Hello, and happy back-to-school season!

I hope you’re keeping your sanity. 😂

I know it comes with its own challenges as everyone settles back into a routine. Some families are craving that routine by now, while others may feel a little more tension than usual as schedules shift and everyone adjusts.

So, be kind to yourself. And prioritize sleep.

​An extra hour of sleep may help protect against illness, which can feel more important than ever when alllll the other kids’ germs start making their way home over the next few weeks.

This month, I hope you find something here that sparks a question, gives you a new perspective, or simply helps you feel a little less alone in figuring all of this out.

Feel free to hit reply and tell me where you’re at in your own journey this month. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

What Actually Happened Inside Our First Toothseekers Conversation

When I created Toothseekers, I wanted to create something I hadn't really seen before:

A space where parents could come together, ask questions, share experiences, and learn from both a professional and from each other in real time.

And honestly? It worked.

Maybe not perfectly. We're still refining the format. Future conversations will have slightly more intentional structure, and we'll collect questions ahead of time from participants. But the conversation was exactly the kind of parent-to-parent support I hoped it could become.

We talked about body tension, craniosacral therapy, chiropractic and neuro support, adenoids, feeding challenges, gut health, tongue ties, expansion, and breathing habits.

One of the most relatable themes of the whole conversation was this:

“We're already seeing all these providers and putting in so much effort. How do we know what to prioritize?”

(As one parent essentially put it: my husband is going to kill me.😂)

Our next conversation is Saturday, September 19th.

Heather Tremblay-Croteau, PT, DPT, CSCS will be joining us for:

Big Emotions + Mouth-Body Connections

If you're tired of collecting information and trying to figure out how it all fits together, come join us for a deeper conversation.

A question I hear a lot: Why does my child snore at night but not mouth-breathe during the day?

Sleep changes the way our bodies function.

When we're lying down, the base of the tongue can shift backward into the throat space. At the same time, we lose some muscle tone during sleep, making the tissues involved in breathing more likely to narrow or collapse.

And if there is already something contributing to airway restriction, such as nasal obstruction, enlarged tonsils or adenoids, a narrow palate, or a low tongue resting posture, those changes can become even more noticeable at night.

This can also help explain why some children sleep in unusual positions. The body is constantly looking for ways to make breathing easier.

And sometimes, what looks like a quirky sleep position, restless sleep, or even teeth grinding may be a clue worth paying attention to rather than simply something to “fix.”

Want to see a quick visual of how grinding teeth can change the airway space? Watch This! It's a video of the inside of the throat taken by an ENT doctor for those who may say, "ew, no thanks" and want to skip ahead... but I think it's cool and insightful!

Thinking Outside the Box: The Gut-Oral Connection

I've been collaborating behind the scenes with other health professionals for years through the Unconventional Collaborative group, planting seeds for practitioners to view their own patient experiences through a different lens (and learning a lot about my own limitations along the way!)

Danielle, one of the co-founders of the collaborative, has really taken that to heart. She now has an entire dental and airway health section built into her medical screening questionnaire.

And recently, that education helped her recognize something important in one of her clients.

Her client was a young woman who had experienced severe acid reflux for years. When Danielle's patient checked several boxes on an airway red-flag screener, she recognized a pattern that was worth exploring.

Her care plan included a referral that eventually led to a MARPE palate expander.

Three months later, this client reported that her acid reflux had resolved for the first time in her life.

I'm not sharing this as a promise that expansion will resolve reflux.

I'm sharing it because sometimes the question isn't simply “How do we treat the gut?” It's “Could something outside the gut be contributing to what we're seeing?”

And we may never get to that question without collaboration, shared education, and learning how to recognize patterns that cross the boundaries of our individual specialties.

That's what I love about collaborative care.

One practitioner doesn't have to have all the solutions.

Sometimes they just need to know what questions to ask next.

The message is getting out.

I was at a small going-away party for a friend recently when two completely separate conversations caught my attention.

One woman told me she had a tooth removed when she was younger and had subsequently developed a habit of chewing on only one side. She was now wondering whether that history could have anything to do with her current hip pain. (short answer, yes)

Another woman I had just met told me about her own history of upper-body tension and her efforts to understand where it was coming from. She had teeth removed for braces because her mouth “wasn't big enough” and had begun wondering whether her dental history might connect with some of the symptoms she was experiencing.

I didn't bring these topics up. They did.

And that made me smile.

I live in a little town that's full of health and wellness professionals, so perhaps I'm in a bit of a bubble. But the message really is getting out:

The next challenge is connecting people with the right team members to help them explore those connections.

And that's exactly where my work comes in.

What should you do next?

If you've been wondering whether some of your child's symptoms might be connected, you don't necessarily need more information.

You may need help figuring out which information matters.

Here are a few ways to take the next step:

Want to learn alongside other parents?​
→ Join us for the next Toothseekers conversation on September 19.

Already have a lot of information, providers, and questions but don't know what to prioritize?​
→ Book a free discovery call and let's talk about whether Concierge Consulting is the right fit for you.

You don't have to figure it all out alone.

Until next time,

Dr. Julia