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Show Notes

In this roundtable — part two of the show’s airway and sleep series recorded around an ASBA gathering — Howard Farran sits down with three leaders working at the intersection of dentistry, sleep, and medicine: Dr. Luann Hall, a UCSF-trained “recovering pediatric dentist,” minimally invasive advocate, and regent of the American College of Dentists; Dr. Manisha Witmans, a board-certified sleep physician, pediatrician, and pediatric pulmonologist who built the pediatric sleep program at Stollery Children’s Hospital and recently learned she’s been an OSA patient herself since childhood; and Dr. Janelle Crichton, an orthodontist and airway specialist whose practice ranks #1 in Canada for Invisalign volume and who is entering Stanford’s Orthodontic Dental Sleep Medicine program as one of only six orthodontists in North America accepted.

The conversation opens on a philosophy of preservation — the idea that a tooth can outlive us but rarely survives the drill — and Dr. Hall’s case for minimally invasive care, arresting decay and remineralizing rather than cutting. She also introduces two ventures she advises: Auris DX, an FDA-approved salivary test for oral cancer often described as a “pap smear for the mouth,” and InHand Dental, a teledentistry tool built during the pandemic. That leads into a recurring theme of the episode: the artificial divide between medicine and dentistry, why oral cancer screening isn’t reimbursed like its medical equivalent, and the panel’s shared vision of collaborative care built around a single shared medical record and integrated practices where orthodontists, myofunctional therapists, and physicians work under one roof.

Much of the discussion centers on airway and sleep. The doctors walk through how mouth breathing shows up in the chair — lips apart, dry inflamed gums, high narrow palates, dark under-eye circles, brain fog, grinding, bite changes, crowding, delayed eruption, and white-spot lesions driven by reduced salivary buffering — and Dr. Witmans drives home the loop between poor sleep and systemic inflammation. She also highlights a striking inequity: women weren’t included in obstructive sleep apnea research until 1993, decades after REM sleep was discovered, leaving today’s screening tools heavily weighted toward men and countless anxious, exhausted, chronically-in-pain women underdiagnosed. Howard adds his own near-fatal kidney stone story as a vivid example of how men delay seeking care. The panel debates when children should first see an orthodontist — landing firmly on early, growth-modification-focused intervention rather than the traditional “wait until twelve” — and closes with practical, fear-reducing exam tips for new dentists, like asking a child whether their teeth feel “happy or sad” and letting patients tell you what they think is going on.

Episode #1715 : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran, Howard hosts a powerhouse airway roundtable with Dr. Luann Hall, Dr. Manisha Witmans, and Dr. Janelle Crichton — a “recovering” pediatric dentist, a sleep physician, and one of North America’s top airway orthodontists.

From why “you can survive without a tooth but not the drill,” to the decay patterns that secretly signal an airway problem, to how women went unstudied in sleep medicine until 1993 — this conversation connects dots most dental schools never do.

🎧 A must-listen on airway, sleep, prevention, and bridging the gap between medicine and dentistry.

#DentistryUncensored #AirwayHealth #DentalSleepMedicine #PediatricDentistry #Orthodontics #SleepApnea