Sep 6, 2026 1-2pm ET
Sunday on The Robert Scott Bell Show:
This Sunday Conversation comes to you from the IAOMT conference, where I sit down with Dr. Ben Pospisil, a dentist whose journey has taken him well beyond what he was originally taught in dental school. After hearing Ben present at the conference, I knew immediately that I wanted to continue the conversation because what he’s talking about isn’t simply straighter teeth. It’s about how the development of the jaw and face can influence breathing, sleep, posture, and potentially the health of a child for years to come.
Ben tells me his own questions began when he realized that some of the dentistry he thought he was doing correctly simply wasn’t producing the results he expected. Why were patients grinding and damaging their teeth? Why were so many children developing crowded mouths? Why did orthodontics so often require removing healthy teeth and then forcing the remaining teeth into the available space? Those questions eventually led him toward orthotropics and a very different understanding of facial development.
This one hits close to home for both of us. Ben and I each had premolars extracted when we were young before undergoing conventional orthodontics. For generations, crowded teeth have become so common that we’ve almost accepted them as normal. But common and normal aren’t necessarily the same thing. Ben points back to observations associated with Weston A. Price and to the work of Dr. John Mew, asking what changed in the development of the human jaw and what we can do differently for today’s children.
At the center of orthotropics is something remarkably basic: oral posture. Ben explains what is known as the “tropic premise,” the idea that proper facial and jaw development is associated with proper oral posture, including the tongue resting against the palate, the lips closed, the teeth in gentle contact, and breathing through the nose. When those patterns aren’t established during childhood, he says facial growth can begin moving downward and backward rather than developing as it should.
And this isn’t merely a cosmetic conversation. Ben connects jaw and facial development with the airway. If the mouth and jaw don’t develop properly, there may be less room for the tongue and a more restricted airway. That brings us into sleep-disordered breathing, snoring, sleep apnea, poor restorative sleep, and the behavioral and health problems that can accompany chronically disrupted sleep. Instead of simply chasing those downstream symptoms, Ben wants practitioners and parents asking what happened structurally in the first place.
Timing becomes incredibly important. Ben emphasizes that childhood gives us an opportunity that becomes much more difficult once the bones have matured. Rather than waiting until a child is 12, 13, or 14 and then trying to straighten crowded teeth, he believes practitioners should be identifying developmental problems when children are much younger. That’s where changing oral posture, function, and growth patterns may potentially alter the trajectory before conventional orthodontics ever becomes necessary.
We also talk about how modern childhood itself may contribute to the problem. Soft foods, fear of allowing children to chew, altered feeding practices, mouth breathing, and failure to properly exercise the muscles involved in chewing and swallowing can all become part of the discussion. Ben’s message to parents is especially important: if something about your child’s breathing, sleeping, mouth posture, or facial development doesn’t look right, don’t simply dismiss your instincts because you’ve been told everything is normal.
One thing I particularly appreciate about Ben is that he isn’t interested in keeping this knowledge to himself. In fact, he’s frustrated that there aren’t enough practitioners doing this work. Through the Orthotropic Academy, he’s helping teach other dentists the methods he learned so families don’t have to travel across the country searching for someone who understands them. He’s not trying to create scarcity. He wants another generation of practitioners to carry the work forward.
That spirit of cooperation is one of the reasons I enjoy conferences like IAOMT. We’re watching dentists question mercury amalgams, fluoride, airway development, conventional orthodontics, and other assumptions that have been embedded in dentistry for generations. Change can be painfully slow, but practitioners like Ben demonstrate what happens when somebody is willing to admit that there may be a better way and then has the courage to learn it.
For parents, Ben’s message is simple and powerful: get educated early. Don’t wait until facial development is largely complete before asking questions. Understand the relationship between the tongue, jaw, airway, breathing, sleep, and overall health, and investigate your options before making irreversible decisions about your child’s teeth. And for dentists and orthodontists, this may represent an opportunity to move beyond simply creating straight teeth toward helping children develop healthier faces, airways, and lives.
Learn more about the work Ben discusses through Orthotropic Academy
We wrap up this Sunday Conversation from the IAOMT conference with my longtime friend Anita Tibau, and if you’ve followed our conversations over the years, you know Anita doesn’t let go of an issue simply because the establishment would prefer everybody forget about it. This time we’re returning to one of the most disturbing stories we’ve covered together: the Casa Pia dental amalgam study and the continuing use of mercury in dentistry.
The fact that we’re still having this conversation in 2026 is extraordinary. Dental schools are still teaching the use of mercury amalgam fillings even though there are numerous mercury-free alternatives. Anita has spent decades investigating this issue, working internationally and using Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover documents surrounding research that was subsequently used to support claims about the safety of dental amalgam.
At the center of our discussion is the Casa Pia study conducted in Portugal beginning in the 1990s. Anita recounts how hundreds of children participated, including approximately 100 orphans, and raises serious questions about informed consent, independent advocacy for vulnerable children, oversight, and the handling of potential adverse outcomes. Her investigation also intersects with the later Casa Pia child sexual-abuse scandal. Anita argues that what researchers knew about the vulnerability of these children should have triggered far greater scrutiny and potentially brought the dental study to an end.
What makes this more than a historical controversy is the role the research subsequently plays in the debate over dental amalgam. Anita explains that the Casa Pia findings were used as evidence supporting mercury amalgam safety and points to later reanalyses of the data that reported associations the original researchers had not emphasized. Her argument is straightforward: if foundational research used to justify a medical or dental practice is compromised, regulators have an obligation to go back and examine the foundation rather than continuing to build policy upon it.
And these children aren’t children anymore. The Casa Pia participants are now adults approaching middle age, giving researchers a potentially unique opportunity to examine what has happened over the decades since their original mercury exposure. Anita wants those individuals located, appropriately evaluated, and given the opportunity to have their health histories examined with the benefit of everything we now know.
We also discuss Anita’s continuing efforts to get federal regulators to address mercury amalgam. She tells me about her FDA citizen petition calling for an end to dental amalgam and for consideration of additional approaches to heavy-metal chelation. With renewed federal attention being directed toward mercury exposure, Anita believes there is an unusual opportunity right now to bring the Casa Pia history directly to policymakers who may not yet understand the full story.
But this isn’t merely about Washington. Anita reminds us that mercury exposure doesn’t stay neatly confined to the tooth where an amalgam is placed. Her concern extends to patients, dental professionals, the environment, and ultimately the enormous burden of chronic illness. Whatever one’s individual susceptibility may be, we’re talking about deliberately placing a material containing mercury into people’s mouths when alternative restorative materials exist. For Anita, that makes continued use increasingly difficult to defend.
There’s also a deeply personal moment in our conversation as we remember our dear friend Kelly Gallagher, who passed away earlier this year. Kelly works alongside Anita for years on the mercury issue, including traveling with her to Portugal during the Casa Pia investigation. She appears with us on this show over the years and brings tremendous heart to this fight. Anita and I take a moment to remember her friendship, her determination, and the light she brought to everyone around her.
This entire weekend at IAOMT reminds me why these conversations matter. There is tremendous innovation occurring within biological and holistic dentistry, but we’re simultaneously confronting practices and assumptions that have survived far longer than they should. Progress requires people willing to ask uncomfortable questions, preserve the history, uncover documents, challenge regulators, and refuse to allow inconvenient stories to disappear.
That’s exactly what Anita Tibau continues to do. The Casa Pia story isn’t finished, the mercury amalgam debate isn’t finished, and Anita certainly isn’t finished. For those who want to follow her continuing investigation and see the documents and material she’s bringing forward, visit Preventive Dental Care.
From Dr. Ben Pospisil’s work on childhood jaw development and orthotropics to Anita’s decades-long effort to expose the problems surrounding mercury amalgam, this Sunday Conversation asks us to reconsider some of dentistry’s most deeply embedded assumptions. Whether we’re talking about how a child’s face and airway develop or what materials we’re putting into people’s mouths, the goal is the same: stop accepting “that’s how we’ve always done it” as an adequate answer and start asking what actually supports healthier human beings.
Remember Friends, The Power to Heal is Yours!
