🇩🇪 Dr. Carola Engelberts
Dentist
Carola Engelberts is a dentist, researcher, and educator whose work explores ankyloglossia across the lifespan and its broader connections with myofunctional health, airway development, breathing, and sleep.
Carola Engelberts, DMD, is a dentist, clinical researcher, and internationally recognized speaker in the field of functional oral restrictions and airway-focused dentistry. Based in Cologne, Germany, she is the founder of the German Society for Orofacial Myofunction and co-owner of richmodent, a large multidisciplinary dental practice, which she has led together with her husband for over 26 years, managing a team of 65 professionals.
Her clinical expertise spans the treatment of ankyloglossia across all age groups—from infants to adults—combined with myofunctional therapy and early orthodontic interventions, always with a strong focus on airway development and functional health.
Driven by clinical observation, Engelberts challenges conventional thinking about ankyloglossia as a purely feeding-related condition. Her research explores its broader impact on breathing, sleep, and early regulation, including a prospective cohort study on snoring in infants.
On stage, she is known for bridging science and clinical reality—bringing clarity to controversial topics and inviting audiences to rethink what they consider “normal.”
Her work stands for one central idea:
function matters—and what we overlook in early life may shape everything that follows.