Dr. Anthony Wentzel graduated from the University of the Western Cape Dental Faculty in 1992 and began a career dedicated to improving the oral and overall health of his patients. His early years were spent serving in government clinics and hospitals, as well as providing outreach care to rural communities. After moving into private practice in Cape Town, he relocated to the United Kingdom in 2002, where he worked within the NHS before purchasing his own practice four years later.
Throughout his career, Dr. Wentzel became increasingly aware of a growing number of adult patients suffering from nighttime grinding, tooth wear, jaw pain, headaches, and related symptoms. Traditional soft splints offered temporary relief but did little to address the underlying causes. Driven to understand the root of these problems, he pursued extensive postgraduate training with leading organisations and clinicians, including the British Society for Occlusal Studies (BSOS), physiotherapy for TMD, TMD management with retired orthodontist Patrick Grossman, Acupuncture for dentists, the British Society of Integrated Dentistry, short-term adult orthodontics, and the British Society of Dental Sleep Medicine, among others.
His clinical curiosity deepened further when he recognised the substantial overlap between dental symptoms and conditions such as GERD, airway dysfunction, and sleep-disordered breathing.
A year-long programme in Dental Sleep Medicine proved to be a turning point. It was here that she discovered how profoundly sleep and breathing issues affect the entire body, with the teeth representing only a small part of a much larger picture.
Reflecting on his own childhood history of asthma, recurrent infections, and night terrors, he recognised the long-term developmental patterns often underlying adult obstructive sleep apnoea and related disorders.
Determined to support her patients better, he expanded his training into Jaw Functional Orthopaedics and Dentofacial Orthopaedics, inspired by the late William Skipp Truitt, his protégé Stefan Cloete, and the work of Myobrace and Dr Noel Stimson, editor of Cranio UK.
Dr. Wentzel practices with a holistic, airway-centred approach — viewing dental health not in isolation, but as part of a complex system shaped by breathing, sleep, growth, posture, and early childhood development. His work reflects a lifelong commitment to learning, integrating science, compassion, and whole-body dentistry to help patients achieve long-term health rather than temporary symptom relief.
Airway-Centred Dentistry and Dental Sleep Medicine have become his professional passion and calling — a labour of love anchored in the belief that the answers to many dental problems lie far beyond the mouth.