We unlock greater health and wellness through addressing tongue ties, oral dysfunction and promoting good jaw and airway development.
Dr. Shereen Lim’s Story
I’m a dentist with a special interest in helping children overcome challenges with infant feeding, swallowing, breathing, chewing, and speech. I do this through a collaborative team approach to tongue tie management, and promoting good oral function and good jaw development. When oral function and jaw development is off track in childhood, it affects the way our airway develops and works, and the way we breathe, sleep and grow.
Getting to the root of poor oral function and jaw development when there are functional problems, ultimately promotes better airway health, breathing, and sleep, which in turn unlocks greater health and wellness for life.
Most of what I do today was not taught to me in dental school, and it came from learning from many different perspectives, and world leading experts in their fields. Follow my journey connecting dots, to offer a holistic and integrative team approach to care, and my commitment to advancing collaboration between professions to serve patients beyond Sparkle better.
Graduated from the University of Western Australia (UWA) dental school with husband Dr Alex Devellerez.
Inspired by a common vision to create a practice that offered extra-mile care and service, and an exceptional team that felt fulfilled coming to work each day, we went on to establish Sparkle Dental together in 2004.
Completed the two-year UWA Graduate Diploma of Dental Sleep Medicine program, becoming one of Australia’s first dentists to be qualified in dental sleep medicine.
Prompted by the frustration of my husband’s snoring, I decided to learn more in this area to help with noise in the bedroom, and help save other spouses from a similar frustration!
I developed a good background in sleep medicine, and became qualified to collaborate with sleep physicians to offer jaw re-positioning devices for adults with snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA). I starting to question why we couldn’t help children grow jaws properly in the first place to help spare them decades worth of poor, sleep and quality of life.
I developed a good background in sleep medicine, and became qualified to collaborate with sleep physicians to offer jaw re-positioning devices for adults with snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA). I starting to question why we couldn’t help children grow jaws properly in the first place to help spare them decades worth of poor, sleep and quality of life.
First met OSA and sleep medicine pioneer Dr Christian Guilleminault and was inspired to search for more answers on the root causes of poor jaw and airway development.
During my dental sleep medicine course, I had become familiar with Dr Guilleminault’s research on palate expansion to help improve breathing and alleviate OSA in children.
When I told him his work had inspired me to learn orthodontics to address poor jaw development, he advised “if you’re starting palate expansion, you are too late.” This thought-provoking teaching moment inspired me to find out more about the root causes of poor jaw development and opened the doors to learn more about tongue-ties and myofunctional therapy.
I began to appreciate that 60% of jaw development is complete by age 6 years (with the first year of life being the most rapid), and that waiting until age 7 years to do orthodontics was missing the opportunity to guide better jaw development during peak growth.
I also learned breastfeeding is the most important modifiable factor that can influence jaw growth in the first year of life. I decided that I would become involved in supporting breastfeeding through tongue-tie management in future.
Commenced a 2-year Mini-Residency in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopaedics with Sydney orthodontist Dr Derek Mahony and started integrating early orthodontics with myofunctional therapy.
Over the next three years, I would fly in and out of Sydney and Brisbane upwards of 25 times to learn more on early interceptive orthodontics and integrating it with myofunctional therapy to address root causes of poor jaw development, from Dr Mahony and other leaders including Dr John Flutter, Dr German Ramirez, Sandra Coulson and Joy Moeller. That excluded international travel for conferences. Combined with two young children who I was determined to learn more for, it was a very busy time in my life!
I learned addressing poor muscle habits that contributed to poor jaw development was a commonly overlooked key to long-term stability of orthodontic results. The bonus was that better muscle patterns including nasal breathing and better tongue function were critical for better sleep and total health too.
Embarked on a deep journey learning about tongue-ties to play a role in supporting breastfeeding, and tongue-tie management from infancy to adults.
The next few years, I would complete the major courses on tongue-ties including the 3-day comprehensive course at Tufts University in Boston. I shadowed Drs Marjan Jones, Larry Kotlow and Soroush Zaghi, to learn from their approaches. This was complemented by many conferences and workshops in the fields of lactation, speech and feeding, myofunctional therapy, orthodontics and sleep surgery to better understand tongue function across the lifespan. I commenced offering tongue-tie releases from infancy to adulthood in 2017.
I incorporated the functional tongue tie release approach taught by Dr Zaghi – combining the release with myofunctional therapy to optimise functional outcomes for children and adults with mouth breathing, snoring and chronic neck tension and headaches.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend time shadowing my top two influential visionaries in sleep medicine, Drs Christian Guilleminault and Stanley Liu at the birthplace of sleep medicine, Stanford Medical Sleep Centre.
This experience reinforced my thoughts that adult sleep apnoea patients deserved more precise and personalised options beyond the traditional band-aid night-time solutions. It offered a glimpse of a promising future where tailored surgeries including palate expansion and jaw advancement combined with restoring nasal breathing and good tongue function could be offered to adult patients who wanted to restore airway health and better breathing 24/7.
It further cemented that early intervention to promote good jaw development, nasal breathing and tongue function during childhood is where our attention should be focused on to help raise the healthiest children, keep treatment simpler, and prevent little problems compounding into much bigger burdens in adulthood.
Committed to advancing integrative care for patients beyond Sparkle, I began organising national inter-disciplinary conferences and offering unique access to world-class experts within Australia.
Whilst I’ve been quiet on that front during the pandemic, I’ve remained active in promoting integrative care with local and virtual presentations for various professional groups. My first trip abroad will be to the US in September 2022 to speak at the American Dental Association’s 5th Children’s Airway Conference, and at the American Academy of Physiological Medicine and Dentistry (AAMPD) Conference, and my next goals include promoting my book Sleep, Breathe, Thrive and starting a podcast to make information more accessible for families.
Commenced offering earlier orthodontic intervention from age 3 years for selected children to help improve breathing, sleep and speech.
I was invited as the only international dentist to join the Endeavour group, a sub-group of the American Academy of Physiological Medicine and Dentistry (AAMPD), or collection of paediatric and general dental and orthodontic leaders, dedicated to promoting airway health for children under the age of 6 years worldwide. This group was influential on my decision to help fill the void for palate expansion for the 3–6-year age group, and we now help meet needs for children from Broome to Kalgoorlie.
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