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Award-winning dentist Dr Lynette Wallace looks beyond teeth to investigate the physiological clues behind oral conditions. Her detective-style approach blends airway dentistry, functional orthodontics, and advanced laser therapies. By Shane Conroy
Dr Lynette Wallace approaches dentistry like a detective.
Traditional dentistry often focuses on treating the immediate issue. A filling repairs decay. Orthodontics straightens teeth. A splint protects against grinding. Dr Wallace asks what sits behind those problems.
Her aim is not simply to repair teeth. It is to understand the physiological conditions that created the problem in the first place. “I’ve always asked why,” she says. “If two patients receive the same treatment and one improves while the other does not, I want to understand what is different.”
That curiosity has shaped the direction of her career. In 2024 Dr Wallace received a Global Recognition Award for her innovative contributions to dentistry and her work exploring the links between oral health and systemic wellbeing.
At her Bowral, NSW practice, Planetsmiles, she often studies a patient’s airway structure, tongue posture, and breathing patterns to understand how a dental issue may relate to the wider physiology of the body.
Much of that investigation centres on how the autonomic nervous system regulates the body—and how breathing patterns, tongue posture, and jaw development can influence how the nervous system balances rest, recovery, and stress responses.
Dr Wallace also understands that, in many cases, the symptoms patients present with are only part of the story. Jaw pain, crowded teeth, grinding, or sleep issues may reflect underlying airway restriction or muscular imbalance that developed years earlier.
Identifying those conditions allows Dr Wallace to design treatment plans that address both the dental problem and the broader functional causes.
“It all connects,” she explains. “The mouth is part of the whole organism. What we do in the mouth can influence the rest of the body.”
Her work includes functional orthodontic approaches that guide jaw development, airway therapies that support nasal breathing, and advanced laser treatments that use photobiomodulation to reduce inflammation and stimulate healing.
She is also Australia’s first certified OraLase provider and recently graduated from the Laser and Health Academy (LA&HA) Master’s Program in Laser Dentistry in Slovenia, one of the world’s most advanced training programs in clinical laser applications and photobiomodulation.
Laying the groundwork
Dr Wallace’s path into dentistry was not entirely conventional.
I’ve always asked why. If two patients receive the same treatment and one improves while the other does not, I want to understand what is different.
Dr Lynette Wallace, owner, Planetsmiles
After leaving school following Year 10, she spent two years travelling and working overseas before returning to complete Years 11 and 12. She then studied dentistry at the University of Sydney and completed her Bachelor of Dental Surgery with Honours in 1994.
Dr Wallace worked in several practices before eventually settling in Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands. She and her then-husband purchased an existing dental practice and began modernising it as dentistry entered a new digital era.
Much of the equipment needed replacing and the clinic had almost no digital systems. Dr Wallace helped upgrade the technology, computerise the practice, and introduce digital X-ray systems at a time when many dental clinics were only beginning to adopt digital workflows.
When the partnership ended several years later, she decided to establish her own clinic. Dr Wallace opened Planetsmiles in 2009.
“I pretty much set the practice up in a week,” she says. “As a single mum I couldn’t afford much time away from work, so we just got everything running as quickly as possible.”
Since those early days, her practice has received broad industry recognition. Planetsmiles won Dental Clinic of the Year at the Corporate LiveWire Global Awards in 2023/24, and Dr Wallace received the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Award in 2023.
Following the clues
Running her own practice gave Dr Wallace the independence to shape the way she practised dentistry. It also allowed her to begin exploring new ideas about how oral health connects to the wider health of the body.
Many of those ideas centred on solving the same problem: why do similar treatments produce different outcomes for different patients?
That curiosity led her to pursue further education. In the early 2000s she completed postgraduate training at the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies (LVI Global), where the curriculum focused on neuromuscular dentistry and the diagnosis of complex occlusal conditions. The training encouraged clinicians to examine how muscles, jaw position, and bite relationships influence dental function.
“It changed the way I looked at dentistry,” she says. “I realised that teeth do not exist in isolation. They are part of a much bigger system.”
From that point Dr Wallace began examining how airway structure, breathing patterns, and muscle function can all affect oral health.
She says tongue posture plays a central role in that system. When the tongue rests against the palate and breathing occurs through the nose, the jaws and facial structures tend to develop more naturally. When that balance is disrupted, the effects can appear later as crowding, airway restriction, or unstable orthodontic outcomes.
Deepening the investigation
Technological advances helped support that shift in thinking. Dr Wallace began using digital imaging and CBCT scanning to visualise airway structures and jaw relationships, and to investigate how breathing patterns and tongue posture influence facial development and dental stability.
“If the tongue is not resting on the palate the environment in the mouth changes,” she explains. “That can influence how the teeth develop and whether the result will remain stable.”
This thinking led her to explore functional orthodontic approaches that encourage natural development rather than forcing rapid mechanical change. Traditional orthodontics often focuses on aligning teeth within the existing jaw structure. Functional approaches look more closely at how the jaws grow and how the tongue, muscles, and airway influence that development.
In younger patients, this can allow dentists to guide development rather than simply correcting problems later in life. Early intervention can help support healthier airway function and more stable jaw growth as the child develops.
One example of treatment is the Advanced Lightwire Functional appliance, which uses very light forces to guide jaw development while supporting normal tongue function.
“Instead of forcing teeth into position you are trying to create the conditions where the body can organise itself properly,” she says. “You want the system working together.”
Closing the case
Over time Dr Wallace also began incorporating laser therapies and photobiomodulation into her clinical work. Photobiomodulation uses specific wavelengths of light to stimulate cellular activity, improve circulation, and reduce inflammation. In dentistry it can support healing and help relieve muscular tension around the jaw. Some treatments may also influence the autonomic nervous system by supporting the body’s natural regulatory rhythms.
“It is another tool that helps the body recover,” she says. “You are supporting the body’s own healing response.”
Dr Wallace became Australia’s first certified OraLase provider and now incorporates the treatment into a range of therapies designed to support healing and functional recovery. OraLase is a laser-assisted treatment that aims to improve physiological function while reducing pain and inflammation.
The therapy may support patients experiencing temporomandibular joint dysfunction, restricted tongue function, sleep-disordered breathing, and chronic muscular tension in the head and neck.
For Dr Wallace these treatments represent another extension of the investigative mindset that has shaped her career.
“Teeth often reveal clues about how the entire system is functioning,” she says. “When those clues are understood early, the body has a remarkable capacity to reorganise and heal.”
