Walker Orthodontics
Your Life. Your Health. Your Smile.
Meet Our Doctors - The Core of Our Team
At Walker Orthodontics, we combine art with science and experience with passion. It’s a combination you won’t find anywhere else, and the result is truly life-changing. You can see it in the smiles we create and hear it in our patients’ stories.
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OUR PURPOSE is to help everyone reach their peak performance and make their dreams come true.
We do that by helping them breathe better, sleep better, and look better. Treating sleep issues in Harvard, MA, and sleep disorders in Lunenburg MA, we give people the energy and confidence to perform and succeed academically, athletically, and socially.
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As orthodontists and sleeping specialists, we can give our patients what they really need and want: a good night’s sleep and a beautiful smile that lasts a lifetime!
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We find and treat the origin of tooth misalignment, facial growth discrepancies, snoring, and sleep disorders. You can see the value of our evidence-based research in published journals.
Thank you for considering us as your family’s orthodontic home. We welcome new patients of all ages and promise to provide the highest quality care and customer service possible.
Dear Friend,
Airway Orthodontists are different. We are looking at why kids have crooked teeth, not just how we straighten them. There are enough adults walking around with crooked teeth, snore, have sleep apnea who had braces and subsequently learned a difficult lesson:
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Orthodontists may be great at straightening teeth, but they don't do anything about why you had crooked teeth in the first place. As a result, you must wear a retainer for the rest of your life, or your teeth will move, have poor sleep, problems breathing, or sleep apnea.
Airway orthodontics recognizes that crooked teeth, in most cases is the result of poor nasal breathing. This develops during childhood, and mouth breathing develops as a survival mechanism. Mouth breathing and habits result in poor facial growth, and the jaws fail to grow sufficiently to make room for the teeth. To correct this, we must address both the breathing obstruction and the oral habits that result from it. Some of these habits are present at birth, and many develop in the first few years of life.
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These breathing disorders not only affect facial growth but have serious health consequences such as poor sleep, frequent sinus infections, high blood pressure, behavioral issues such as ADHD, and sleep apnea to name just a few.
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Congratulations! You have taken the first step to helping your child reach their potential. The choices you make for your child can improve their chances of experiencing unobstructed breathing, a good night's sleep, healthy development, a better life, and certainly a happier one.
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Airway Orthodontics is not about teeth. It is about helping the jaws and face grow to their full genetic potential and allowing airway spaces to open to full size.
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It's about starting treatment when you discover poor oral habits and addressing the habits, not the teeth.
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We need to stop turning to medication as the automatic solution for kids. Instead, we need to look at WHY kids are getting sick, growing poorly, sleeping poorly, and performing poorly. When I give lectures across the US and internationally to dentists, physicians, and students, I tell them that the dentist of the future must become an "Oral Physician" not just a Tooth Doctor, because so many things we see in the mouth are symptoms of greater problems
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As a parent, I know you want more than anything for your child to be happy and successful Peak Performers (whatever that might mean for them) in whatever areas they might choose. It takes a team to make that possible: parents, grandparents, great teachers, mentors, and coaches.
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Here is the formula for young and old:
1. Breathe gently through the nose
2. Keep lips together when not talking or eating
3. Keep the tongue on the palate at rest
4. Swallow without using facial muscles with tongue on the roof of the mouth
5. Good posture (sit and stand straight)
6. Eat to nourish (eliminate processed foods and sugar)
7. Good rejuvenating sleep
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There are no pills, no shots, no surgeries, no compliance-free appliances, and no shortcuts. Breathe right. Eat right. Sleep right. Be right.
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To Your Health,
Dr. Walker
Our Doctors
Dr John Walker
BA, DMD
Diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics
Dr. John Walker founded the practice in 1978 and has since been a fixture in the community as a Harvard and Lunenburg orthodontist. He received his doctorate in Dental Medicine from the New Jersey School of Dental Medicine and earned his Certificate in Orthodontics from the Boston University School of Dental Medicine.
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In addition to being a diplomat of the American Board of Orthodontics, Dr. Walker is also a clinical faculty of orthodontics at Boston University and a member of the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (AADSM). He has also developed many treatment protocols, and has collaborative relationships with renowned medical professionals.
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Dr. Walker is an international speaker and author of several Orthodontic and Airway publications. As a pioneer in Sleep Disordered Breathing, Dr. Walker loves to travel overseas and speak about the importance of Airway Orthodontics and new discoveries in Orthodontics.
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Dr. Walker has two daughters, Elizabeth and Julia. Elizabeth, like her father, is an Airway Orthodontist in Burlington, Vermont, and Julia is an Aesthetician and Yoga instructor in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dr. Walker likes to windsurf, bike, and sail during his free time. He loves to spend time in Aruba, which led him to open a third Orthodontic office there.
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Dr Martha Neely
DDS, DMD
Diplomate of the American Board of Orthodontics.
Dr. Neely – our highly-trained orthodontist in Harvard, MA, and Lunenburg, MA – received her Doctor of Dental Surgery from the National University of Columbia and a Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry from Boston University, graduating with high honors.
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She then went on to obtain a Master of Science in Dentistry, in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics. Dr. Neely also conducted research at Boston University’s Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research, where she published scientific articles on orthodontics and presented her findings at several professional meetings.
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In addition, Dr. Neely – who is bilingual in English and Spanish – is a member of the American Association of Orthodontists, American Dental Association and Massachusetts Dental Society. Her special interests are dentofacial development in growing children, and snoring and sleep apnea problems.