The Future of Dentistry with Autumn Henning!

Live from Greenville, I interviewed Autumn Henning from Chrysalis Oralfacial - an experienced Myofunctional therapist on how to take the best care of our patients by collaborating with other professionals!

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Allison: Well, so it was to the future of dentistry podcast. My name is Allison Cruz here, your host, I'm here with my amazing guests. Autumn, penny. Thank you so much for coming to the future of dentistry. Although I'm in your town right now, Ingrid. Um, and we're going to explain a little bit about what we're doing in a little bit, but I want to welcome you first.

What was the show?

Autumn: Thanks so much Ellison happy to be here on the podcast.

Allison: So absolutely. We're excited to share who you are, what you do and how you help the dental industry, because you are not a key in the dental industry per se, but we're going to talk about how, what autumn does is actually fundamental for the dental industry.

So introduce yourself to.

Autumn: I like to say I'm an adopted dentist. That's what I'll say. Um, so I am a speech language pathologist and a certified orofacial mycologist and an international board certified lactation consultant. So

so essentially what I specialize in is oral facial function and more so dysfunction. And so, you know, looking at the mouth and all the jobs are mapped. You know, eating and talking and, and feeding and all of those things, um, and how it affects our entire health, our sleep, our, um, how stir, um, the TMJ, things like that.

And so that's what my job is. So I see from infants all the way up to elderly, so I could have a baby having breastfeeding difficulties and, you know, on the other end of the spectrum, And adult with sleep apnea. And so everything in between headaches and, um, picky eating kids with speech disorders, all of those things.

So really I would get how the lips, the tongue, the cheeks, the jaw, how they all work together. Or not, um, and figure out what are those contributing factors. So a lot of what I do is very collaborative, um, working with, um, dentists primarily, and, you know, pediatric dentists, general dentists, orthodontists are the main ones that.

Allison: I love it. I love it. And I actually got to meet autumn through one of my friends. Who's a pediatric dentist because autumn came in, took my Instagram worse. Um, and she just took off best student ever. You crush it. Don't tell anyone else that you were the best student ever, but truly she just took the information.

It's like educating her patients issue vastly what we want to do. And so one of the things, one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on the future of dentistry podcast, because. In this podcast, we're talking about what is happening in the dental industry, how it's evolving and changing to better care for our patients in a preventative way.

So our patients want things faster, easier, and safer. They want to really focus on prevention. They want to focus on solving problems before they're problems. And I feel like your role is absolutely critical. In that ability to prevent these problems from happening in the future. And so tell us a little bit about how you collaborate with your dentist as a pediatric dentist, and why is it so important that you guys work together to solve the problems?

Autumn: Right. So at its crux, I would say, you know, everything that you're looking at in the mouth and seeing in the mouth, there's a reason for it. And there's a root cause behind it. And. When I do is related to that root cause. And so you can think about someone with sleep apnea or bruxism right, and they're filtering your whole mouth restoration over and over again, you make up to 10 bite guards and it's not fixing the problem.

So that's kind of the role that I'm playing is, you know, looking at that tongue assumption, that world rest posture, um, you know, the balance of the muscles and the jaw and things like that. Yeah, I would just say, you know, really zooming out and looking at those full body and heal full patient. Um, you know, we learn things when we learn about the body and systems and, you know, It everything's interconnected, they failures so working alone, but that doesn't get crank results.

And so, um, yeah, structure and function have this dynamic relationship. You know, if you're seeing high narrow collets, that's likely because of math breathing or a tongue tie. Or poor tongue rest Fasher with the tongue, not up in the roof of the mouth. And so, you know, as a dentist or orthodontist, you can definitely expand that pallet, but it's not addressing the reason we got there in the first place.

And who knows about the stability. So, yeah, just, you know, definitely working on the functional side and then collaborating on the structure.

Allison: Absolutely. And it's really looking at the patient, like a whole person, like looking at everything involved and often we can't do that alone. Dentists can't do it alone.

You can't do it alone. And that's where the beautiful collaboration comes in to be able to provide that best care for the patient. Something that I've been hearing a lot in the industry. And a lot of groups and organizations are talking more and more about this, but not, not ever knows how to get it started and they don't know how to start collaborating.

And so if you could tell a dentist, that's thinking about collaborating, when somebody in your special. How would you suggest, or like, we'll get information. Can you tell them in order to start that pathway? Right. Yeah. You know,

Autumn: I would, you know, see if there are any patients you have in common or a patient in your dental chair that, um, has speech issues ask if they have a speech therapist or, you know, um, And then reach out to them.

Like we're nice people at promises, reach out to us say, Hey, could I come observe her I'm in your office and see what it is you do. Um, would you like to come to our office and see what we do? And then meeting of the minds, have coffee, have dinner and just get to know each other and your philosophies. I guarantee you'll find.

Dots that you can connect and ways that you can enhance each other's practice to help your

Allison: patients. I love that. And so what are you typically referring patients to dentists for and what are they typically referring to you

Autumn: for? Yes. So typical referrals, um, to dentists, um, Pretty much, you know, malocclusions, crossbites, high pallets, neuro pallets, um, sometimes draw surgery.

Um, that may be part of it, airway stuff, um, you know, to get imaging and come beams or an MRI of like the TMJ. Um, and then tongue tie. That's a big one. So those are, those are primarily the ones, again, I'm in someone's mouth every day. So, you know, I see something interesting that I don't know what it is.

Pathology wise, you know, I'm definitely gonna refer to a dentist for that. Um, so those are the main things that I'm referring for. And then on the flip side, you know, I think dentists are doing a great job, you know, up and coming and looking at the whole picture. And they're asking those questions on their history forums about snoring and about speech issues or feeding issues or, you know, headaches and TMJ and things like that.

Those are what my referrals are, are coming through to kind of see if there's a functional component to it.

Allison: Are you seeing any trends like with what's happened in the pandemic? Are you seeing like, you know, I'm imagining increase in stress, causes some things that you're seeing. So I'm curious, like what, any trends that you're seeing?

Autumn: Yeah. You know, it's interesting, a lot of times, you know, People have said, like, you know, it really started with the pandemic and there's a phenomenon out there that I read about called mask mouth. And basically, you know, when you're wearing a mask, a lot of people are mouth breathing. And so that causes stress on the joint and, you know, um, changes to the dentition and things like that.

So, Yes. I also find that people tend to kind of rationalize things or stress like, oh yeah. I grind my teeth. Cause I'm stressed when oftentimes it's related to breathing. So, yeah, it's been an interesting time for sure. And

Allison: you can imagine, yeah, it's, it's interesting to hear like every different new zone of genius in the profession is what are they're seeing because of the pandemic and because of the stresses of something, I just continue to continually hear over and over again, like the patients are suffering more and more because of stress.

So, um, it's good to know that, like there are these resources. Speaking of resources. I know that one of the things that you wanted to make sure that I mentioned in this podcast was what resources can you give to a dentist in order to find out information, to connect, to refer, to collaborate? What resources would you want to make sure that everybody has?

Autumn: Yeah. So I mean, to find one of us, so orofacial, mycologists are kind of few and far between we're working on that. Um, but it's kinda like another master's degree in our fields. So. Um, definitely the I L M directory, um, to find an oral facial mycologist. Um, I love ASAP pathway rate, um, sleep and pediatrics pathway.

That's led by three general dentists looking at sleep and pediatrics. Um, sleep disorder, breathing type stuff related to the mouth. Those are two really great resources. And then shameless plug. I do teach courses and dentists come all the time. It's, it's really fun. I teach tops training type of rural tissue, specialty training.

And then the reason you're here this weekend, um, Dr. Ann and I, um, teach our second level course comp plot the top. And it's really about. Um, you know, working on integrating this holistic care into your practice, as far as tongue tides and, you know, screening for mouth breathing and myofunctional disorders.

Allison: I love that. And I'm so excited to learn everything that guys going to teach us this weekend. It's going to be so fun. I already know. We're going to learn so much. What would you say if you could even dentist, as let's say an hour, a dental office manager, a dental team member, and you know, this is something that they've been thinking about implementing in terms of screening or in terms of really trying to create the solutions for what they're seeing in a different way.

What would you say would be kind of like the first step? Like where would you say they should start? Where, where should they go?

Autumn: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, continuing education conferences, Um, you know, work smarter, not harder, um, you know, have, you know, just a checklist of yes or no and ask some of these questions.

And if you see a lot of checks on the yes, side of the column, then you know, to have that conversation so that, you know, it's. It's not extra. It's just already part of your intake process. I would say I love that. Um, some great books that you could read to start with, um, gasp by Hinden and Guild. I'm tongue tied by Richard Baxter.

Um, areas live by, um, Dr. Magna Disani. Yeah. So those are some of my

Allison: favorite. I love it. I absolutely love it. And so if people want to learn more about you and where they can find you, if they have questions, if, if they really just want to reach out to you, where can they find you? Sure.

Autumn: So my practice and company is Chrysalis or a facial, C H R Y S a L.

S O R O F a C I N. Dot com. Um, there's a contact form on there. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook as well. So

Allison: yeah. Check her out on Instagram again, like she crushes it. She's based camera, educating teaching all the time. It's so, so good. So definitely check her out on Instagram. Um, and my final question for you is if this, if you could kind of paint a picture of the future of dentistry to be like the most.

Collaborative or the most, I guess the best way we can take care of patients, what would you say would happen in the future of dentistry utilizing you, utilizing the collaboration that you guys really create together?

Autumn: I would say, you know, there wouldn't be just dental practices. There would be whole centers and, um, integrating some of the other specialties, like myofunctional therapy.

You know, even ENT things like that, um, sleep divisions to work together. So I would love to see like complexes, you know, like you have the medical complex and there's like unrelated fields. It would be nice if there were, you know, related fields together and we can collaborate easier and more in real

Allison: time.

Exactly. And how, like how far do we are in terms of incarceration? Like, do you think that. Just starting to toe the line in collaboration or we, you know, moving

Autumn: along. I think there's just a lot of challenges as far as you know, um, I think the, the biggest part is not actually the collaborating, it's the communicating and, um, doing that in a manner that, you know, Take up so much time.

And so I I'm hoping, you know, in the next 20 years we start to see a change. That's usually the longest kind of day, but, um, you know, I kinda got into this area of my field, um, about 10, 12 years ago now. And, uh, I've seen it come leaps and bounds. And just these, these few years, you know, it's, hasn't really been that long.

Um, so I think it's getting more common because people are seeing results. Yes. And that's what matters.

Allison: Okay. Absolutely. And so this is something that I was really excited to ask. It's something, my friend questions. I literally just pick your brain all day and I know I'm getting a full conference from you tomorrow, so I won't be selfish, but if, what are some of the most exciting or whatever it is that you see?

Oh my gosh. Yes. It's

Autumn: so exciting when, um, you know, there's this mutual respect, I think in our society, we think of like doctors and other healthcare practitioners. But really like we're equals I refer back and forth and they listened to me and I listened to them and we respect each other. But, um, you know, there was a patient I can think of.

And I guess this was last year that the orthodontist was. Yeah. You know, I think she's headed to jaw surgery and, um, you know, she sent her over to me to work with her. She, we did myofunctional therapy, a tongue tie release. And, um, she did like her recall with her and, you know, new scans and all the new measurements and stuff.

And she called me, it was a Friday night. She called me on my cell phone. And, um, she said, you know, I don't think, I don't know that we're headed in that direction. And that's a life change and that is so life changing. And, um, you know, that's something I'm working with moms and babies and, you know, moms that want to breastfeed.

Um, say there's a tongue tie or some sort of oral dysfunction going on. Um, you know, really being, having a hand in that relationship, um, that shapes that whole, their whole life. So yeah, it's, it's really neat getting someone off their C-PAP that's. Gosh, that's super cool. Um, closing open bites just by getting the tongue out of the way.

Yeah. Um, and in the right spot. So yeah, I, I love seeing those results and, and it's, it never gets

Allison: old. I love it. Oh my gosh. Well, I want to acknowledge you. You're going to be sorry. Being on the future of dentistry podcast. It's an honor to have you here and definitely go and check out our Instagram, very lazy website and go and learn more about how she is helping change the dentist dental industry, and really creating what the future of dentistry can be.

I'm so excited to do your courses again, um, by the time this airs we'll have gone through it. So I'll have a little more to say about it and some of the results that I see, but I want to acknowledge you for everything that you do, your bright, beautiful personality. Um, all of your Instagram game. I'm so impressed.

um, so thank you so much for being on the future of dentistry podcast and we will see you tomorrow.

Autumn: All right, bye guys.