The Growing Beautiful Faces course by Dr. Jeffrey Dahm represents an ideal opportunity for general dentists to develop advanced insight into growth-centered orthodontic care. Discover how this course can help you shift from focusing solely on tooth alignment to integrating epigenetics for healthy facial development and airway function.
What is epigenetics?
The Growing Beautiful Faces course places a strong emphasis on epigenetics, which is the study of how influences, such as breathing patterns, sleep habits, and muscle function, affect how genes are expressed. This is an important area of study concerning the development of the face, jaw, and airway.
It’s also an area that other general dentistry orthodontics courses tend to overlook. However, it has a profound impact on developing children, where growth plates are still highly responsive. Poor oral habits, from mouth breathing to low tongue posture, can greatly affect jaw development, palate width, and maxillary growth.
Understanding the relationship between function and structure is essential, and epigenetics highlights this. Issues such as mouth breathing lead to irregular pressure that contributes to narrow palates, crowding, facial asymmetry, and affected head posture.
Gaining an understanding of the impact of epigenetics can help you guide growth from the start, instead of simply correcting problems afterward. When you know how to leverage the link between behavior and airways, facial harmony, and neuromuscular balance, you are better-equipped to support long-term functional health outcomes.
How Epigenetics Connects to Orthodontics
Many orthodontic courses for general dentists focus on correcting dental crowding and misalignment after they occur. Of course, these are crucial foundational concepts in orthodontics. However, integrating epigenetics lets you reorient your approach to address the root cause behind these issues before they develop.
In this way, epigenetics enables dentists to shift from mechanical correction to developmental guidance. With these insights, you can evaluate oral posture and how it promotes or restricts optimal development. From there, effective intervention is possible before structures harden into maladaptive orientations.
This new perspective moves beyond the position of the teeth to assess airway health, sleep quality, and neuromuscular balance. It encompasses how narrow arches or jaw misalignment are more than just aesthetic concerns; they also point to compromised breathing and altered development.
Being able to identify epigenetic influences allows you to intervene during optimal growth windows. This approach enables less invasive strategies that support healthy development rather than forcing correction. Using epigenetics, orthodontics becomes an overall preventive healthcare solution that supports breathing and general well-being.
What You’ll Learn in the Course
During the Growing Beautiful Faces course, Dr. Jeffrey Dahm covers how to recognize irregular growth by evaluating facial symmetry, palate width, tongue posture, and other details during routine dental evaluations. Instead of waiting for issues to arise in adolescence, you’ll learn the warning signs to start early intervention in childhood.
This practical instruction in functional and airway-centered treatment planning equips you to implement habit correction and nasal breathing encouragement alongside traditional orthodontic appliances. Importantly, the course demonstrates how appliances for early intervention can guide proper development.
The course’s insights into real-world case studies further highlight the benefits of early intervention in preventing malocclusion, speech issues, and sleep-disordered breathing. You’ll learn how to build personalized treatment plans that prioritize airway health and facial harmony and deliver predictable and stable patient outcomes.
Throughout the course, you’ll develop an actionable framework for proactive intervention. From structured diagnostic methods to treatment timing strategies, you can gain the practical skills to integrate epigenetic concepts into patient assessments and treatment plans with confidence.
Why This Course Matters for Your Practice
Today, parents are more aware of the broad-ranging implications of orthodontics beyond just smile aesthetics. They know that oral development can have a significant impact on their children’s health, and they want a dentist who can address these concerns. Positioning your practice as growth-focused makes you stand out to parents.
Integrating epigenetic principles can also improve your diagnostic capabilities. You’ll be better able to identify potential orthodontic complications before they arise and offer solutions that minimize treatment invasiveness and timelines. The ensuing improved patient outcomes can then lead to higher long-term satisfaction and retention.
You’ll also have the knowledge to better explain orthodontic issues and treatment plans to patients. Instead of just focusing on how to fix problems, you can break down why they happen in the first place. Being able to present the combination of developmental guidance, airway health, and functional benefits can help you improve case acceptance.
Incorporating epigenetics helps you differentiate your practice from your competitors. You aren’t just focusing on available treatments, but instead bringing lasting improvements to every aspect of your practice.
Discover How Epigenetics Can Deliver Improved Patient Outcomes
The Growing Beautiful Faces course equips you with evidence-based, modern orthodontic insights to better care for your patients. By integrating the latest in epigenetics with functional orthodontics, you can elevate your treatment plans with a new approach to support effective early intervention and improve patient outcomes. Sign up for the course to get started today.
To learn more about our popular orthodontics courses for pediatric and general dentists, check out one of the upcoming events below.
