Dr. Jennifer Wallace
Palmetto Smiles of Beaufort
Changing Smiles, Changing Lives
story by JEANNE REYNOLDS photos by JOHN WOLLWERTH
Many people rank going to the dentist right up there with public speaking and spiders as one of their top fears it’s even got a name: dentophobia. But patients at Palmetto Smiles might be the exception because they can see their dentist literally putting her money where her mouth is: When Dr. Jennifer Wallace removes her mask, the first thing you’ll likely notice is she’s wearing braces.
“I was a TMD (temporomandibular disorder) patient with neck pain for a long time and thought it was from the angle I hold my head while working,” said Dr. Wallace, who has a special interest and years of experience in the neuromuscular aspect of dentistry. “Then I looked at my own jaw models and saw the misalignment causing the problem.”
Now close to the end of two years of treatment, Dr. Wallace is a walking advertisement for her own practice. But she’s far from the only patient who had experienced life-changing results from her care — from a teenager whose face and profile were dramatically transformed to a middle-aged man who lost 50 pounds when his sleep apnea problems were resolved.
“He said I saved his marriage because he stopped snoring,” Dr. Wallace laughs.
Anchoring in a Safe Harbor
Happy patients can credit Dr. Wallace’s high school job in a hospital radiology department with at least part of her success.
“I always wanted to be in the medical field — it always fascinated me,” Dr. Wallace recalled. “But a doctor in that radiology department advised me if I also wanted to have a family, a home life, and decent hours, I should go to dental school instead.”
She heeded his advice, moving from her hometown of Columbia to Clemson University for an undergraduate degree in biology, then to dental school at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Another encounter there altered her career path again: She met her future husband, Aaron Sarathy, who was attending dental school on a Navy scholarship. Dr. Wallace decided to enlist too.
“He suckered me in,” she said.
After a residency in Norfolk, Virginia, and billets in Naples, Italy, and Washington, DC, where she served in the Pentagon, Dr. Wallace left the service thinking she and her family — by then grown to include a son and daughter — would return to Charleston. But the Navy sent her still-active-duty husband to Beaufort instead.
“Six months in, I fell in love with it,” she said.
Within two years, Dr. Wallace opened her practice, Palmetto Smiles of Beaufort, at 40 Kemmerlin Lane, tucked behind BB&T just off Lady’s Island Drive. She works as the sole full-time dentist in the practice, alongside a team of eight, including two hygienists, two assistants, an operations manager, a human resources manager, an insurance coordinator, and a patient concierge. The practice offers its 2,000 active patients a wide range of dental and airway treatments, including cosmetic and restorative dentistry, TMD and TMJ pain treatment, facial growth orthodontics, and sleep apnea treatment.
“There are so many outside factors such as allergies, tongue ties or habits, and even the way one breathes that affect growth and development,” Dr. Wallace said. “It’s my job to recognize these things. In children, I help guide the growth back to normal. For adults who are done growing, it’s a little more complicated, but they can be helped too. Correcting some of these problems can often alleviate years of pain.”
A Passion for Health and Wellness
The practice also offers other services outside the dental scope, such as massage. In fact, pulling together different health and wellness practitioners who can provide a broad range of services is one of Dr. Wallace’s visions for the future. She recently bought a property in the new Whitehall development on the corner of Meridian Road to create a health and wellness center with dental, craniosacral, chiropractic, massage, and Botox experts. She said that construction should start by the end of the year or early next year.
Dr. Wallace continues to develop her expertise with nearly nonstop professional development courses. She studies at the Las Vegas Institute of Advanced Dental Studies, a leading postgraduate training center for advanced cosmetic dentistry, physiologic-based TMJ therapy and treatment, and full-mouth cosmetic porcelain reconstruction. She also recently completed a two-year mastership class on growth and development at the Facial Beauty Institute in Tennessee and is an ambassador of the Breathe Institute in Los Angeles, working with its team on airway treatments.
“You have to go and constantly learn to remain on the cutting edge,” Dr. Wallace said. “There’s always more to know.”
After more than a dozen years in private practice, it’s obvious Dr. Jennifer Wallace has a passion for what she does.
“I love the ability to change someone’s confidence level with not only a new smile but a new jaw position that is healthier for the joints, muscles, teeth, and airway,” she said. “It’s not an instant fix. It’s nonsurgical so it takes longer, but the results are amazing.”
Patient Testimonials In Their Own Words:
“Before I saw Dr. Jennifer Wallace, I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence, and I had trouble playing sports with my friends because I couldn’t run without getting out of breath. After her treatment, I felt so much better about myself and could keep up with all of my friends in sports. I was scared that the only way to fix my problems was to have jaw surgery like my Dad did, so I was very happy to have found her!”
— Athan G.; started treatment at age 13, finished at 15
“I was looking for a new dentist because mine retired, and a friend told me what a wonderful practice this was, that it was more than dentistry and catered to the individual. She talked about a spa kind of environment that makes you feel relaxed instead of just, “Okay, come in, and we’re going to clean your teeth, and out you go.” One of the things they asked me was, “What would you like to see in your smile, and how do you feel about it?” It was an opportunity for me to really sit down and talk to someone about how I felt about my smile and my teeth. They took pictures, and we looked at them together and decided we would do some work on my front teeth. They made it very easy and were upfront about how long it would take, the process, and how much it would cost. Even though I’m fearful of the dentist, her team took their time to make sure I was comfortable.
Now I feel like the girls at Palmetto Smiles are all my new best friends.”
— Debbie Schuchmann, Beaufort resident
