Before You Decide on Wisdom Teeth, Fluoride, or Braces… Listen to This with Dr. Berry Gillespie Artwork

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Follow Your Gut Podcast is for the women who are ready to stop outsourcing their family’s health and start leading it with clarity and confidence.

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If you’ve ever been dismissed, overwhelmed, or stuck in cycles of guessing and symptom-chasing, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to stay there.

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Before You Decide on Wisdom Teeth, Fluoride, or Braces… Listen to This with Dr. Berry Gillespie

November 25, 2025 • Juniper Bennett • Season 5 • Episode 170

Why is it so hard to find real guidance about wisdom teeth, fluoride, and braces for our families?

When I first invited Dr. Barry Gillespie onto the podcast, I thought I was bringing on a traditional-turned-biological dentist. This is what I shared in my community The Rebalancing Collective, and what I shared on my instagram stories when I was gathering all the questions you wanted answered. But as soon as we began talking, I quickly realized I had misunderstood and what unfolded ended up being far more empowering than the conversation I originally imagined.

When I walked into my house after this interview, Ty and our kids asked me how it went, and the only words I could find were, “I feel like I just sat with one of those wise people you see in documentaries… someone who has actually lived the things he’s talking about.” His insight means so much to me, and I know to every single one of you listening, because we’re not here for symptom-masking or band-aids. We’re here for lived experience. And hearing from someone who has walked both sides and now chooses a different path is deeply grounding and profoundly empowering.

You’ll hear his honest, unfiltered opinions on the things so many of us feel pressured into… wisdom teeth removal, fluoride, braces, root canals, and why, as he says, “you don’t want to go along with the herd.” He takes you out of fear and back into discernment. The conversation around wisdom teeth alone is going to shift how you think about dental timelines. We compare it to circumcision, how the culture tells us to do something simply because “that’s what everyone does,” instead of making decisions with intention and understanding.

If you’re someone who’s ever sat in a dental chair or a doctor’s office wondering, “Is this really the only way?”... this episode is for you. It’s humbling, empowering, and filled with the kind of wisdom that helps you see your health in a whole new light.

I can’t wait for you to meet Berry! Let’s get into it!

Thanks for listening! I would love to connect with you ♡

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Sending love and wellness from my family yours,
xx - Juniper Bennett
Founder of ōNLē ORGANICS

Dr. Gillespie is seventy-eight years old. He spent four years in college, four years in dental school, and two more becoming a surgical specialist before opening a successful practice in Massachusetts. He lived the dream life of a traditional dentist until his own body started speaking to him through headaches that no doctor could explain. Instead of silencing the symptoms with medication, like he was told to do, he got curious. That curiosity changed every part of his life. It took him from surgery rooms to a life devoted to understanding the body’s innate ability to heal.

What makes this conversation so powerful isn’t just Dr. Gillespie’s wisdom. It’s the honesty that only comes from someone who has lived inside the traditional system, followed the rules, believed in the model, and then had his entire perspective altered by real life. He’s here sharing his opinions after fifty years of seeing both sides… what dentistry teaches and what he now knows to be true about whole-body healing. And for me, that carries a different kind of weight. When I walked into my house after this interview, Ty and our kids asked me how it went, and the only words I could find were, “I feel like I just sat with one of those wise people you see in documentaries… someone who has actually lived the things he’s talking about.” His insight means so much to me, and I know to every single one of you listening, because we’re not here for symptom-masking or band-aids. We’re here for lived experience. And hearing from someone who has walked both sides and now chooses a different path is deeply grounding and profoundly empowering.

I can’t wait for you to meet Berry! Let’s get into it!

Juniper (00:00)

Today we have Dr. Barry Gillespie here with us and what an honor it is to be able to have this conversation with you. Before we push record, we just shared briefly how hard it is as mothers to navigate our dental and medical world. And you know, so often we hear mom say, well, I'm just a mom.

But none of us are just moms. We are our family's biggest advocates and our leaders. And I know that we have so much that we are going to learn from you today. And so I can't wait to just get into this conversation. Will you take just a minute to introduce yourself and share the road that you've been on? What has brought you to where you are today and the practice that you have?

Barry Gillespie (00:46)

Yeah, thank you for having me on to the podcast. If you're interested in our work, my name is Barry Gillespie. I was a trained ⁓ periodontist. In other words, I went to college for four years. I went to dental school for four years. I went to two years of surgical work. to be a periodontist, so I was in school for 10 years. I got out when I was 28, and I thought I knew everything, and everything was good. We opened up a practice on Cape Cod in Hyannis, Massachusetts. And on Wednesdays, I used to fly to Nantucket, so life was very good. This is in 1975, 50 years ago. it happened so, like the first year I was out, it was okay. The second year, I started to develop headaches, and I... didn't know where they were coming from and I went to the medical people in my area and they didn't have any answers and they gave me these drugs and I remember looking at the drugs in my bathroom at home and I said, I'm not gonna take drugs, I'm gonna find out why I have a headache. And that journey has taken me down this road. I went to a chiropractor and I walked in and he said, you have a cranial problem. And I said, cranial problem? What's that? I'd never heard of that. This is 50 years ago.

Juniper (02:01)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (02:05)

And that's when my whole journey started, where I get into cranial work, cranial sacral work, I get into fascial work. I started with adults, adults who had headaches, TMJ, jaw applying, know, jaw strain, they clenched their teeth. They had neck pain, they had back pain. That's how I got into it. And then I started seeing children and then I started, we became very, very good with children with asthma, children with earaches, children with headaches, ADHD and learning disorders and eye problems. And then a little bit later on in my career, we took a deep dive into newborns where I saw about five or 600 infants out in Lancaster, mostly Amish. And we found out we were very good for fussy babies, babies who had breastfeeding problems, they had trouble latching on, they had failure to thrive, they had colic, they had reflux, they had gas and indigestion.

They were constipated. They went every week, you know, seven days and the pediatrician said, if you're breastfeed, you know, you're fine with seven days. We said, no, you have to go every day. And there were many other conditions like strabismus and stridor and laryngeal malacia, pyloric stenosis, colic, torticollis, plegeocephaly. We can get into that later, but there were a lot of conditions that we're very, very good with, with this craniosacral fascial therapy.

So that's how I got into it. I thought I was gonna be a periodontist and I was for a while and then in 1997 I left and I went to massage school. mean, who leaves a job like being a surgeon to go to massage school, which I did. And I started my own teaching in 1999 and I taught for a number of years and now I have two trainers that are out teaching in America.

Juniper (03:34)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (04:04)

If you're interested, go to the website. can look at, you you click on training and you'll see where they're teaching. So we're out there and we're trying to make it happen for everybody and it's very, very exciting.

Juniper (04:16)

Well, and I have so much to say about your journey, but I want to touch on this very last part. This training that you are doing, it's not just for a certain type of expert, right? Like I could attend this training.

Barry Gillespie (04:31)

Right. Anybody can attend the training. And the reason why is it's a massage technique. There's no surgery, there's no technology, there's no medication, there's no drugs. It's a massage technique where you're holding an adult, you're holding a child, you're holding a baby, and you're feeling for fascial strain.

Juniper (04:34)

Okay.

Barry Gillespie (04:58)

in their bodies and you're helping them to release it. You're helping them to let it go. So that's the basis of our work is that people we see, your newborn, your infant, your child, yourself, you're probably tight. And what's tight is this fascial web. The fascia connects every cell of the body, 40 trillion cells of the body and

Juniper (05:06)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (05:28)

everything gets tight. When people are tight, they don't function that well. And then they have these little problems that come up. Not life threatening, you'll live. But can you live with a headache? Can you live with neck aches? I can go down through the whole list. Can you live with asthma? Yeah, you can live with it. But there's an answer to that. And it's because your fascia is tight. And then we connected the cranial sacral system into the fascial system. And so it's basically the craniosacral fascial system that gets really, really tight and it creates a lot of quality of life problems. You you walk around with a headache, your neck, your hip hurts, your back, know, something is bothering you. And a lot of times it can be cleared out a lot of its fascia. The fascia is tight and it's pulling in there and it's straining and straining your infant. Your infant you know, curled up for 40 weeks.

And all of a sudden they come out like this and you know like, I'm tight. That's what your newborn's saying. That's what your infant's saying, I'm tight. You know, I have reflux, I have colic, I can't breastfeed. There's some parts of my body that are tight that aren't really functioning that well. So we just help them loosen up. So yes, we see mothers who take the training. ⁓ They come in and they might say, well, I'm just a mom. Well, one of my teachers,

Juniper (06:30)

Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (06:53)

Kim Sherlock was just a mom. She took the training in 2008 and she became an assistant teacher with me and then she took over the training in 2015, you know, when I was turning 70 or so. And they've been out there for 10 years. She and Holly have been out there for 10 years. it's so gratifying when a mother takes the training and she loves working on the family and she works on the nieces and the whole neighborhood. She says, you know, I love this and I'm good at it. You I'm going to massage school. I'm going to open up a business. I'm going to have my own practice. This is what I'm going to do. And that's really rewarding when I hear that. So a lot of good things are happening out there. You know, people might say, well, I'm just a dad or just a mom. Well, you know your child better than anybody. And a lot of times, well, at least in Philadelphia, the pediatricians will just blow you off. Whatever the child has, well, they'll grow out of it. You know, they'll... They'll turn the corner, or know, it's always something. But your baby's in pain, your baby's throwing up, and you know, well, no, there's a problem there. The fascia is tight. So, but we can talk about this during the hour or two.

Juniper (07:54)

Absolutely. OK, well, this is very interesting to me. And I know everybody listening, because everybody here is listening to find different ways to heal their families. And so I know before we hit record, you said that you guys are doing a training here, where I live in Bozeman, Montana, next summer. And I'm definitely going to attend that. I mean, all of the tools that we can put in our medicine cabinets and our tool banks just empowers us, right? And so that feels very exciting to me.

Barry Gillespie (08:33)

Right. Well, I gave my first training out in the Rocky Mountain areas in Missoula in 2012. And I was out there. We had about 30, 35 people and they invited me to come out and I came out with a number of teachers. And we taught the infant work out there too. And the following summer in 2013, I gave an infant training out there. And so, you know, I'm familiar with Montana.

Barry Gillespie (09:01)

I love Missoula and I'm sure Bozeman's the same. So yeah, people are out there, they're very independent and they want the best for their families and it's different than around Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, big pharma is very powerful here, the hospitals are all big pharma and it's just all the offices are here and it's a different vibe on the east and the northeast coast, especially in Philadelphia.

But when you get out into the rural areas of the country, it's more, hey, what works? know, natural things, and let's get into it. So basically, that was half of the equation that I got into. The other half, around 1977, I started looking at my blood relatives. And most of them were getting cancer and heart disease in their 50s and 60s, and they were dying. And I said, you know, okay, what's wrong with this picture?

Juniper (09:40)

Okay.

Barry Gillespie (09:58)

And I found out that their lifestyle wasn't that great. So in 1977, I decided to become a vegetarian. I stopped eating meat. In 1978, I stopped eating sugar. I read this book called Sugar Blues. They said basically sugar was poison, so I stopped eating sugar. And I stopped eating highly processed foods, know, any type of, any factory-made food. I tried to avoid all of that.

And then I stopped drinking alcohol and then in 1980 I stopped dairy products, So basically I've been a vegan for 45 years and I was a vegan before there was a name called vegan. You were a vegetarian who didn't have fish or meat or chicken or turkey or eggs and blah, blah, blah. But now there's a term for it.

Juniper (10:37)

You are in good company. This is.

Barry Gillespie (10:53)

I was an original vegan, so that's what kind of works for me.

Juniper (10:58)

I was nine years old, I've always been very connected to animals. And I just made this connection of like, I don't want to put that in my body anymore. And I told my mom and she's like, okay. And so she started cooking two meals and I haven't had an animal product since I, for gosh, what's that? I just turned 38. So almost 30 years.

Barry Gillespie (11:23)

30 years and you've lived. can still survive.

Juniper (11:24)

Yeah. And I've lived. I'm thriving. Yes, I can survive. And I've had four very beautiful, healthy, full-term pregnancies. And I have four thriving kids who have been plant-based their entire upbringing. And it's.

Barry Gillespie (11:44)

Well, that's what I got into when I saw your website and it was all about the microbiome. said, wow, these people are all over it. So I started at one. When that started coming around, I started studying that. started and I basically found out that if you eat really well, if you eat organic whole food, mostly plants, the bugs inside of you will love it. The good bugs will love it. If you garbage, you're eating

Juniper (12:09)

The good bugs love it.

Barry Gillespie (12:14)

garbage, about 68, 5 % of the Americans eat garbage, you know, then the bad bugs will eat that and then you have a problem. And then when I found out that there about 40 trillion cells in the body, there were more bugs and then we have cells. So it's a big deal. This whole microbiome, we know very little about it, fraction of what we should

Juniper (12:33)

Mm-hmm.

Barry Gillespie (12:38)

the microbiome is really important, so I'm really happy you people are into it.

Juniper (12:39)

Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, I have dedicated my work to our microbiome because my son struggled with many symptoms despite living a very intentional lifestyle. the pediatricians told me he would outgrow it or here's a steroid cream for his rash. And I just wasn't willing to accept it, just like you. I'm not going to accept medication. I'm going to understand why this is happening. OK, so I have a lot of dental related questions for you.

Barry Gillespie (13:18)

okay, let me qualify myself. I'm a retired periodontist. I retired 28 years ago. So I can't tell you what to do. I can't tell a dentist what to do. Plus I was a surgeon. I wasn't an orthodontist. but I can give you, give people my opinion.

Juniper (13:20)

Okay. Okay. Yes, that's what I'm so excited to hear is your opinion. Somebody who, you know, your story is very relatable to everybody listening, is that you had a personal experience and you had to take it into your own hands and you completely changed your life in the process of healing yourself. And I think that's the story for most people listening. And so your opinion really

Barry Gillespie (13:37)

And that's all I can say.

Juniper (14:02)

really matters to all of us. so first off, I first learned of you. I heard you on another podcast.

Barry Gillespie (14:04)

Okay, that's nice.

Juniper (14:13)

been trying to do my own research because my daughter just turned 15. And the dentist is saying, It's time to get those wisdom teeth removed. And so the oral surgeon is calling me twice a week and I have not really been able to find, you know, my, there's gotta be a documentary that will just teach me about our wisdom teeth and the risks of removing them, the risks of not removing them because it's all very Western dental driven, any information out there. it's very fear-based and

Barry Gillespie (14:25)

Ha ha.

Juniper (14:47)

To me, my head says, well, this is very much, you I have three boys and it's very much like, well, you just get them circumcised. And for me, it was like, well, no, no, no, why? And so for my daughter's wisdom teeth and eventually my boy's wisdom teeth, I want to go into this feeling educated and making a decision with intention versus the system just saying that's just what you do. Because in what I learned,

Barry Gillespie (14:59)

Fuck.

Juniper (15:16)

I sure as heck didn't circumcise my boys. And I have a feeling that we might follow the same path with wisdom teeth, but I just want to have the wisdom teeth conversation.

Barry Gillespie (15:28)

Okay, yeah, I can give you my opinion. basically I can't speak for Montana or anywhere else in the country, but I can speak for Philadelphia. It's kind of like you've reached the age where you need your wisdom teeth out. You know, it's just like a grant, you know, like you, okay, you start driving when you're 16, you get your license, and then you go to college when you're 18, and then there comes a point where it just becomes

Juniper (15:48)

Right.

Barry Gillespie (15:53)

part of the norm that you've reached the age where you get your wisdom teeth out. And they'll make the argument that there's a tooth bud there and it's easy to do it and you're young and all that. And that's okay, you if you wanna do that. My question is, will your jaw be large enough, wide enough to... have those wisdom teeth erupt and they're still functional? That's the big question. If you have a good size jaw and there's gonna be room for those wisdom teeth, ⁓ why would you have them out? So that would be my big thing. I kept my wisdom teeth until I was in my 50s. They'll give you the argument, well, they're more difficult to get out when you get older and...

Juniper (16:37)

rate. And do you feel like?

Barry Gillespie (16:50)

and all that. I had my wisdom teeth ⁓ in my 50s and I had decay on a few so I had them out. I still have one wisdom tooth. ⁓ I'm 78, I still have a wisdom tooth in there. So yeah, it's something that you're gonna have to decide what to do. ⁓ You wanna think this through, you wanna do your research. You don't wanna go along with the hurt. The herd will say, okay, said, doctor said, you know, this is what everybody's doing. So I'd say, you everybody does circumcision, everybody does this and that, you know, so, but you have to think of what's happening there. You know, is your jaw wide enough? Is it large enough where those wisdom teeth can actually be functional? Or do you have a small jaw on big teeth and maybe you do need to have to get them out. It's just not a slam dunk when you go to the dentist.

Juniper (17:47)

Right. And okay. And do you have knowledge? So is there a certain way that wisdom teeth naturally kind of grow in? So when you're seeing them on the X-ray and they're saying, okay, we, we, it's time to get these out from the bit of research that I've done, it's almost like they they're kind of at a natural angle forward and then they come up.

Barry Gillespie (17:48)

That's my opinion. They can be, I'm not too familiar with that, but they can be angulated or they can be horizontal or they could be vertical. So your child might be like 22 and they're vertical and it's being trapped in there and you might say, okay, that might be an indication to have that tooth out. So there are whole scenarios to this. Again, I'm not an oral surgeon so I can't speak as an oral surgeon, but I'm just giving you general.

Juniper (18:18)

Okay.

Barry Gillespie (18:40)

Knowledge that you need to do your research You need to look at each tooth, know canopy functional someday

Juniper (18:50)

Well, and I guess my, think like at this point in my research and even in this conversation is it's, I think it's kind of a, you just keep observing and make decisions as needed. And maybe it's not across the board, just preventatively get them all out.

Barry Gillespie (19:10)

That's right. Now you have to remember each tooth is related to an organ. It's related to an energy flow, a meridian. So I mean, these things, when you talk to your dentist about that, they probably go right over their head, but it's, know, God put it there and let's, you know, maybe we should keep it. So I kept mine and sometimes even if they're impacted, you may decide to keep them. So it's an individual situation, you know, there's no real right answer, there's no real wrong answer. You know, I think we have this freedom in America. I hope we still have this freedom where we can decide what goes on in our mouth. So you're the one who's paying and you're the one who's going to the dentist, so you should have the final say. So that's my opinion.

Juniper (20:00)

Okay. And then before we move on to something else, your practice are you having to do a lot of, cranial sacral healing from maybe traumatic injuries from wisdom teeth removal. do you see that in your practice?

Barry Gillespie (20:16)

I did when I was a practicing periodontist. This goes back into the late 70s, 80s, and early 90s before I left. left in 1997. But every year somebody would come in, usually like 18, 19, 20 years old. ⁓ They had their wisdom teeth out. Dentists said, well, we need your wisdom teeth out. They went into the hospital and they were knocked out. when they had their wisdom teeth out. And when that happens, the dentist can open, you know, you're not conscious, they'll open your mouth, they'll usually put a rubber thing back there to keep your jaw wide open. And then they'll start pulling and extracting these four teeth. And that may be fine and good, but for this particular individual that, you know, is coming to me, there was too much force used, there was too much trauma and getting usually one tooth out, it tore the TMJ ligaments and the patient came in with in retractable pain 24-7. The pain never stopped. And I worked on these children, know, they're young adults. I worked on them, couldn't help them. They eventually sued and their lawyers would have me in as the expert witness for the plaintiff for them. And you know, it

Juniper (21:28)

you

Barry Gillespie (21:45)

It's got to be where virtually every case was lost. The dentist always prevailed. So it was a difficult type of situation. So that's what's possible. any type of dental procedure, there can be a problem with it. So it's not like a slam dunk and, this is a guarantee and everything's going to be fine. So you have to be careful if you are having your wisdom teeth out. If I were having it done, I would go to the dentist, I would go to an oral surgeon, I wouldn't go to a general dentist. I'd go to an oral surgeon, I'd have her or him numb half of my face, and I would open wide, not too wide, and they would extract the wisdom teeth here, and I'd be totally conscious, where nobody would be stretching my jaw wide open. ⁓ I would have... those teeth out, wait a month or so, okay, let's do these teeth now. Numb these, do these teeth. So I wouldn't go in to a dentist and have all four out at once. You can do that. But I'd rather let, I want them to chew on one side, I want to let another side heal.

Juniper (23:00)

Well, kind of along with this is the next question is would you get a root canal? Why or why not?

Barry Gillespie (23:07)

Root canal. Good question. ⁓

Juniper (23:14)

On my Instagram, and I have a community, I invited the members and my followers to submit their questions. And there was over 100 people that asked about root canals. ⁓

Barry Gillespie (23:27)

Root canals, yeah, okay, let me take you back to dental school. I had to do an internship in endodontics, which is root canals. There wasn't one word in dental school about anything negative about root canals. Zero, nothing. I had a dental education for six years. There was nothing wrong with root canals. Root canals are the way to go. That's the way we were taught. So you get out there in the natural world and then you find out, you know. hey, mercury's not so great, so I got all my mercury fillings out. Fluoride's not so great, I didn't, none of my kids had fluoride, and I don't have any toothpaste fluoride, you so I didn't find, so then after a while you start, hey, what's the A to A up to here? And then you start seeing things about root canals, which carry a lot of bacteria, pathological bacteria, they can go through the whole body, get to your heart, create a lot of problems, and there's cancer, you know, and he'd say, what's real here? so I looked at that and I looked at that seriously. I say that, yeah, that could be a possibility. I always have an open mind to things. Unlike most dentists and medical people, they're very close-minded. I have an open mind, but I don't let my brains fall out. I try to be real about it. And so I had both sides to it and I didn't do too much. until I was 70 and then one of my lower molars got infected and I needed a root canal. here I am 70 years old, I need a root canal, what do I do? I have two options. We'll have a number of options. I can take the tooth out, have the tooth out and then put an implant in, which I'm not doing. I would never do an implant for myself. That's another story. I would have to put a bridge in there. I wouldn't put a bridge in there. I just let it heal. But that was one option. The other option would be to have the root canal done, but go to the endodontist. And I went to the best endodontist in Philadelphia. I found a guy who taught at school and doing it for 30 or 40 years. He was the best. I went to him, paid more money, blah, blah, blah. He did a really, really good job. He showed me the x-rays.

Juniper (25:40)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (25:48)

It was done really, really well. He cleaned it out really, really well. So I decided to go down that road. But the key was how it's going to last in the long term. You know, what's it going to be like in the long term? So when I go for my cleanings every year, I have the hygienist take an x-ray of that one tooth. And I want to look at the bone around the tooth.

I'm going to look at the bone around the apex of that tooth to make sure that it's okay. It's not deteriorating. And then there's no change. And then that's what I would do. Again, this is just my opinion. That's what I'd recommend. That you can do root canal, but it has to be done really well. And you need to monitor it. If you go to the dentist every few years getting x-rays, you want to have that checked.

If we took an x-ray and it did blow up, then I'd have to make a decision, do I have it out or, you know, what do I do then? Plus, my health has been really good for the last eight years since I've had the root canal. So it's not like I a heart problem afterwards or, you know, I had cancer, you know, something like that. So I'm assuming that everything is okay. So that's my stance on root canals. Again, my opinion. So.

Juniper (26:53)

Great. Right. Thank you. Okay, so now I have a question about braces and I feel like in the inner, oh yes, good. Okay, well let's get into the braces.

Barry Gillespie (27:20)

Good. I was hoping you'd get to orthodontics. We could do a whole podcast on orthodontics. Okay, before you get into that, there are three phases. There's palatal expansion, there's braces, and then there's a retainer at the end. after you're done, you know, we'll get into that. Palette expansion is...

Juniper (27:39)

Okay. I am so lucky enough that I didn't have to have braces. And so this is just a whole new world and conversation for me. And you know, my kids are 15, 11, eight and six. And for all of them, the conversation is, is very heavy at the dentist and just like the wisdom teeth. like, I don't, feel like I need to be more educated before I make any decisions.

Barry Gillespie (28:08)

Yeah, I you can do what you want. mean, there's remember that the orthodontist, at least in Philadelphia, you're looking at 10 grand, maybe more 15 grand. I mean, there's a lot of money in orthodontics and then it's it can be fairly optional. One of my close, really close friends was an orthodontist. He told me that 85 percent of his practice was there just because of looks, how you smile, know, how the teeth lined up. And for the For the girls, it was all about the wedding pictures, know, the wedding, know, the smiling and the bite and everything. it's, rarely, where you see a bad bite where someone needs to get orthodontics to have a bad bite corrected because they're getting headaches, know, jaw problems. And, you know, I see that once in a while, but ⁓ most of its aesthetics and that's where America is. That's where the culture is.

So it's, that's, but let me get into the, your first probably adventure with the orthodontist is your general dentist. Somebody will say that there's a high palate, the jaws are narrow, you need to have your face widened, you need your jaw widened, you need palatal expansion. So you go to the orthodontist and they'll make this contraption that sits up on your upper jaw and may have a screw and it slowly widens your face.

And that's the conventional standard of care for widening the face, something like that. ⁓ In my world, in craniosacral fascia world, it can strongly restrict the normal brain motion. The brain needs to slowly expand and contract. The brain needs to breathe and the fascia needs to be loose. What this palatal expansion can do is really restrict the brain motion.

You might have a child who have a very long brain cycle, then they go happy and they're fine and they have a palatal expander put on and they start to get headaches and they start to get this and that and they get asthma and they're breathing problems. These problems start up because the craniosacral fascial system has been restricted by the orthodontist. So that's phase one on the palate. After that, it's usually, okay, we gotta put braces on.

Juniper (30:25)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (30:32)

when they put the vans on the front teeth and they put an O-wire across here and they tighten everything down, it'll restrict the motion of the maxillary bones, which will restrict the motion of the cranial bones, which will make your child's heads tight and all of a sudden they have behavioral problems, have ADHD, they have headaches, they have whatever they have. And the orthodontist said, well, that's not me.

That's what they're doing. They're restricting this craniosacral fascial system. And the third thing is, okay, get all your braces off, it's two years, and now what they'll do is make an appliance that snaps up in the upper jaw. That will restrict the motion of the maxillary bones. That will create a tight hip. So that's my take on it. Unfortunately, it's not the standard of care. You know, if it's ⁓ in America, it's not. It's even in Pennsylvania. If, you know, a dentist could take me before the state board and say, you know, you're this whole cranial motion, this fascia thing has not, it's never been scientifically proven. And we're practicing the standard of care and, you know, you're you're out. So that's that's the way it is in Pennsylvania. And it may be like that in your state, too. But I think down the road the craniosyclofacial system, the brain motion is incredibly important. How well your child's brain is breathing, your newborn, your child, it has a great effect. And when you go to my website, Gillespie Approach, you're gonna see a thousand stories on brain motion and fascia, and mostly babies and children. So it's really important problem. Let me tell you my first experience with an orthodontist. So I'm a hyanist, it's 1978.

And I worked on a boy who had headaches. And I did really well with him, and his headaches went away. did cranial work. And then his mother was really pleased. So he, I didn't hear from him again, and about eight months later, the mom calls me up, you know, my son has headaches now. I said, what happened? Did you have a fall or something, any trauma? I mean, she said no. I said, well, bring him in. Let's just take a look at him. What happened is he went to the orthodontist. He had all his teeth banded up here. They had an arch wire here. You know how when you have braces on, they really tighten everything down to move the teeth. So when you're moving teeth, you're restricting the motion of the maxillary bones. Those bones get tight. The sinus bones get tight and the large cranial bones get tight. Your sacrum gets tight. The whole cranial sacrofacial system gets tight. And it's a problem and he had a headache because of the braces. So here I am, a dentist and INS, and I have to go to the orthodontist and say, basically said, you're the problem, you created the headaches. so, because the parents paid thousands of dollars and now their kid has a headache. And so that was my first exposure to orthodontics. And I was in

Juniper (33:46)

Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (33:52)

I was on Cape Cod for eight years, and if you multiply that by a number of stories, my practice depended on dental referrals, people sending me patients and professional dentist physicians, and that went away, and so I had to leave. So I left Cape Cod and I came to Pennsylvania. So that was a rude awakening to find out what was, how things were. This is just the way it is. ⁓

Juniper (34:12)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (34:22)

in your state, I don't know wherever you're coming from, know, pallet expanders, braces, and retainers are all probably the standard of care. And somebody like me come along, you I'll come along and say, hey, you know, that's a problem because it restricts brain motion. The State Board of Dentistry in Wyoming or Nebraska or wherever are gonna say, well, it's unscientific, unproven, you know, you're out. So you can't make a case for that.

Juniper (34:50)

Wow, isn't it, it's really sad. It's really sad because what you are doing, it's not as profitable as this three stage process of expanding the face, right?

Barry Gillespie (34:53)

It is Famicom. Yeah. Yeah, and then we got into the newborn work. Just take that one step further. We saw our 600 babies. One day a baby came in and the palate was literally a V-shaped. It was very narrow, very narrow face. The baby was a few weeks old. Okay, very narrow faced. So I couldn't put my index finger all the way up. I couldn't seat it all the way up in the palate and I couldn't wiggle it this way. It just got stuck up there.

Juniper (35:26)

Wow.

Barry Gillespie (35:37)

So I was with two of my colleagues, two of my students, and we were out there and we worked on this baby for about 10 minutes. I said, well, let me check and see what happened to the roof of the mouth. So all of sudden I go up there and my finger went all the way up to the roof of the mouth and I could wiggle it back and forth like I had a normal palate. The bones, when you're born, the bones aren't really bones. They're cartilage, they're intermembranous tissue. It's very soft, very moldable, And you can do a lot in the first few weeks of life to have great facial structure. Not many people know that, but I think that's the root of lot of orthodontics where there's a lot of trauma at birth. A lot of bones are out of alignment. The teeth get alignment, and they come in crooked, and all of a sudden you're 12 years old, and you need orthodontics for $13,000. So that's a... It should have been addressed at birth. That's my opinion, and that's why I'm very hot on the work done at birth. It should be done on day one. It should be done on the hospitals with your midwife, with your doula, at your birthing center. It should be done on day one, all of the work we do for infants and children. That's the most powerful work, and you go to my website, you're gonna see that. It all should be done at birth.

Juniper (36:37)

Wow. So this framing. I mean, you're kind of blowing my mind right now because I mean, there's so many times where you're just like, oh my gosh, I wish I could have known this 15 years ago, right? I wish I could have known this, but if I were becoming a mom right now, is this something that I could learn at your training?

Barry Gillespie (37:20)

Yeah, again, we teach all moms. teach, you know, you have to be, you don't have to know any medical knowledge. You don't have to know the cranial nerves or the bones or muscles. It's all about feeling. It's all about feeling brain motion. It's all about feeling fascial strain. It's all about feeling fascia releasing. ⁓ It's nice to know, you know, what's here. yeah, the thyroid's here and you know, the hyoid bone's here. It's nice to know that, but it's not necessary. I mean, it's all about feeling and it's all about allowing the body, you're facilitating the healing, you're allowing the body to heal itself. The body will show you the trauma that it wants to release and you're gonna help it release it out of the body. And if you do it over a series of visits, you're gonna release a lot of the strain from that infant and that child and everything will start to switch and open up and become more normal.

So what we believe in is to get to the root of the problem, the root cause of the problem, rather than treat the symptoms and just band-aid the problem. I mean, that's what we do. Currently, the medical profession, pediatricians, they know drug surgery and technology. They're gonna band-aid a problem forever. And then they'll pass it on and you may have asthma in your whole life. It could have been corrected at birth possibly or even when you were younger. You know, as a child, you could have headaches your whole life from birth trauma. You know, it should have been corrected at birth. You can have a lot of problems in those 40 weeks. You know, there's a lot of trauma. What happened during delivery? Did you have forceps? Did you have vacuum suction? Did you get stuck? Did you have shoulder dystocia? What happened during labor?

Juniper (38:54)

Mm-hmm.

Barry Gillespie (39:12)

you know, was it a nice easy labor, eight, nine hours, or was it fast, or was it 30 hours, or record was about 92 hours of labor, you how much pressure did you have during that labor? And in fetal life, we found out fetal life is not great. I mean, there could be a bicornate uterus, there could be ⁓ fibroids, there could be a uterus where there's a lot of fascial strain in it, it really doesn't want to expand, so you're. you're living in this organ that just doesn't want to expand and you're being compressed like this. You have a twin there, you it made multiple bursts. There are a lot of things that can happen. You may get twisted in a certain position like this and then, you you wonder why your neck is bothering over here because you were twisted and fetal, you know, for a number of months. Nobody saw it, nobody corrected it and you go through your whole life because you're...

Juniper (39:44)

Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (40:07)

Now you have neck strain over here. This fascia just grew into this position. So there's so many things that can happen during those 40 weeks. It's really, really important. The medical profession, at least in Philadelphia, they'll say that as long as the apgar scars are good, as long as you're breathing, and as long as the heart rate's good, and you look good, and you seem fine, you're good to go. In my world, you're not. Your fascia is tight. Your cranial bones are probably out of position.

Juniper (40:30)

Yeah, you're good.

Barry Gillespie (40:36)

you're probably a lot of strain in there and you're not happy. When a newborn or baby's not happy, they're gonna cry. And that's what they do. That's what they tell you. There's something wrong. Babies cry when they're wet or when they're hungry. But when there's a lot of crying, crying at night, they're just crying, they have colic, they're in pain. So you go to the pediatrician, well, they'll grow out of it. And I'm not really, no. Do they grow into IBS? Do they grow into Crohn's disease?

Juniper (41:05)

Exactly.

Barry Gillespie (41:06)

What is this, what are we growing out of? You you still have that strain.

Juniper (41:09)

It's actually what are we growing into, yeah. Exactly.

Barry Gillespie (41:12)

Yeah, you grow out of something, you grow into it. You go into a backache, you go into something like that. And that's just what I

Juniper (41:22)

So in an ideal world, we have this knowledge and we can support our infants. But if our listeners are like me and we're many years into motherhood, is there work that we can do at this age to support their mouth development? Okay.

Barry Gillespie (41:40)

Oh, sure. Yeah. No matter what age, it's doable. know, fairly, it just takes more visits. It's just more. More visits. I'm just saying it's a lot easier if we could do it all on day one. You know, you're in the, 99 % of Americans are born in the hospital. You know, in Philadelphia, you have two days for vaginal birth, four for a C-section. So during that first day, you know, somebody could,

Juniper (41:53)

Definitely. Okay. Great.

Barry Gillespie (42:10)

work on your baby every hour for 24 hours. So the whole idea is to get your baby strain free. So on day two when you leave, your baby can breathe well, they can breastfeed well, they can digest well, they can poop well, and they can nap well. You're gonna take home a happy baby.

Juniper (42:32)

all of us moms are just wishing that there was you in our birthing circle, right? ⁓

Barry Gillespie (42:40)

Yeah, the problem is I'm 78 and I don't know how long I've

Juniper (42:45)

I know! Okay, I have a couple.

Barry Gillespie (42:48)

The good news is we're training people. Kim and Holly are out there and we're training and look at our schedule and hopefully we'll be near you. If we're not near you, you shoot an email to Kim or Holly and say, I'm in their state, I'm in this city, I can get enough people, we can have a training. Come to wherever, come to where we live, we will support you, we'll have a training and they will come there.

Juniper (43:08)

Okay. Well, that's amazing. So I'm going to, I'll have your website and all of your information linked in the show notes. So anybody listening can find you really easily. But I think my takeaway so far is that's exactly what I'm going to do for my children's wisdom teeth and making decisions with braces. I'm going to do what I can. And I'm not going to listen to this pressured timeline that the younger, the better you have to hurry and get it done with. Because, you know, knowing that The majority of cases for braces is more aesthetic. It's never too late to make that decision either, but trying to repair the body from, you know, the tightness or from damage or trauma is a lot harder than making these decisions with a lot of intention upfront.

Barry Gillespie (44:02)

Right. If you do decide to go to an orthodontist, you want to go to someone who is interested in brain motion, interested in fascia, interested in our world. And they often have to be interested in airway. There's airway problems where everything is tight in the throat and the nasopharynx. And you're not getting enough air into your system, into your respiratory system, into your sinuses. So there's a whole lot of airway.

Juniper (44:18)

How do you find these words? How do you find this orthodontist?

Barry Gillespie (44:30)

problems going on in orthodontics. you really want, you really need to do research, you know, and those dentists can be hard to find, to be honest, because everybody's in the standard of care. You everybody's on the island and, you know, there are a hundred dentists on the island and you decide to, hey, there's a problem with airway and what about this brain motion, you know, and before you know it, you're gonna be off the island.

Juniper (44:40)

Well, yeah, that's my question is how do we find? Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (44:59)

You know, you're not part of the game anymore. So that's how it ends up, very unfortunately. But you need to find a dentist who you can work with. And if you're a parent, you're going to be working on your children before you even go into orthodontics. You're going to have your children really brain free, everything really good. And then you just have to do your research, and you have to decide what you want to do.

Juniper (44:59)

Yep. Yep. Yahoo!

Barry Gillespie (45:27)

When parents come to me, ⁓ I'm terrible at sales. I don't tell people what to do. If you want therapy, we'll do it. If you don't, that's fine, either way. So it's what people want to do. I think this is America, and we all have choice. We have freedom of choice. we don't like to be pressured. We don't like to be fear-based. If you don't do this now, these are the five things that are going to happen down the road.

Juniper (45:53)

Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (45:53)

Well, nobody really knows the future and, you know, we don't know. So let's let me do my research and maybe we'll go day to day and then we'll decide what we want to do. So again, this is my opinion.

Juniper (46:02)

Right. Well, I think, well, I share that opinion. This is true for every part of our health, right? we have to really take the time to educate ourselves so that we can make decisions in alignment for our own families. Now, Barry, before we wrap up, I have a couple of just quick questions. I know that you talked about fluoride briefly and how you don't use fluoride but I had a lot of people wanting to hear your opinion on fluoride.

Barry Gillespie (46:31)

Yeah, fluorides are poison. I think it's basically, it came from the aluminum industry. And the aluminum industry had this fluoride as some type of residue. And we're just sitting around and they said, okay, let's make some money. And this goes before 1939, before the FDA did a lot of research and studies. And they found out that if they add a little into the water, it prevents decay. That's one opinion. I don't see any research. I don't see any long-term research on that. You know, with standardized control groups, know, randomized control, double blind. You know, I don't think the research has ever been done on that, but it's again like orthodontics and wisdom to you, that's part of the culture. That's what everybody does. That's what we do. Drink water that's fluoridated. You know, I don't drink water that's fluoridated. I don't even brush my teeth with toothpaste. You know, I think it's a lot of Madison Avenue. I haven't used toothpaste in 40 years. You know, it's in... school we learned is the actual mechanical action of the bristles of the brush that clean the teeth. It's the floss that cleans the sides of the teeth and if you want your mouth to smell good and you have chemicals, you you can use some toothpaste. So I mean that's just, you have to look at the culture and see what's happened. So that's my opinion on fluoride and also mercury. In 1980 I was reading through some dental research and I was looking at countries in Europe

There were a number of countries that banned mercury, know, amalgam fillings, which are 50 % mercury. And I was reading on, I said, why is this? And they said, well, you know, what happens when you have a mercury filling that the mercury vaporizes 24-7? So either you swallow it, you know, or you breathe it in. And then I said, okay, where does it go after that? And nobody knows.

Juniper (48:04)

Hmm.

Barry Gillespie (48:31)

So mercury is the most toxic neurotoxin in the world. And we have it in our mouths. And it's interesting when the dentists put it in, everything was fine. But then you go have it taken out and everybody shows up with a hazmat and gear and big suction. it's, really? Now they're going to be exposed to all the mercury vapor.

Juniper (48:51)

It's a diesel. The very last question that I have is, ⁓ there might be two. You brought up how you don't use toothpaste. That was a question that was asked a lot is what toothpaste do you recommend? And are you a proponent of hydroxyapatite?

Barry Gillespie (49:16)

What toothpaste to use hydroxyapatite you know when I was a periodontist the They used to be a mixture of People you used to make your own toothpaste of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide and you used to mix it up until like a paste and that was Like a brush you'd brush it into your gums you brush your teeth with that they did the research on that and They found out in the late 70s, early 80s that it really stopped periodontal disease. It really affected periodontal disease where people didn't need surgery anymore. So the periodontists at that time, you know, just went, you know, that became a problem. So that's one way to go. There were other companies like Tom's, ⁓ Tom's in Maine, There probably some toothpaste out there with no fluoride and no chemicals. You know, I'm sure there's some and you may want to use that. That's fine. You if you want your mouth to taste good. I just didn't want anything else in my mouth. So I just I just brush my teeth with dry brush, dry brushes, and I use floss and I've been doing that for decades. So that just that's what I do. But, you know, again, this whole podcast has been my opinion.

Juniper (50:35)

Wow. Yes, well Barry, we really appreciate your opinion.

Barry Gillespie (50:44)

Yeah, it's just my opinion. And you can take what resonates and what doesn't resonate, can reject, and that's fine.

Juniper (50:56)

The last question that came up a lot is about mouth breathing. And I'm wondering if you have anything to say about.

Barry Gillespie (51:04)

Mouth breathing, yeah. It starts at birth. You see the newborns that come in and you know they're then when they breathe they're like

Juniper (51:06)

Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (51:15)

There it is. Or I'll say, is your baby a mouth breather? And they'll say, yes. Yeah, we go in at night and we try to do this, but they end up like through their mouth. So then they have to ask the questions, are the sinuses clogged up? Or is there fascial strain coming from the chest, throat, neck, pulling into all of this tissue that's creating the mouth breathing?

Juniper (51:28)

Mm.

Barry Gillespie (51:42)

And then you get into the tongue tie problems. And then you get into the tongue and the lip tie. And you get into the myofunctional work done. dentistry really expands out into specialties now. when you get into that world, you really need to look at the fascia, look at the connective tissue that's pulling on all these structures. We have strain that's pulling into the upper body, pulling into the sinuses. It'll pull into the eye. It'll create strabismus.

Juniper (51:42)

Mmm.

Barry Gillespie (52:12)

It'll create lazy eye, it'll create eye problems, and then fascia starts pulling in there, it can create jaw problems. You know, there's a lot going on. So that's what I see. again, if you're interested, go to Gillespieapproach.com. If you're interested in training, click on training, and go right to my Kim and Holly's website. You know, if you're interested in the articles, you can read the articles. We have a newsletter, you can subscribe to that for free. You you just get my opinion, write an article, two articles every week. I've written over a thousand articles, whatever your infant has, and I'll have some articles on it and see if it's helpful or not. So I'm very excited about the work and I'm very excited that people like you are interested in having people like me talk about the other world that you never hear on media.

Juniper (53:03)

Well, I'm really grateful. Yes. I'm so grateful to have this conversation because we see so much marketing even like for mouth breathing, you know, just get mouth tape, you know, there's, there's products by this and by this and by this. And it's, it's actually that we need to do the deeper work of, of releasing and healing the body. Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (53:23)

You need to get to the root cause of the problem. And what we found with most people, the root cause of the problem was birth trauma. What happened during fetal life? What happened during labor? What happened during delivery? When you popped out, the seeds of whatever you have are probably sown then. It should have been looked at then. It should have been mitigated then. It should have been corrected then. You should have gone home with a happy baby, a baby that's healthy, not a baby who can't nurse well and they're pooping every eight days and they're crying all the time and they're up at night and you can't sleep. That's not my world. I don't see that world. I want a happy baby world where this work is done in every birthing center and every hospital, every midwife in America, where everybody has a happy baby. And I want those kids, happy babies to grow up to be happy children. You know, they're eating. Whole food, organic, mostly plant-based, whatever you feel is necessary, eating really healthy food, lot of fresh air, doing all the sensible things that we already know, so they're happy kids. So that's the way I see it. That's my goal.

Juniper (54:38)

Wow, Barry, in my dream world, you and I can go on this mission together because that's my, also mine, is every birthing center, every hospital, there needs to be this awareness of how important the microbiome is throughout pregnancy and birth. And if we join your work and my work on the microbiome, I mean, the health of our whole world is so different because it all starts in pregnancy and birth.

Barry Gillespie (55:06)

I know it's crazy, like 32 % of the babies are born by C-section. What happened to the microbiome?

Juniper (55:12)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (55:16)

The whole idea of going through, part of going through the vaginal process is you're getting the mom's microbiome, yeah, and 32%, third of the babies aren't getting the microbiome. What do they do?

Juniper (55:26)

And then you just miss it. Yeah. Well, and then, well, yeah. So their first microbial exposure is environmental. And I hope this could just be a whole nother conversation then even if it, you know, even if your baby, like I was, you know, feel so grateful, I did have a natural child birth at a birthing center and it, it wasn't C-section and still my child really struggled with his microbiome health from the very beginning. And there's just a lack of education for mothers that of how important our microbiome is and what we pass on to our children during birth, even if it is vaginal. And so, you have my mind spinning.

Barry Gillespie (56:02)

Yeah. birthing seems to be like a sacred event, something that's like, wow, this is very special. And some hospitals, some medical people turn it into, it's like you have a disease and we have to treat the disease and we're going to take care of you. And so I think there's a disconnect there, at least that's what I see around in Philadelphia, you hear those stories. So it's just something that needs

Juniper (56:16)

Yeah.

Barry Gillespie (56:37)

that needs to flip into, that's my position.

Juniper (56:41)

Well, thank you for your time, Barry. It's been so nice getting to know you.

Barry Gillespie (56:44)

You're welcome.

Juniper (56:47)

I can’t wait to share your message with the world.

Barry Gillespie (56:52)

I hope the world takes it well. It's just my opinion and that's it. I'm just, this is what I've learned.

Transformation of the week:

This week’s transformation comes from a mama who shared, “We’re not quite a week into the detox. I can’t believe the transformation already. He’s sleeping better. His skin is so much clearer - no more red, inflamed skin.”

What makes this message so powerful is that this mom was scared and skeptical before starting. Like so many parents, she had tried everything and wasn’t sure if this would be any different. But now, just one week in, her child’s body is already showing what’s possible when you deeply commit to and trust the healing process.

Everyone’s timeline is unique… some see changes quickly, while for others, it takes more time. But this transformation is such a beautiful reminder that once you start rebalancing and the body feels safe again, healing begins. The gut calms, inflammation settles, and you can literally see the body coming back into balance.

Question of the week:

This week’s question is such an important one, and it’s something I know so many of you wonder about. A mama asked, “Do you believe allergies improve too when the gut is balanced and the skin improves?”

Yes. Absolutely yes.

Allergies and skin symptoms are not separate issues. They’re two different expressions of the very same root imbalance. Around 80 percent of the immune system lives in the gut, so when the gut becomes inflamed or overrun with bad bacteria, yeast, mold, fungus, or parasites, the immune system becomes hypersensitive. It starts reacting to foods, to environmental triggers, even to the body’s own tissues. That’s where we see things like eczema, hives, rashes, food allergies, sensitivities, and asthma.

They’re the immune system communicating that it is overwhelmed and needs help.

So when you rebalance the gut, you’re not just healing the skin. You’re calming inflammation at the root. The gut lining strengthens. The immune system stops overreacting. And suddenly the body doesn’t perceive everything as a threat anymore. This is why families see food allergies lessen or in most cases completely disappear, seasonal allergies fade, sensitivities calm, and skin symptoms clear all at the same time.

I saw this exact transformation in my own son. When I healed his eczema through rebalancing, his nine food allergies completely disappeared. And he is not an exception. This is something I see over and over again in families who commit to restoring balance instead of just eliminating triggering foods and chasing symptoms.

Because the truth is, when the gut heals, the immune system heals. And when the immune system heals, allergies go away. This is the power of healing from the root.