Born and raised in Essex County, Canada, Dr. Page graduated from Detroit Mercy Dental School in 2015 and now practices in Kingsville, Ontario.
While she loves general dentistry and helping people with all things oral health, her personal experience is what led her to focus specifically on airway health. She’s open about her journey because she wants to help as many people as she can.
Mild-to-moderate sleep apnea often goes undiagnosed and untreated. Dr. Page is on a mission to change that.
Dr. Page's Story
Her story
in her words…
“It started when I was a teenager. I was feeling exhausted most of the time, even after a 9-10 hour night of sleep. I felt like I was a lazy person and it made me feel really bad about myself. I had chronic fatigue and exhaustion.”
I then had a CBCT scan to show my airway. My airway is tiny. Behind the area of the tongue, you ideally want 10mm. I had 5mm. So even though I don’t have severe sleep apnea, it’s hard to get quality air into my lungs. I also have a small jaw, so the tongue tends to fall back.
I thought it was too late to do anything because I’m an adult so figured I’d have to deal with it.
But turns out it’s not too late. I can do adult expansion and myofunctional therapy to help with my sleep quality and help reduce my headaches and jaw pain.
I didn’t want to feel this way for the rest of my life.
So I entered into Vivos treatment myself and the results have been dramatic. My headaches and jaw pain are greatly reduced. I feel awake and refreshed in the morning and I get through my day with normal energy. “
“My mom took me to a doctor who told me some people just feel this way and gave me iron supplements.
Of course, that didn’t solve the problem and the fatigue continued into my adulthood and progressed into other symptoms. When I’m tired I tend to tense up more and get headaches.
On average I was taking Advil 3-4 days per week just to get through my day.
Then I started experiencing jaw pain.
You try to explain it away as just being too busy. You don’t think of it as function and form first.
I had a friend and colleague who was practicing sleep dentistry and she encouraged me to look into it for myself. I did a sleep study through Vivos. It showed that I had mild sleep apnea. I don’t need a CPAP, but it revealed that I never go into deep sleep. Maybe 10% of my sleep time is deep sleep. The rest is light, so it’s not restorative.
When Dr. Page became a mother, she wondered if her son would experience the same struggles, based on his genetic predisposition to inherit her jaw shape and size.
When he had trouble nursing, Dr. Page’s sleep dentistry colleague helped her recognize that he had a posterior tongue tie and lip tie. Looking deeper, the pieces started coming together. He also didn’t sleep well and was generally fussy when awake.
Dr. Page started to learn and study airway health in children. She was introduced to HealthyStart for kids and was amazed how mouth breathing, tongue posture, and incorrect jaw development cause all of these issues… issues that eventually lead to the adult who never had treatment and now suffers from sleep apnea and its symptoms.
Dr. Page says,
“I knew I needed to do something. We took our son to have his tongue tie and lip tie released. Once he was two years old, we got him on HealthyStart. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know he isn’t going to suffer the way I did as he grows older.”
Dr. Page is an active member of the Canadian Dental Association
and the Ontario Dental Association
When she’s not seeing patients, Dr. Page can be found spending time with her large extended family and being outdoors as much as possible with her husband Max (who sleeps great, by the way.), her son Zach (who now sleeps well and is quite happy!), and dog Archie (also quite happy and a little too energetic to be the therapy dog he was meant to be - no complaints from Zach.)