Dr. Martha Silva didn’t set out to build an airway practice. She set out to help her own daughter, who was struggling to focus in school, waking up tired every day, and showing signs that something wasn’t right, even though no one around her could say what it was. When she couldn’t find a provider willing to treat what she saw, she designed a custom expander herself, found a lab to build it, and started treating her daughter on her own. Within months, she had her answer: a child who looked rested, focused, and like herself again.
That single transformation is why Dr. Silva now leads a practice built entirely around one belief: dentistry should transform lives, not just treat teeth. At The Holistic Airway Dentist, we look at how jaw development affects your entire body, from sleep quality to energy levels to overall wellness, because Dr. Silva has lived the difference it makes. She has since treated all four of her own children with airway-focused techniques, and she brings that same firsthand understanding to every family who sits across from her.
Committed to Whole-Body Wellness Through Airway-Focused Dentistry
Dr. Silva's path into airway dentistry began under Dr. Kevin Boyd, a Chicago pediatric dentist and early jaw development pioneer, who taught her to recognize red flags most general dentists never learn to see. She went on to achieve Fellowship status with the Academy of General Dentistry, a distinction held by fewer than 2% of dentists nationwide, and she ranks among the top Invisalign providers in her region for her advanced, airway-focused expansion techniques.
As a mother of four who has treated all of her own children using the same techniques she recommends to patients, Dr. Silva doesn't just understand airway-focused care in theory. She has lived it inside her own family, watched her own kids change because of it, and built her entire approach around not wanting another parent to spend years searching for answers the way she once did.
Dr. Silva examines how jaw development affects your entire body, not just your teeth. Her approach considers sleep quality, breathing patterns, cognitive function, athletic performance, and overall wellness, and she coordinates with other specialists, including myofunctional therapists and pediatric sleep doctors, to address root causes rather than isolated symptoms.
Dr. Silva didn’t arrive at airway dentistry by studying a textbook. She arrived at it by spending nearly a decade in general practice, noticing patterns in kids that no one had taught her to name, until a mentor, Dr. Kevin Boyd, showed her what she was actually looking at. Even then, she had nowhere to send the children she identified. It took years, and a chance connection through a book on breathing, before she finally had the training to treat what she’d been recognizing all along. That gap between seeing a problem and being able to fix it is part of why she’s so direct with families today about not waiting.
She asks the question conventional dentistry usually skips: why did this happen in the first place? An orthodontist can straighten crooked teeth without ever asking why the jaw didn’t grow large enough to fit them. A pediatrician can note that a child snores without connecting it to how their airway developed. Dr. Silva starts from the root cause, examining how jaw structure shapes breathing, sleep, and long-term health, because treating the symptom alone only gets a family so far.
Her techniques are additive, never subtractive. When a jaw doesn’t have enough room, most providers create space by removing something, whether that’s extracting teeth or shaving down enamel. Dr. Silva does the opposite: she expands the jaw so everything that’s supposed to be there has the room to fit naturally. It’s the difference between a mouth full of teeth “double parked” on top of each other and one where growth had the space to happen the way it should have from the start. For the children she treats early, that approach can mean avoiding years of complex orthodontic work later, and in some cases, keeping wisdom teeth that would otherwise need to come out entirely.
Dr. Silva has seen firsthand how airway health shapes everything from childhood development to adult quality of life. When jaws develop properly, breathing happens efficiently through the nose, which influences sleep quality, oxygen delivery, growth hormone production, cognitive function, and even cardiovascular health. She’s watched restricted airways force mouth breathing in her own patients, cascading into problems most families never think to connect.
Children with underdeveloped airways often struggle with issues their parents don’t realize are related: frequent ear infections, enlarged tonsils, speech difficulties, bed-wetting, behavioral concerns, and difficulty focusing in school. Dr. Silva has seen these patterns repeat across years of treating kids, and she knows how much earlier intervention can change.
Adults with restricted airways experience chronic fatigue, poor sleep quality despite sleeping enough hours, decreased athletic performance, and accelerated aging. Many have already completed orthodontics but still struggle with breathing because their previous treatment compressed rather than expanded their jaw. Dr. Silva offers a different path, one she’s tested on herself and her own family first, so that adults have options beyond jaw surgery or a CPAP machine.
