Toxin Free (ish)

The Silent Epidemic Behind ADHD, Snoring & Cavities: The Hidden Dangers of Mouth Breathing in Infants & Kids with Dr. Hilary Fritsch ✨ Ep. 103

• Wendy Kathryn • Episode 103

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Nearly every child today is developing with an airway that's too small for their tongue, and most parents have no idea it's happening.

In this crucial conversation with Dr. Hilary Fritsch, an airway-focused dentist, we expose why so many American children need braces, struggle with focus, or experience chronic health issues. The truth is, symptoms like mouth breathing, snoring, frequent ear infections, and even ADHD-like behavior aren't random - they're often signs of an underdeveloped airway and jaw.

The most frustrating part? This epidemic is entirely preventable with early intervention. Through proper screening and treatment starting at age three, children can develop properly-sized airways and jaws, often avoiding the need for braces altogether. This isn't just about straight teeth - it's about your child's sleep, breathing, and long-term health.

Whether your child has chronic cavities despite good oral hygiene, struggles with focus, or shows any signs of breathing issues, this episode could change their future. 

  • If you have a child between the ages of 3-12, go to www.toothpillow.com to get your free virtual video assessment started.  Tell them Wendy from Toxin Free(ish) sent you and use code WENDY at checkout to get the upgraded virtual video assessment for FREE,  plus $200 off any treatment.


In today's episode, we're chatting about: 

• Why crooked teeth and the need for braces aren't just genetic 

• The connection between airway development and common childhood health issues 

• How to identify signs of airway issues in your child 

• Why early intervention (starting at age 3) is crucial 

• The truth about mouth breathing and its impact on your child's health

Download the Top 25 Toxins to Avoid and become a label reading pro! 

If you enjoyed this week's episode, please:

Speaker 1:

Parents, this might be the most important podcast episode I have ever recorded since I started the Toxin Freege podcast. I talk a ton on the show about finding root cause of illness and holistic health. But what if I told you there is a single epidemic affecting nearly every child today and most people have no idea it's happening? I know, I didn't know, and conventional dentists and doctors are not talking about this. Here's what you need to know if you have a child that has chronic cavities, even with good brushing and nutrition, adhd-like symptoms or trouble focusing, snoring, open mouth, breathing at night or restless sleep, or maybe they're just a picky eater, or maybe they have frequent ear infections, tonsil issues, adenoid issues. And have you ever stopped to wonder why so many American kids have crowded and crooked teeth and need braces and teeth pulled? These symptoms are not random and they're not just bad luck. They are a sign of an underdeveloped airway and jaw and it is impacting nearly every single child today. And the part that makes me absolutely crazy is that this is entirely preventable with early intervention, and I wish somebody would have shared this with me when my kids were younger, before I invested in braces, because with early intervention, not only can your child's jaw develop properly, giving them better overall health, but their teeth will have the space it needs to come in straight and you can usually avoid the need for braces at all.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode, I'm sitting down with Dr Hilary Fritch, an airway-focused dentist, to break down why this epidemic is happening, how come nobody's talking about it and why almost every child today is developing a jaw that it's too small for their tongue and airway, and what you, as a parent, can do about it. This isn't one of those wait and see kind of things. The earlier we as parents intervene, the better. This conversation truly has the power to change your child's future, their breathing, their sleep and their long-term health, and I'm not going to leave you hanging and wondering what to do after this interview. I'm going to be sharing how to get a free virtual airway assessment for your child. It is completely free and only requires you to send in some photos. You have nothing to lose by getting a free consult and your child has everything to gain.

Speaker 1:

Let's dive in, hilary. Thanks so much for being here on the Toxin Free Age podcast. I think this is the topic that we are about to dive into. It is the number one thing parents need to know and we're not being told. So thank you for being here. I so appreciate this. I think this is going to be a life-changing interview for the moms, the parents and, honestly, not even just the parents, even adults and we'll get into that. I feel like this is going to be one of those eye-opening, life-changing oh my gosh. This explains so much moment for people as they're listening to it. So thank you for being here and, just you know, give a very quick background what brought you into the world, from dentistry to airway?

Speaker 2:

Well, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. So dentistry I always wanted to be a dentist when I was a kid and there's just been this evolution of me having an autoimmune disease, kind of figuring out that I needed to look at medicine differently than I was taught, and then realizing that I've had an airway issue my whole life and kind of wanting to figure out how to heal myself and prevent it with my kids, and then basically like just tiptoeing little by little by little into this world and the more I learned about it, the more I was like this is the only thing I care about.

Speaker 1:

It's so funny that you say that, because I do think that's what happens when people tiptoe into this world is the deep hole. You jump right into the deep hole and you're like, oh my gosh, everybody needs to be talking about this. That is how important this topic is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, fully agree.

Speaker 1:

So we're saying airway, People listening are like what does that even mean?

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

What is an airway issue? Can you kind of explain what that even means to people?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so basically it means that the tube that you're breathing through is inadequate or the way that you're breathing is inadequate. So typically it's like looks like mouth breathing, snoring, any kind of sleep disorder, breathing sleep apnea, and so we look at it as like proper facial development, proper jaw development. So airway issues are fundamentally a dental disease. If the jaws were placed in the right place and the tongue was nice and strong and trained to stay on the roof of the mouth, we wouldn't have any airway issues. But because nobody's growing the jaws that they were meant to have anymore, like pretty much every single person I look at has an airway issue, meaning like the tube is too narrow, or their tongue is the right size but their mouth is too small, or their tongue isn't strong and it's not staying in the roof of their mouth, or their nose isn't working great. That whole, this whole area of the face, isn't functioning like it's meant to this whole area of the face isn't functioning like it's meant to.

Speaker 1:

So what's causing that? Because this is widespread. The first time I ever really became aware of this, I actually read a book, a massive book. I talk about it a lot. It's called Deep Nutrition. It was written by a pediatrician and she talks about how the way that our jaws are forming in, kind of like modern you know the modern countries where we are all cooking our food they're soft and we're depleted in minerals that there are these root causes of why our jaws are so narrow and kind of like inserted in and they're not developing properly. Is it because we are not using our jaw the way we're supposed to? Is it because of the mineral Like? What is causing this? Because every kid I know needs braces and we'll get into that. But the narrow jaw, all of the teeth, and now it's so funny, I see it everywhere. I look for that recessed chin I'm like constantly looking at people and the forward head posture.

Speaker 2:

Everybody's like this because if they'd straightened up, they'd break up like squish their hair way off.

Speaker 1:

So what is the root cause? Do you think so?

Speaker 2:

when they look at ancient humans, they never had crowded teeth. All the teeth were nice and straight and aligned. They'd look at their skulls. But 400 years ago royal families started getting crowded teeth and they think it's because they were having like shots, cook everything for them and everything was soft and puddings and whatever, and then. So that was like the beginning of some dental crowding and improper jaw development. The biggest change happened when they introduced baby formula, unfortunately, because that started to turn off epigenetics, because breastfeeding is so essential to jaw development. Like you have to push your jaw forward to latch very physical action for the babies to get milk and then they have to breathe through their nose in order to do it. So it's like all those things work together. So now we're like seven, eight generations in and each generation is multiplying on the jaw development issue. So now they say 98.5% of humans aren't developing the jaws that they were meant to have. I feel like it's like a hundred. In the last year I've seen one kid that I was like, oh yeah, you look at you, you did it. And that kid's mom was like a nutritionist who was giving them cod liver oil from the get-go, like she knew everything.

Speaker 2:

I think it's like soft foods, our processed diet. Indoor living we're not breathing through our noses that well. We're exposed to a lot more allergens and viruses and colds that we were like. This winter's been really hard on everyone, everybody's mouth breathing for months now. So you know there's basic. Those are the big things. It's soft diet. Breastfeeding toxins, I think, are contributing to tongue ties and so the tongue is the architect of the face when it's tethered down and it can't do its job, and then our food doesn't have the nutrition that it's meant to have. Weston Price was this famous dentist who studied why do all supermodels come from third world countries? While they're eating organ meats and breastfeeding and having kind of more of an ancestral diet, they're not sucking everything out of a smoothie pack.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no amen to that, you will get it. I fully agree. I love Wes and Bryce.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So, for parents who are listening, what are some of the symptoms that they should look for? So, and I'll be honest, when I first got into this world, jump in until I had a personal friend, actually Soshana, who introduced us I didn't really dive in until I saw for myself the dramatic difference that happened in her son. Like you, there is like it is like night and day, which is crazy, and as a friend.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that we talked a lot about was, like his symptoms, the things that were causing her so much distress, like why are these things happening? Can we talk about what parents should be looking out for just in general? Because when you say mouth breathing, every single parent who's listening to this just went well, my kid sleeps with their mouth closed. I don't notice, or they don't snore, but that doesn't mean that they don't have airway issues, things like ADHD symptoms or, you know, bags under your eyes, like what are the symptoms that parents should be kind of like aware of?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, first of all, everybody tells me I'm sleeping with my mouth closed and I'm like you don't know you're asleep and, unless you like, put a video on your kid all night, you don't know, like I. I find that people say that and then, like I, we can kind of like figure out later that it's not true. But so that's one thing. I just think, be skeptical of your belief that you're actually breathing through. So, like I'll, they'll say that and I'm like, well then, why are their lips so chapped? Like dry, chapped lips are a sign of mouth breathing. Dark circles under the eyes, that's from mouth breathing.

Speaker 2:

It causes, like this, vasodilation and anytime that the baby teeth don't have two to three millimeters of spacing in between them, which, like no kid has, that means they're, they don't have enough room, because where are the permanent teeth gonna fit? Like it's, it's already too small. We also like shed weddings, a big, big, big one, that adhd symptoms, because they're kind of like wired. You know, it's like that jet lagged kind of wired feeling that you can get. That's what kids who aren't getting good sleep feel like every day. That's why when we give them adderall, it helps, because adderall is an upper, so it's like giving a tired kid a cappuccino and saying get through your day, yeah. So those are like some of the big ones. We also like ear infections, chronic throat infections.

Speaker 1:

Adenoids and tonsils. Right, that's something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, If you ever had to talk about tonsils and adenoids you need to go straight to an airway dentist because you can get that soft tissue out of the way. But you haven't addressed the mouth breathing habit. You haven't addressed jaw development, Like all the structural issues are still there. I mean snoring. If they're not breathing silently through their nose at night, that's a red flag, Like sometimes sort of pickiness around food can be a sign. Speech issues can be a sign because that's related to tongue ties. God, there's so many things, so many.

Speaker 1:

I know when I started diving into the research, I was like everything. Can we talk about cavities? What is the connection between mouth breathing and cavities in kids?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So this is a really big one because everybody thinks that it's from not brushing properly or their diet. But the biggest reason I see for cavities is mouth breathing and it's become so obvious now. Like all my little mouth breather kids are full of cavities and the ones that aren't don't have them. So what's happening is at night mouth dries out, you don't get the neutralizing effect of saliva and bacteria can go to town. So obviously really important to floss before bed so that we at least clean out as much of that plaque that the bacteria eating as possible. But if your lips are sealed you're gonna have way less cavities. So that's like one of the red flags that you should look for with airway stuff.

Speaker 1:

I think that's so because parents are told oh, my kid has cavities, and you know they're like well, we eat really good and they brush really good and they floss really good and we use all the good like and they're like why does my kid have cavities? And I know, you know, you hear a lot that sometimes it can just be genetic. But I think this is such a missing piece that parents need to understand that this is a huge contributor.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. In dental school we weren't taught that mouth breathing was related to cavities at all. So that's why every dentist creates this guilt thing in parents where they say, oh, maybe you're not flossing, or maybe you're not eating healthy, or maybe you're giving your kids a lot of candy, oh no, let's take that one step further, because actually in my community what's happening is these parents are going into the dentist and they're doing all the right things and the dentist is saying what toothpaste are you using?

Speaker 1:

And these parents are using natural toothpaste, whether it's hydroxyapatite or whatever, and the dentist is telling these parents, the reason why your kid has cavities is because you're not using fluoride. Yeah, and then they come to me and they're like am I doing the wrong thing?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Okay, we can fix your teeth, but we can't fix your brain, Just like, if that happens to you. Just remember that, you know. So don't worry. Yeah, and hydroxyapatite is really good at remineralizing teeth, so I like that's they're. They're not bad people. That's just what we were taught. We were taught fluoride is the God and just more fluoride. But we really have to go. Okay, hold on, Are you? Is this kid breathing through their mouth? Do they have crowded teeth? Do they have dry, chapped lips? All that stuff. That's what the dentist should be looking at and not saying hey mom, what kind of quack are you? You're not using fluoride.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for clearing that up. Yeah, I mean, there's, like you, really root cause. This airway, the way that the jaw is developed, can be a root cause of so many symptoms that are being treated as something different and kind of. One example I want to touch on is this movement around mouth taping right, this is like such a popular thing. And when I started researching I was like, okay, well, that makes sense to me in my head that that is, in a way, people are having all of having all of these like amazing reactions to it. Oh, I'm sleeping so much better, I'm regulating my nerves. It's like you hear all of these things like because I'm taping my mouth and I'm thinking, well, you're just putting a bandaid on the issue. Yeah, right, you're not addressing the root cause.

Speaker 2:

I like to call it a hack because it's not like. It's not like a real treatment and it can be risky for some people to do. But it's like I have patients experiment with it as a way to figure out am I actually breathing through my nose all night or do I have to rip the tape off in the middle of the night? But it will encourage you to keep your lips closed. But I feel like my functional therapy is such a better tool because we're going to like reprogram the brain to keep the tongue on the roof of the mouth and we're going to get the tongue strong enough to stay up there.

Speaker 2:

So the tape works because you're going to breathe through your nose, so then you get nitric oxide, so then you get into rest and digest better and you get more oxygen sent to your muscles and you get basically like less fragmentation of your sleep because your tongue isn't falling back into your airway and causing micro arousals. But yeah, it's not changing the structure of your jaw, it's not improving the size of your airway. It's helping you keep your tongue up in the roof of your mouth because your lips are sealed. I hesitate to recommend it because it can be dangerous for some people. So I don't know, but it's a useful tool to like get clarity, I would say, on whether you're breathing through your nose all night or not, because some people are like, oh yeah, I'm breathing through my nose and then they can't keep the tape on all night.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've heard that too from people. Okay, so let's talk about intervention now. We've talked about all these things that are terrible about air breathing and jaw development, and so you know, like what now what? Like, what are people supposed to do about it? If you were talking to a parent who has a young child which is a ton of my audience, or they're moving into the age where you know orthodontics, because pretty much every single kid I know has orthodontics when should a child be checked for mouth breathing, proper jaw development, all of those things?

Speaker 2:

You need to be going to the dentist, to an airway dentist, to look at their jaw development, because almost every single kid can benefit from intervention at that age and the earlier we start, the better we get them sleeping right away. So what we know from the research is the neurocognitive deficits that kids get from poor sleep. Even once we fix the airway, we've lost that important developmental stage so we can't correct for it necessarily. Like we've lost that important developmental stage so we're not. We can't correct for it necessarily. So the earlier the better. I'm a huge fan of starting at age three with a tooth pillow and myofunctional therapy and really kind of like starting to address the jaw development while they're growing. Like traditional orthodontics says, wait until they're 12, 90 of the jaw development is done like it is way, way harder to fix it then and we've also now had 12 years of crap sleep Like their entire childhood. We're going to just say, okay, go ahead and have bad sleep. I think it's. We have to move it back.

Speaker 2:

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry just said finally, like we need airway health is essential. We need to be evaluating this. So hopefully that starts happening. The problem is like people don't know how to need airway. Health is essential. We need to be evaluating this, so hopefully that starts happening. The problem is like people don't know how to evaluate airway. We weren't taught. We were taught zero about airway in dental school. Everything that I've learned, I learned by paying for it. Like in the last few years, I have spent like over a hundred thousand dollars training myself on this stuff because we we didn't. We didn't learn one thing about tongues or airway in dental school, so hopefully we can dial that back and make the new rule like age three. We're looking at jaw development.

Speaker 1:

I feel like I mean this should just be preventative care for every child.

Speaker 1:

Like at three, you go to an airway dentist and you, how is your baby's jaw developing? And, by the way, if you can address this issue, you can avoid orthodontics. As a mom who's been through now two kids with orthodontia and we'll talk about that in a second I'm like, oh my God, I wish I knew, I wish I freaking knew, like what I know now it should be a basic screening for every single child and the fact that what you just said like dentists don't get trained on this, and we can extrapolate that too to like Western medicine, the things that you know doctors don't learn in medical school, and why people go to alternative. You know naturopaths and like people who have gone out and gotten more holistic type root cause, functional medicine training, I feel like this world kind of lives in that same place and with that new policy coming out, I really hope that what that means is that dental schools will start providing this education, but in the meantime, because we know nothing happens quickly with the GIMP bureaucracy we just know that.

Speaker 2:

You got to advocate for yourself right now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly what if you have. So at three and at the end of this interview we'll talk about, like my favorite option for people to get their kids checked. But let's move to like an older kid. So if you're talking to somebody who has maybe a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old, is it beneficial at that age also to go ahead and move forward and get them checked and get that therapy?

Speaker 2:

It's absolutely never too late. We can cure sleep apnea in 80-year-olds, so age 9, 10 is a great time to get some fixed expanders put in. So we're just going to get that expansion that we need. That helps. The roof of the mouth is the floor of the nose, so when we expand the palate we're also going to widen the nose and improve the volume to like what it should have been. And then I think my functional therapy again like we got to rewire the brain and now establish that nasal breathing habit and wearing a tooth color device after the expanders is a good way to make sure that that's working and then potentially, like the teeth will drop into the right spot. We don't need to do orthodontics after that as well. Like it's possible to avoid the whole braces clear aligners thing if we start early enough.

Speaker 1:

Let's go into a little bit more detail. I think you know maybe people are saying expanders, tooth pillow. What is that? Okay, what is an expander? Can you explain the actual process for cause? What you need to do is you need to make more room in the palette. So how does that work actually?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so fixed expanders are kind of the gold standard for expansion, in that, like in children, we use an expander that has little like 3D printed metal caps that glue onto the molars and then there's a bar like these finger springs across the front that push on the teeth to help get some forward growth, because that forward growth is really hard to get. It's really really important to get the maxillum and the mandible up out of the airway. And then there's something called a super screw in the middle that you can turn and it gives you like an eighth of a millimeter with each turn. So it's basically just growing the jaws forward and wide, like God intended them to be, and you have to do upper and lower. The research shows if you just do an upper expander that they're going to relapse.

Speaker 2:

The other thing is like every single orthodontic retinol is just doing an upper expander because that is what they were taught, but they'll. They can only go so wide before they completely exceed the width of the lower arch, so they're not going wide enough. So people are always telling me well, my kid already did expansion and I'm like I bet they didn't go wide enough. We need to get, we need to do upper and lower so that we can actually go wide enough to make enough room for the tongue.

Speaker 1:

And it's crazy what happens when you widen that, like my friends with Shauna, her son, his jaw. I mean he looks like a completely different kid. It changed his like physical features almost completely and like brought his jaw wide. You can see. I mean it is obvious, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So I'm like sometimes that scares people, scares people like I don't want my kids to look different, but they're gonna look better. Yeah, no, it's more attractive yeah, if you look at like beautiful faces.

Speaker 2:

They have forward growth like maxilla, and the mandible are out in front of the forehead and they have that nice line from the cheekbones forward. They don't have this nasally fold because they've grown forward enough and I think our brain just knows like that looks healthy. That's why it's beautiful and basically like they have teeth from corner to corner, like a big julia roberts smile if they smile and you can see little black triangles here in the corners. That's called a dark buckle corridors and that means the macula is too narrow and like if you look at smiles now you're going to see like everybody has.

Speaker 1:

So everyone me included, by the way. I have spent much time in the mirror and I'm self-diagnosed yeah, we're like.

Speaker 2:

It's even like I had an expander as a kid and they just didn't go wide enough. I have it too. I'm now doing my own version. I'm like doing an adult version of expansion to help. But so you like you'll. When we do expansion, we basically like grow them forward and wider. The maxilla shows teeth from corner to corner and then we untrap the mandible because the mandible is a victim of the maxilla. So if it's small, trap back.

Speaker 1:

And that's your lower.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the lower jaw is going to be trapped back too, and that's why we see so many women with chronic headaches, chronic TMJ pain, teeth clenching that's one I didn't mention before.

Speaker 2:

Clenching and grinding is like massive, big red flag. So when we grow them excellent forward and wide, then the mandible can go to like a happy place and so you'll see the jaw release and come forward. They get like a better line through here under their chin, gets longer and the jawline starts to look better, like their whole face just like develops in this beautiful way, like. It actually makes me like I'm getting the chills right now thinking about all the kids that people come from like all over to see me now, and so I'll be zooming with them and I'm like, oh my God, you look so good. I can't like they're just blossoming, it's so pretty. And then I was like, yeah, we were just in Hawaii taking a bunch of pictures and I just I want to cry because she looks so pretty and everything's developing so nicely. It really like really changes things in an awesome, positive way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, I, and, like I said earlier, I cannot unsee it. I see it everywhere and all the kids that are running around my community. When I'm out grocery shopping, when I look at kids, now, what I see is this tiny, narrow, recessed chin. And I see it. I can't unsee it. Yeah, and it's crazy. This is an epidemic, it's every single kid.

Speaker 2:

This is an insane epidemic.

Speaker 1:

This is every child. This should be standard care for every kid. Every parent should be told. Every parent should be told to get a consult, do an airway. I'm going to get passionate. I was like I was about to like launch into, like this whole thing, but I'm not going to do that, it's fine.

Speaker 2:

I know I like it. I'm with you. I feel like we're we're screwing up kids' faces.

Speaker 2:

I'm so mad I walk around and I want to cry. I'm like we are. We are really screwing this up, like it is not fair to ruin their face because we wanted to wait till age 12, because it's easier. We are totally like everybody's squished through their mid face. They have crappy lip support, everybody's having to get lip injections because their lips aren't supported well, because their face is trapped back, like it's just really really hard for me, especially when I know how easy this is to fix. If we just look at them at age three. For God's sake.

Speaker 1:

So let's move forward a little bit to. So you do the expanders. And then what is the tooth pillow device?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So tooth pillow is a really cool device. They come in like different sizes and different designs based on what the bite looks like. So if they have an underbite or overbite or whatever, and it's like a night guard kind of you could picture like a football mouth guard, but it has a spot for upper teeth and lower teeth so it encourages the mandible to come forward. Unless they have a underbite, then it encourages the maxilla to come forward and it pushes the tongue. It's like little flanges that push the tongue up onto the roof of the mouth. There's like a button that the kids learn to push up, so it encourages the tongue to get on the roof of the mouth where it can do its job as the architect of the face. And then it's kind of like when you stick an orange peel in and smile, it has plastic across the front so they're forced to breathe through their nose. So it's a really good habit forming device and just like gentle expansion, gentle mandibular advancement.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I want to address the fact that this is plastic, because I know I'm going to get a lot of people to be like oh, plastic in your mouth terrible, Listen, having mouth breathing and an undeveloped jaw is way freaking, worse than the small amount of time that you're going to have the potential to have plastic in your mouth. So is this where the whole mewing thing came from? Because, let me tell you, I have teenagers and mewing is so cool and the way that it's been explained to me from my teenagers is you put your tongue at the roof of your mouth which is ironic that this generation has started doing this top of their mouth and then you swallow while the tongue is at the roof of the mouth. Is this kind of where all that? Because people are like, oh, get a snatch jaw, change your jaw right, it's all over the internet, yeah, I mean is this all related?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, of course. So myofunctional therapy is like mewing, like we're. We're basically suctioning the tongue to the roof of the mouth, where it should be, and kind of like exercising it to keep it up there. And you can even watch in the mirror when your tongue is low, your chin kind of hangs down and when you suction it up it tightens up. Yeah, so kids are on to something. It will like strengthen, you know, the muscles and then. But the thing is, if you didn't get the jaw development, it's not gonna. Mewing isn't gonna help you grow forward and wide. If you started at age three, it would, but like usually the teenagers were like hitting it a little too late. But it can make changes and I think it's cool that it's in fashion.

Speaker 1:

I'm so. Yeah, I'm like I mean, this generation is on to something right? Yeah, let's talk about orthodontics. As a mom who has kid my, my son, currently is doing his very last um Invisalign and he has a genetic missing tooth, the same one that I do. That's right here. I don't know what it's called, but it's in towards the front of the face, so it's like a big deal from an aesthetic perspective and I feel so sad that I passed those genetics on to him.

Speaker 1:

I say to him all the time like I'm so sorry, you know he's 16. And hopefully he's okay with me talking about him, but you know the next step would be putting in a bridge for that and I, as I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm like I want to go get his jaw development assessed prior to doing any permanent orthodontia, because mine's permanent and I can tell you that all those things you said I have. And so, as an adult, I'm like, oh my gosh, what do I do? But let's start with the teenagers. Like he's older, he's 16 already. Would this benefit him at all to find a myofacial, you know, dentist that can provide this kind of support? Or is it like, oh well, it's too late, you've already had, oh no okay, I'm going to tell you about my teenager.

Speaker 2:

So she had traditional orthodontics with all the best orthodontists, who were my buddies and they're trying to do a great job for her and please me so I would send them referrals. And, um, we did expansion. She is nice and wide but she didn't get enough forward growth and she actually only has 2.4 millimeters of airway behind her soft palate. So I'm gonna try not to cry because this makes me so freaking mad. But she has sleep apnea. I like tested her um a while back and I was like I can't believe this baby, like we screwed up and it breaks my heart, but we can fix it and I'm so sorry.

Speaker 1:

No, this is why this is so important. This is why, at the beginning, I said this is the most important conversation. Listen, this is like episode number 100 and whatever of my podcast and this is the most important episode I have ever recorded. And parents need to understand this, because this is their kids and the rest of their lives.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I feel like sleep apnea is kind of a death sentence because it causes heart attacks and strokes. But sleep and oxygen are the two most important things in your life and I know so much about this so it's painful for me. But anyways, she doesn't have it as bad. When I look back, I think I had it like way worse than her. I had chronic headaches and stomach aches and a lot of symptoms. So she doesn't really have, which is good. But anyway, I'm putting her in a removable expander now that helps us grow forward. So we're like I can see the changes in her face. She's doing awesome. I'm going to be able to like fix this for her. It's just really frustrating because had I known everything that I know now, we could have prevented her from having this problem at all or bad sleep, and now, like she's 14, she doesn't really want to deal with wearing an expander all the time.

Speaker 1:

Sure, I mean heck, my 16 year old doesn't even want to do anything, Like I get it. But it's really like I can't tell you how much relief that you just gave me, that like, if I go get him assessed, that it's not too late.

Speaker 2:

It's absolutely not too late. Like I'm doing it for myself right now, we we help 80 year olds, like 14, is kind of the end of where we can do fixed expanders. In my opinion, dr Ben does fixed expanders up to age 16. Dr Ben Moralia, who started Toothpillow, I just find, like my older kids, do not want it fixed in their mouth because they have a lisp when they have it in, so that's why I use the removable one. But we can definitely remodel the palate. I'm watching it happen. I have a ton of teenagers in them right now. But, yeah, it breaks my heart because these freaking, they're just kids, man. It's not fair for them to have this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, people need to know, so let's talk about adults. So if you were talking to somebody like me and you've been treating yourself obviously, so it's not too late for us either.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely not. No, yeah, so like I mean, I literally meet with like three adults a day who come in and say what can I do about this? And we go through the options. So if they can't breathe through their nose, very well, we need to do palatal expansion because we've got to remodel the nose. If they can breathe through their nose, then we can just use clear aligners and make the mouth bigger. We got to improve the tongue space. So the three big things with Airway are adequate tongue space, adequate tongue function and nasal breathing. So like if you can breathe through your nose all night. We're using something I like, a product called Candid, but it's kind of like visualize, Invisalign and it's just clear aligners. We can move the teeth forward and wide with that and make way more tongue space so we can get the tongue up out of the airway.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I love that there's options and this isn't like a hopeless scenario, like, oh no, if you didn't do it when your kid was three, like you're totally screwed. So I wanna talk about Toothpillow, and I am equally as passionate about Toothpillow as I am about this topic in general, and I think a lot of that stems from the fact this is just my personal experience, stems from the fact this is just my personal experience as I was getting ready to leave. I'm originally like spent most of my life in San Diego, and so my community there is like very educated, a lot of people. There are dentists that are myofacial specialists. There's access in places like San Diego right, those options exist.

Speaker 1:

I know people know, because I live in the middle of nowhere in Northern Virginia and I got to tell you there's nothing around here. So there is this accessibility issue that I think is going to be an impediment to people finding support for their kids, and so that's one of the reasons why I love Toothpillow. But I also love the cost, and I'm just going to share my own personal. I have friends who have spent between $6 and $7,500 in San Diego because that's how much it costs to get treatment like this, and I think Toothpillow is just an affordable, accessible, and by affordable I mean like, in comparison to a lot of what's being offered, and a lot of it is it's virtual right. Yeah, yeah, so let's talk about it. What is the Toothpillow process and how can people who are listening to this, who are like what do I do now? How can I get my kid assessed? What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

Okay, so tooth pillow you have to picture tooth pillow as like remote airway dentistry. So the whole goal is like getting airway dentistry to kids that don't have access. So I live in Montana, massive state, like some people here are more than six hours away from me, so a lot of people drive, but a lot of people can't drive, and so basically what you do is you go and fill out a questionnaire and submit photos of your kid and we go in and like see if they're a good candidate. And then I do a zoom where I share my screen and I say, hey, let's look at these pictures together. Here's what I'm seeing I'm seeing dark buccal corridors. I'm seeing lingually tipped teeth. I'm seeing chapped lips. I'm seeing on high vaulted palate. I'm seeing it like the tongue that looks like it's too big for the mouth. Blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2:

And then I say, hey, this is the device that you need. I recommend you get the malfunctional therapy package and then Toothpillow sends them what they need. They have an app and tons of help. So the ladies that are helping out the moms on that Toothpillow side are available basically 24-7 to answer questions and when they need the doctor's opinion, they reach out to me and say, hey, can you look through this case? Maybe we need to change the appliance that they have, or the mom's worried about their tonsils, whatever it might be. So it's a way for those moms and dads to get their kid into an airway appliance starting at age three and do myofunctional therapy also through Toothpillow. So I just like think I don't understand why not everybody is doing it. I think it's a brilliant, affordable way to help every kid.

Speaker 1:

Every kid. I know every kid should have a consult, every kid. And so, by the way, because I work with Toothpillow, I'm like, how can I work with you? And I cannot wait to get my kids and myself. In fact, as soon as I get off of this interview, I know who you guys work with in Virginia, it's a three-hour drive.

Speaker 1:

And, because my kids are too old, that digital virtual consultation, there's a cap. Right now it's 13, right, yeah, yeah. So if you have a kid who's younger than 13 years or younger through Toothpillow, and I will have a link and I will have a explanation of the process, of how to get a free video consult, they'll walk you through sending in the pictures, how to send in the pictures, what pictures you know to send, and then get that video explanation from an actual airway dentist showing you what are all of the things they see with your kid and then providing how you know, how you them moving forward. And so when you, you know, use my link, not only do you get that free video consultation, but then, if you move forward with the actual treatment, there's also a discount for you there. I just think that this is so important and I feel like it's the consults free, like it's just do it, just do it nothing to lose.

Speaker 1:

You have nothing to lose. At a minimum, you just have this really important information to take in and do you know what you want with? And I just there's really no reason why every single child as a, as a preventative measure, no matter what, like all my friends, all my family, all the, I'm literally going to go tell the whole world, like, go get a consult yeah, that consult is huge.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I feel like, honestly, like we can get so much data from those photos. I it's kind of like seeing me for an exam which is 250 bucks or something. I mean, you're gonna. I'm I'm walking through that questionnaire and saying like, like you're having chronic earaches. This is is probably from an improper swallow. When we swallow properly, it pulls the fluid in the ear, which prevents it from getting stagnant and prone to infection, like we're. I'm looking through all of that data that you're sending and I do like a really comprehensive video. So you're going to learn a ton. I think it's really eyeopening, like you've literally nothing to lose and you're going to learn a ton about your kid that nobody's ever talked to you about before. It's going to be eye-opening, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And it's one of my favorite things about Toothpillow that they do that for you that video consult. I think it's incredible, yeah. So last question Do you think that, with the new policy that came out, that anything's going to change anytime soon? And just from an advocacy perspective, when parents are going into the dentist's office, how can they advocate for their kids? Because I actually know a lot of people that have gone into their dentist and say, hey, do you have a referral for a myofunctional? I say things like ask about this, ask about this, this. How can parents be more informed and advocate for their child?

Speaker 2:

I mean I will say, like before I knew about airway stuff or before I knew about how fluoride was toxic, the patients that came in and said, like brought these things up, were they were teaching me stuff and opening my eyes to it. So if you have a dentist that seems receptive, you might be like kind of triggering them to, you know, get online or take a class or get more knowledge about it. So I think there's no harm in talking about it. On the other hand, I have dentists in town here who think I'm a total quack, that I believe that we can remodel the palate. So there are people who are just not going to get there and they we can remodel the palate. So there are people who are just not going to get there and they like, I think you need, if they're not hearing you when you're talking about tongue ties or you're talking about fluoride or you're talking about airway, that's not the doctor for you.

Speaker 2:

I'm skeptical that we're going to get there just because the AAPD said to, because the American Dental Association in 2017, said that every dentist needs to be evaluating airway, and no one's doing it, so, like we're, just until we start teaching about airway and dental classes or in dentistry we have these like continuing ed gods that everybody goes and spends all this money with. And until those, until the gods of continuing ed say, start talking about airway, then everybody's going to think that it's not real, we can't do anything about it, or it's not an issue, or you know, only the quack biological dentists are doing this stuff. So I personally think you have to kind of get in your car and drive and find somebody that you trust.

Speaker 1:

Well, thanks for being here, Hillary. I hope this message reaches all the people who need it, and I'm definitely not going to stop talking about it, so thank you so much for caring about this, because we need to get the word out.

Speaker 2:

I'm so tired of having like 50 year olds in my chair who just had a stroke and they're like I guess I have sleep apnea. We could have helped that guy a long time ago. And if we like start looking at kids at age three, we can really turn this epidemic around. But, like you said, like every single kid I look at has improper jaw development these days and it's like breathing and sleep, it's like so fundamental to vitality. We have to shine the light on this. So thank you for being one of our light shiners. You are welcome, all right.

Speaker 1:

I'll bring you for being one of our light shiners. You are welcome. All right, I'll bring you back after I get my whole family assessed. We'll check in a year from now and see how we're all doing. Awesome, I can't wait to hear about it.

Speaker 1:

Now that you finished listening to this episode, I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do to get a free virtual assessment by an airway dentist. It is so simple. All you have to do is head on over to wwwtoothpillowcom. If you have a child between the ages of three and 12, you're going to go ahead and click on the get started button on mobile or the is my child a candidate button on desktop. You're going to follow the prompts and it is so easy.

Speaker 1:

All you have to do is take six photos of your child. There are examples right there on the website. It's going to ask you who referred you and you're just going to put in Wendy, or Wendy from Talks in Freeish, or the girl at Talks in Freeish, or whatever you want to put in there. You're going to walk through and put in all of your information, upload your photos and then, at the very end, it's going to ask you if you want a virtual video assessment. This is really important. Go ahead and upgrade that and use code Wendy W-E-N-D-Y at checkout and it's going to make that virtual assessment free. I promise the information in the video that you're going to get back from an actual airway dentist that's going to walk you through your child's photos and tell you everything you need to know is going to be priceless. The link is in the show notes, but one more time, that is wwwtoothpillowcom.