which also impacts our general ability to have a healthy immune system. Right? And so everything like you've said is so.

I mean, we could just keep going.

Down this rabbit hole, but it is so interconnected. And so a lot of people say, oh, it starts at birth. No, it starts at conception.

Exactly. It starts.

Yes, yes. And I also loved that you highlighted CST and osteopathic manipulation. Because my second daughter was a kiddo who we had her released, her tongue tie released, day five. And she breastfed. I'm making up new words. Breastfed beautifully compared to my first, who I did not know was tongue tied until she was 24 months old. And we had a very painful 13 month feeding journey. But I was stubborn. And the one time I tried to give my first one formula, she had an eight total horrible reaction. And I was like, nope, it's not happening. We're going to figure this out. I'm too stubborn to do any, any other way, so we're going to make it work. My second one was born at that point. I knew about tongue ties release day five, beautiful breastfeeding journey. But she dragged one of her legs behind her when she was scooting across the floor and never truly crawled. And what I knew about development at that point was like, okay. And so I like to use her story because it shows that full body connection. So while we addressed the fascia in her mouth when she was born, I didn't really address the body immediately. We did start to address it around like three, four, five, six months when she was not doing all of her gross. Motor was like always kind of hanging on, on, you know, we're kind of where she should be, but not quite. And I was like, I just want to get ahead of it. Well, I had her in pediatric PT for maybe eight months. Okay. It wasn't really doing anything. Just gonna put that out there. I go to a craniosacral therapist. She's maybe 12 months old at this point. Like, she's still not crawling. Maybe 12 and a half months. Whatever. She was right. And she teaches me about some Chinese medicine. My daughter always runs hot. She does this manipulation on her back. Stop sweating in the car seat. I was like, what the. Okay, I'm in, I'm in. You've got me. Teach me more, teach me more. And then the next week, I took her to this osteopathic couple. And I kid you not, within days, she pulled herself up, started, like cruising and then was crawling. So then she started walking. And my husband's like, wow, she's walking. And then I was like, yeah, she's walking, but she's not crawling yet. All of a sudden, like, the next day, she crawls across the couch. Which most people like are like, who cares? She's crawling. She already walks. No, this is important for Development, like, there's crossing of the midline. There's a lot of things that are happening when we crawl. And it's also an un. It's not a stable surface. So the fact that she was able to crawl on an unstable surface after CST and osteopathic manipulation, one treatment each, that's amazing. After having eight months of PT with no results. And months went by between, you know, PT and me taking her to these practitioners. So people can't say, like, oh, you don't know which one it was. No, I know you will. Which didn't work. Okay. And I was sold at that point. I was like, I can't explain it. I don't know why it worked, but I know it worked. And she's, you know, she's been my upper respiratory kid. But aside from that, from a gross motor standpoint, her body has developed beautifully, you know, and she's never had any other struggles. And I was. So that really kind of was my dive into that world at that point. I was like, I was already in the tongue tie world. I was already in the myo world and the pediatric feeding world and understanding that there's a root cause behind all of this. But then I saw that, and I was like, oh, this really pulls it all together for me. I wish. I wish I knew about this when she was born, because I would have taken her straight instead of going to the oral surgeon, I would have first gone to the craniosacral therapist or the osteopathic doctor, and then we would have gone for the tongue tie release, and then we would have come back for more body work. And that's just where it's. That's where I'm such a big proponent. For anybody who's doing any type of intervention, you have to be supporting the entire body through the intervention. With craniosacral. With osteopathic interventions, it's critical.

And I think that sage advice from. Right. So mothers who are like, just, we were war torn, like, we've been through this for years and we have lessons to impart to younger moms is truly start with the least invasive approach first. So if someone is. Is telling you, let's snip, let's cut, let's do a surgical intervention, just take a breath and ask other mothers, like, read books, go to the library, search podcasts, like, get onto social media. Find a crunchy, holistic alternative mom group, like, ask before you jump into surgical interventions. Because there is a lot of wisdom that we can share with each other. And Addressing the fascia first and foremost before we cut or snip is prudent. It's prudent and it's wise and right. I think it's just also common sense, like we want to do that and.

Also to interrupt you for one second. Also, sometimes there appears to be a fascial restriction that doesn't actually exist because of how fascia. Like you said, the fascia remembers. Right. So it, because of positioning, it could appear that there is more tension than there actually is. Something could mimic a tongue tie. You go through craniosacral, you go through osteopathic intervention. Sometimes that's enough to relax the body where a surgical intervention is not necessary. So I'm a big proponent of if you need it for sure, let's do it. Let's make sure the body's prepped the right way. Let's make sure we have the right pre op and post op approach to addressing this. But also we've seen cases where it's not necessary to actually surgically release the tissue.

Right.

And who knows, maybe down the road, maybe down the road it becomes a problem. I'm also not a big proponent of, like, we don't have a glass ball. I don't know if it's going to impact you versus somebody else. We go based on the symptoms. Right now, is there impaired function? If function is impaired, let's address that. But let's like, get down to the root. Let's figure out why we think this is happening and see if we can work from there in the least invasive way. So I love that you brought that up because I think it's such a critical topic of conversation. Yeah.

And I don't know if there's disparity or if there's some contention in your professional community between what is that root cause? Right. So, I mean, as a mom and as someone who is asking questions and like talking to different professionals and trying to figure it out myself personally, for me, all I can say is I've come to the conclusion that the fascia is the root and that it, like, like we discussed it, it's a embryological and in utero issue. And then compounding that with birth and what happens to the fascia and the child, everything at birth and then beyond is for me, starting at the beginning. So that's why I brought up Dr. Barry Gillespie. And that's why I'm so excited to hear, because I haven't listened to all the episodes. I did try to, like, go into some of your history, but I Didn't know you had Gillespie, you know, practitioners on, and that's fantastic. So I'm just so glad that that's being talked about more, because in terms of your world, as a, as a professional in this, in this genre, you know about it, but in the general population of mothers, I mean, even Dr. Gillespie's work is not that mainstream. So I think, I think the benefit to babies and children is going to be huge if that piece of the perspective can get woven into more mainstream care as time. And, you know, unfortunately, it's going. You know, you and I both know it will take a long time, right? It always. It takes decades. It takes decades for what we find sort of like cutting edge holistically to be woven into the mainstream narrative or to be even accepted, because most of the time it's vilified and it's crucified as quackery and not peer reviewed.

So, you know, conspiracy theories, you know, and I, I love the whole, like, what's the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth? Four years. I don't know. I mean, yeah, just give it some time and it'll all come. It's like everyone who thought I was a conspiracy theorist in my family four years ago, they're all going, oh, wow, there was some merit to what you were saying.

Oh, okay.

You believe me now that your sources are confirming that what I said four years ago is true. Got it. Okay. We're all on the same page now.

And then, you know what? It's. It's similar to, like, the, the physician, like the, the osteopathic doctor, the do. So instead of seeing an md, like, for general family medicine, I. I have a do instead of an md He's a do. And again, like, I don't know if a lot of just general American mothers know the difference between medical doctor and doctor of osteopathy. And you know what? Cheers to my sister. So my sister, I have five sisters, but one of my sisters is actually an md. She's a cardiologist. And she actually went through the do. She went through a DO program instead of an MD program. And she actually turned me onto some of the interesting facts, facets and components of osteopathy. And she's the one actually that gave me the recommendation for the physician that we see, you know, in my. In my hometown. And, you know, he can prevent and treat ear infections without antibiotics.

Isn't that amazing?

So isn't that, you know, it's like, Isn't that amazing? You know, it's like such a Fascinating conversation to have with someone who either doesn't believe or is ignorant and doesn't know anything about alternate paths. So. Well, the pandemic, that applies to so many things in life, not just health, but as you and I both know, like, everything.

Well, during the pandemic, after I was telling you before we recorded, my, my three year old around that time basically had croup nine times in a year. She, she wasn't three yet. She was two during the pandemic. But she had had a history of RSV croup, you know, upper respiratory infections. You would sneeze in her vicinity and she would get a cold and then it would turn into croup, like within 24 hours. And then she'd be on another steroid and more puffs of this. And we went to, you know, a pediatric, what are they called? The pulmonologist, you know, the specialist and everything. And he was wonderful. But at the same time, it's like they put her on an inhaler at 2 for the summer and then that seemed to help things go away. And that, that was the same point where I was starting to feel uneasy about everything because I was like, history is repeating. She's been on the same meds. Yes, maybe they help short term, but nothing seems to be getting down to the root cause of this issue. I don't understand why nobody can help us. And you know, then I was being told, oh, she may be a kiddo who has pediatric. You know why? I'm like, words are hard today, man. I am tired. Asthma, okay? And I was like, I, I don't, I don't know. I don't agree with this. I feel like this is completely preventable. And if, like, you're not going to help me figure out how to prevent that because she's only two. I'm, I'm out. I'm out. And so, right. Pandemic happens. I'm at home. I'm just googling different ways, like different alternative approaches to treating children with croup with, you know, and like at this point, I'm used to this kid having this like scary barky cough in the middle of the night. I know what croup is like. I know if I open my freezer door and she stands in front of it, it's going to help calm down way, like we've got all of our little solutions, right? And I stumble upon, upon homeopathy and I'm like, huh, this is interesting. And then I stumble upon some speech pathologists who use homeopathy. In my space. And I was like, oh, okay, these are my new besties. Like, I need to have conversations with these people. And so they tell me like, where to start taking courses. I start taking my own courses, really for my family's use. Right. For my own knowledge. And that was like the rest is history. I basically between homeopathic interventions that I learned and I did expand my kids. So she was expanded at age 4. My other one was also expanded age 4. Between their expansion and opening their airway. Once her airway was open because we have cbcts on both of the kids. And I haven't done an after on her because she probably needs a little bit more expansion. And I'm, you know, like, I don't need unnecessary radiation to prove anything to anybody. But on my older child who had early expansion, she went from having very full. And she started with an ALF appliance too. We didn't go directly into like the rapid expander. We started with the alf, which seemed very, you know, she was kind of a sensory kiddo and nervous system was, you know, a little all over the place. And that thing went in her mouth and she was like the chillest thing. Like it just calmed her down. And I was like, oh, okay. She could still eat. Her palate was open. So it's. You're less like locked up because it's just around two teeth, you know. And so I was like, okay, I'm digging this. The only reason we didn't. Well, let me back up. So we. I have her cbcts that are about two years apart, but she had that in her mouth. She only needed it for about nine months. Had it for a year because pandemic. And we didn't do any body work during that time because everything was shut down in Maryland. I would have liked to, but we didn't. And she still, within three months went from having almost touching tonsils that were super inflamed to having normal sized tonsils. Her tissues just calm down.

Amazing.

Amazing. She, her and her before and after cbcts, you can see that her sinuses were filled. They are no longer her, you know, airway. Like her where her turbinates are.

You would.

It just looked so inflamed. It was so full. Like how was this kid breathing? Her adenoids were enlarged. Yeah, everything was normal. At age 5, when she had her follow up CBCT, we moved down here. I presented with some colleagues. They were like, she still needs some more expansion. So I ended up putting her into a short term hyrax with like that had A forward growth component with a biological dentist down here in North Miami. But my younger one ended up going straight into that same appliance, the, the hyrax. Because the research does show for a child who has like a airway issue that's more emergent, like high group, you know, nine times in a year. Yeah. That you want to expand faster for the sake of the airway and brain development and all of that. And so I was like, okay, it's a short term thing. Like let's do it. And I will tell you, her croup stopped when we expanded her. And I was like, I again, I'm sold. I mean this is what I literally do in my practice. I pro all of these things, but I now have their cases, my own children, as evidence of how beautifully this works when we use the interventions that we feel called to use as moms. Right. I'm not a dentist, I'm not an ortho. I don't know anything about moving hard tissue and bone, but. Right. I knew enough to know my kids. I feel like this is what my kid needs right now. We're going to run with it. And it was a beautiful thing at that time. They've also been in, you mentioned tooth pillow. They've had myo brace, which was more so to guide their continued growth expansion. The one thing I don't love about it, and I'm very vocal about this is my. So first of all, my older one cannot keep it in her mouth for more than an hour. She gags on it and spits it out every night. So it doesn't really serve much of a purpose. Right. But my younger one who chomps away at it and we had some like buildup put on their back teeth to help so that if there is any grinding, they're grinding that down and not their teeth. And to help kind of develop the jaws a bit better. The planus tracks they call them. But my younger one who wears it actively and all night long.

Right, Good.

She I looked at it one morning and there was mold inside of it. And we cleaned this thing daily. And I was like beside myself because I was like, there's mold in this appliance. We clean this every day. There was mold in it. I completely freaked out because I'm like, oh my God. Mold illness, like, like that's the last thing I want is this appliance. It's supposed to be helping my kid has like molds in it now. And she had a little part of it that did poke it right down because you know if you're using. And they tell you on their website if you're using the appliance appropriately, this is going to happen. It's going to break down. But no one had ever told me that. And so I was a little bit surprised. I meant I, like, I texted our dentist and I was like, hey. And they're like, no worries.

And I was like, okay. But also the wear and tear. But I, Yeah, I get it. Like the, I mean one of the risks inherent with those like, you know, stationary silicone mouthpieces guides is that they are, especially when you wear it overnight, they definitely do breed bacteria which can lead right. To some cavities or, you know, some, I don't know, maybe just like inflammation and things like that. So, yes, that's just, I think one extra step in terms of just being so diligent and like with the cleaning and the disinfecting. So, yes, like I, you know, as moms, it's, it's just one more thing we have to do. But I get it. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's so. Yeah.

And so, and I, I'm not as familiar with the toothpill. I follow everybody who's been promoting it on social media.

Suppliants.

It's, it's. Well, I, Yes, I pulled up an actual. Yeah, I pulled up an article about that like randomly the other day and it said Toothpillow basically uses the myobrace system. It may have been the vivos or something. And I was like, okay, well that, yeah, there's also like Healthy Start and it's all these different like programs that kind of mirror each other. So I'm curious. Yeah, so I'm curious to know because your kids are older and I know my listeners are going to be like wanting to know how are they using it?

Like, what is the role for older children?

Because I always thought it was my daughter's younger children.

This past year at 12, she is the one who got put into the tooth pillow at the very end, tail end of that jaw development. So she currently. Her transverse measurement, it's really, I think it's like between 35 and 36. So it's still pretty small. And the goal was now she had already been in braces that I had fired that other orthodontist who we. She had presented herself as an airway focused dentist slash orthodontist. And she was actually referred to me by a myofunctional oral therapist that was very esteemed and like long standing in my local community that I trusted and she had sent me there and we really did not see eye to eye and it was not a workable professional relationship. So I took the braces off. I now am in a different state seeing this new practitioner, one of the co founders of Toothpillow. And he said, well actually, you know, we do still have some expansion and some growth I want to see happen. I'd like to see her get to 40, let's get another 5 millimeters. And so far because of the braces, I mean her alignment looks actually pretty good. I want to do, I'd like to do a year of tooth pillow. I'd like to do a year of the guide appliance and I'd like to see how much we can get done in a year. So he was like kind of taking at least with my one child because the other two are very different. It seemed to me kind of like a very gentle, slow approach to. She was developmentally, you know, like biologically, like chronologically, I mean, a little bit behind like her 12 year old molars. Like she was 12, turning 13, but her 12 year old molars I think had like just erupted. So I don't know if that was. She might have been like chronologically a little bit behind. And he felt like, we have time and let's like, let's just take a very slow, gentle approach with this. I think we're going to get nice progress and then of course like a year from now we'll reassess. And the conversation that I had with him was it really changed over this past six weeks, Right. Because we've been there now for, I don't know, like six months. But the conversation recently really changed once I realized the, the implications for myself and the size of my palette and the wisdom teeth removal and the impacts. And me, I'm literally at the point where all I want to do is ensure that my children's jaw development is as large and as wide as I think genetically possible for them. So that if and when they do get their wisdom teeth now, I don't know if they have all four because they, you know, some people only get two, some people get four. We haven't done X rays yet.

Right.

If and when they do get their set of wisdom teeth, all I care about is making sure that they have a jaw that can fit them so that they never have to go through the trauma that I went through and then have the long term implications on the back end of what I'm living with now because it's a double, it's A double assault, right. And I said to him, okay, like, I appreciate kind of we're taking this like very prudent, kind of like gentle approach, but I just want to be clear with you that you know, if it's, if it's too slow going for me, and she's 13, turning 14 and now we're getting a little bit up into like the teenage years, like, I just want to be sure that we can reassess and do expansion and get her to 40 or more or 41 or 42, whatever the case may be. So in that respect, I would say the relationship, the professional relationship we have, like mother, practitioner is so much healthier and so much better because we have such a nice dialogue. And I think again, this is for your listeners and as a mom, the doctor patient relationship, especially as mothers, I think so many of us struggle with being able to challenge or ask questions or feel like we are actually being heard and that our concerns as mothers and our maternal intuition and the things that really matter to us are being validated. And it isn't just lip service. I think it's like a deeply, like, it's like a psychological, emotional issue that women have that mothers have. Whether the practitioner is male or female, it doesn't matter. That dynamic, I know it's challenging. I know it's challenging. And that pertains to all manner of medical interactions. Whether it's the pediatrician and you're being pressured to do, I don't know, procedures that maybe you don't want to do or that you feel skeptical or uneasy about with, you know, well, visits, things like that, it doesn't matter. Or whether you have a practitioner advocating for a surgical intervention. I, my heart really goes out to mothers who struggle with that. And what I'll say is that it took me a long time and it's really only with age and finding my voice and learning how to advocate and ask questions and challenge when necessary that your children will ever get the care that they deserve. Because if you are not willing or able, and they're two totally different things. Right? They're totally different things. But whatever camp you find yourself in, if you still struggle with that, mother to mother, I would say that that has to be, that has to be, that must be the thing that you focus on first and foremost for the health and well being of your children and your family and the legacy that you're going to leave them for their long term health.

Yeah, no, and I, I love that I had a, I mean, I've had all kinds of Experience with the practitioners as you know, as someone who owns a private practice in the D.C. metro area and now lives in South Florida, I'm no longer practicing myself, but I was turned away by an ENT with my daughter's tongue tied because I was no longer breastfeeding. I was turned away by another one because, you know, her mouth is closed and she's nasal breathing. I'm like, for the two minutes you've been in the room with us. Finally took her to an oral surgeon who was like, this is like, one of the worst. Most cases I've seen. There's definitely a functional impact. Like, let's. Let's figure out the plan right then. With my younger one, actually, it was the same one, my older one, when we moved down here. There's an ortho in Boca Raton that everybody goes to and everybody loves, and he claims to be airway centric. And his evaluation was very airway centric. I will give him that. When we sat down. And mind you, Lily had already had an ALF appliance and had some expansion, but she needed more expansion. And I had colleagues who saw me present her case at a dental conference and tell me, the two of them afterwards, hey, I think she needs more expansion. Like, it wasn't coming from me. It was coming from other dental providers who moved teeth for a living, right? So. And I didn't say anything to this guy at that time. I was gonna be like, well, my. My colleagues and friends said, you know, yada, yada. No, I gave him full opportunity to basically put it, lay it all out there. He did a beautiful presentation. He recorded everything. He has a CBCT in office, pulled up on the screen, you know, to have a real time conversation and talk through everything and her angles and this and her airway. And we get to the end, and he literally looks at me and he goes, why would you want to mess up her beautiful face? You're going to fatigue her. She doesn't need any other expansion at this time. And I. If. I mean, I almost jumped across the desk and strangled this guy. I was like, first of all, what is wrong with you? You would say something like that in front of my child? Like, let's just start there. I was like, second of all, no, I don't agree with you. I know I'm not a dental provider, but I've been told by others that, you know, anyways, I was very calm, cool, collected, and. And he knows what I do for a living. And so we had, like. I was there with him for 15 minutes going back and forth to the point where, like, his front desk was coming and trying to be like, you have other patients you need to go see. Like, this consult needs to end. And I said to him, you know what? It's. It's no problem. Thank you. I'll pay $100 for the. The scan results that you're going to send off to Beam readers, because I want those, and I don't want to have to do another tea anytime soon for her. I was like, but we're done here. Like, thank you for your time. And I left. He called me an hour later when he was done seeing patients, because he knew I was pissed. And he was like, you know, I just. He was trying to, like, smooth things over, and now he's, like, all being, like, smooth talking. Yeah, you know, I see what you're saying, but I don't think. And I was like, with all due respect, this is not going to work for the exact reasons that you said you could be the greatest provider. But when you go so far as to say something about the appearance of my child in front of them in such a derogatory way, like, that's number one. Yeah, we're done. We're done. I was like.

And.

And then you go on to basically tell. I was like, this was not airway centric. I was like, your eval was. The rest of it was not. I deal with medical professionals all the time in this space. Like, thank you for your time. We can agree to. And I said, we can agree to disagree, but I hope that you'll be open. Because he literally sat there and told me that every other professional in this space that my colleagues have learned from were a total crock of shit. And I was like, oh, okay, all right. That's. That's good. You know, like. Like, it's like someone coming to you and saying to you, oh, Gillespie, no, that's. That doesn't work. That doesn't work. And you're like, I have evidence that it does. I've done it. I've healed. Like. But sure, like, you have your story, I have mine. That's fine. Yeah, it was wild. Wild to me. So then I started driving an hour, hour and a half to take my kids further south to go to somebody who did get it and who was on the same page and was like, you're absolutely correct. Like, and this is the time to intervene. Like, let's go. And I was like, okay, amazing. So, anyways, long story short, you know, also moving down here, when I jumped into the Holistic space, which was really more 10 years ago. But I've gone deeper and deeper and deeper since. You know, it's like my friends come into my house. Yeah. To pick up their kids and they go to my pantry and they take pictures of the foods that I have because they want to know what to feed their kids. I'm like, I feel like I'm so, you know, working with functional medicine. And they're like, well, you literally do everything on the checklist here that I give to patients and have to educate them on. So, like, this will be a very easy journey for us. And I'm like, I've been doing this for 10 years. Like, this is not new to me. I'm just trying to figure out what's next on the journey to help us continue, like, thriving and healing and whatever else comes up. Like, how are we going to, you know, adapt? How are we going to address it? Because for us, it's a little hard to go back and deal with the root cause, you know, that happened in utero. So unfortunately, on the back end, we are dealing it with in the best way we can. But I have these conversations with moms who are about, you know, who are like, okay, I know that there's like epigenetics involved with tongue ties. Right. And so how do I prevent my next child from basically, like, like, become Amish? Here's a laundry list of things you can start looking into. Like, and I think of, like, it's.

It'S facetious of me to say and I hope.

Right, exactly.

Like, exactly. But the truth is we're up against a lot. We're up against a lot. And the effort and the commitment and the discipline that it takes. And also like the.

Yes.

It'S more than that. It's like a, it's like a deep. It's like a deep devotion to wanting to protect, like, what is sacred. And that essentially is creation. Right? It's like God blesses us with these perfect children. And God's design is perfect. There are no mistakes. Creation is perfect. We see that in symmetry. We see that in mathematics. We know that we are a reflection of the perfection of the universe. You know, like the, the roots of a tree, you know, the conical, like, swirl of a seashell that's within us in the same way. And the departure, like, the further that we depart from nature and I think God's perfection and symmetry and perfect geometry, the harder and harder life becomes. And you know, as, as modern women, we find ourselves living in this post industrial world, right. A Hundred years ago, this probably really wouldn't be a conversation. Okay. Our great grandmothers did not have to deal with this. There was no forever chemicals. There was no Teflon. There was no chemical warfare with fragrances coming into our home and our personal care products and phthalates and endocrine disruptors. There wasn't really even industrial agriculture. There wasn't pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. There wasn't glyphosate. There wasn't Roundup. So this is a very modern, post industrial world that makes our life as modern mothers challenging. So it's more, it's more than just let me, it's more than just like, let me put the list on my fridge and try to like, avoid these things. It, it's a truly deep, deep devotion to wanting to preserve the perfection of what God has created. And I think that there's like a, I think that there can be. And I can attest to this because I find myself going through, I find myself going through this. It's like a, a, it's like a fatigue. It's like a, it's like an emotional and spiritual fatigue that you, you feel as if. Yes. Oh, I just. What, what am I gonna do? Right? What, what could I possibly do? Every week, every month, there's something else that, right, there's something else that we learn. There's some, there's somebody else, there's some new podcast, full time job. It feels like some new revelation. So I say all of this, like, not to be, you know, and I hope that, like, the message and the conversation that we're having today is inspiring and not despairing, because that's not what it is. That's not my message. I think that being aware, being educated, and being devoted to preserving the beauty and health of your children is the highest and utmost calling that we can have as mothers. So that is kind of just like my, that's just my, my blanket position. There's nothing more that you could do, nothing more beautiful that you could do for your children or give to your children than that. But at the same time, in the same breath as a woman, as a mother living through this generation and raising children, you know, I'm in it with you. I'm in it with you. I'm walking this road. And I'm here to say I know it's hard. I cry, I get frustrated, I get fatigued. But don't ever give up. And it's like my page, like my handle, it's mother of metal, right? And what is metal like the dictionary definition of metal is having courage and optimism in the face of like, hard times or challenges or despair. So like, when you have metal, it's like, oh, you really test your mettle. That's why my community is mother of metal. I get it. I really get it. I walk this path and my heart goes out to all of us who are navigating this. And I, I think it's doubly challenging when we ourselves, right, as the mothers who are tasked with protecting and preserving the health and beauty of our children, when we ourselves are also struggling because we are also already the unfortunate benefactors of a previous generation's mistakes. And so I'm that person, I'm that moment. And I just, I get it. And it's like I'm just giving a big virtual hug to all of us out there who are kind of doubly impacted by a lot of these issues. But, you know, the smile on our kids faces, the ability for the croup to disappear, the ability for them to sleep through the night, the ability for the ADHD and the behavior symptoms to go away, it's all worth it. Right? And we know that and we, that's why we do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Brianne, thank you so much for sharing your story, your kids stories, your, your journey, your. You didn't call it a journey. You called it a.

What did you.

A big adventure. Yes, yes. I mean, and it truly, it is because, I mean, I feel like a journey should have a start and an end. There's a start, but I'm not sure if there's ever going to be an end. But yeah, I mean, you speak so eloquently and so beautifully about these topics and you know, and I think this is going to be so encouraging to, to a lot of moms, and especially even moms who are also practitioners, because sometimes we are really hard on ourselves. I speak to a lot of friends in the space that are like, I feel like I should know this. I feel like I should be doing better for my kid because I have the information and I have colleagues and I have the access. But, but, you know, at the end of the day, we're all mothers trying to navigate the best way forward for ourselves, for our children, for our families. And so I think you really, you know, that big virtual hug is.

Thank you for having me on. A lot of people need right now.

And you know, major, thank you, thank you, thank you.

New things from you and I hope that your listeners learned some new things or just had some new perspectives from the things that I had to say and God bless you.

Amazing. Amazing. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you found value in this episode and want to hear more of these Myotots, Airway and Feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and share this episode on your social media platforms. You can access free resources and all I offer@halliebalkin.com or pop over to Hollybulcan on Instagram to get all the latest updates.