Meet Dr. Sheena Sikka: On Art, Ancestry, and Why Saving a Tooth Is Always Personal

"It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has." — Hippocrates

A Clinic in New Delhi Changed Everything

I was fourteen years old when I first understood what dentistry could do.

My family visits India every year — my grandparents live there, and those trips have always felt like a return to something essential. On one of those visits, I volunteered at a clinic for the underprivileged in New Delhi, rotating through different patient-facing medical departments as an aid. I was curious about everything. But dentistry stopped me in my tracks.

What struck me then — and what I still feel just as strongly today — is that dentistry is one of the very few medical professions where the barrier between doctor and patient essentially disappears. You don't need a hospital. You don't need an operating room. You, an assistant, and a handful of instruments can completely change someone's life in a single appointment. The immediate gratification of diagnosis and same-day treatment. Taking someone out of pain in an hour. Giving someone back a smile they stopped showing years ago. The emotional weight of that kind of work is something I don't think I'll ever take for granted.

This May, I'm returning to India to volunteer at a clinic very similar to the one that first inspired me. It feels, in the best possible way, like a full circle.

Art, Architecture, and the Hands That Shape Things

No one in my family is a doctor. I grew up in a household rooted in artistic expression — my parents come from backgrounds in architecture, interior design, and real estate. Growing up surrounded by people who thought carefully about form, proportion, and the way things fit together in space gave me a sensibility I didn't fully understand until I found dentistry.

I have a serious background in ceramics and sculpture. I am part of a ceramics studio here in the city, and I still go regularly — not as a professional obligation but because I genuinely love it.

And the longer I practice dentistry, the more I see the two disciplines speaking to each other. Both require an understanding of material and structure. Both demand precision at a small scale. Both are fundamentally about shaping something functional that also has to look right. When I am building a crown or restoring a smile, I am drawing on the same instincts I use at the wheel.

Dentistry, at its best, is a craft. I think it always will be.

A Family Rooted in the Body's Intelligence

The holistic thread in my life did not begin with dentistry. It began much earlier, in my family.

My grandfather practiced Kapalabhati yoga — a discipline centered on oxygenating the body through controlled, forceful breath to energize, detoxify, and stimulate metabolism. Long before yoga became a fixture of American wellness culture, he had built a genuine community following around this practice. In the 1980s, when yoga was still largely unknown in the United States, he was already teaching it at a community level with quiet conviction.

My great-aunt, Santosh Verma, went further still. A prominent yoga teacher from the 1970s, she traveled across Europe teaching and eventually opened free yoga schools and wellness centers in Norway, Finland, and Sweden. She practiced Shat Kriya — the discipline of cleansing the body inside and out, and the mind through meditation. She believed deeply that health was not the absence of disease but the active, ongoing cultivation of inner balance.

I think about that a lot in my practice. The mouth is not separate from the body. What happens in the oral environment ripples outward — into the gut, the cardiovascular system, the immune response. My family taught me, long before dental school did, that the body is an interconnected system that responds to how it is tended. That understanding shapes every care plan I put together.

From the NIH to the Operatory: Why Research Matters at the Chair

Dr. Sheena Sikka, DDS

Before dental school, I conducted research at the National Institutes of Health — work that led to three published papers, two on osteoarthritis of the temporomandibular joint and one on vertical root fractures in endodontically treated teeth. I also conducted salivary research studying the effects of SAG — salivary agglutinin protein — a remarkable protein that binds to both bacteria and viruses and is thought to increase bacterial clearance from the mouth.

That research changed how I think about saliva. Most people consider it incidental — the background fluid of the mouth. I think of it as one of the most under-appreciated diagnostic and protective tools in the body. The mechanical aspects of salivary flow, combined with the chemical properties of its proteins, make it genuinely central to oral health in ways that clinical dentistry is only beginning to fully appreciate. It is one of the reasons saliva testing is such a meaningful part of the care we provide here.

Research gave me something that clinical training alone cannot: the habit of asking why. Not just what is happening in a patient's mouth, but what is driving it, what the evidence says about how to address it, and what the long-term data tells us about outcomes. I bring that orientation to every conversation I have with a patient.

Root Canal or Implant? Here Is How I Think About It

One of the most important parts of being a dentist is being an educator. When a patient sits across from me and learns they are facing a significant decision — root canal or implant — my first job is to make sure they understand what they are actually choosing between. The pros, the cons, the timeline, the costs, and the biology underneath all of it. So let's talk through it honestly.

Prevention First — Always. Before we ever arrive at the conversation about root canals or implants, we do everything in our power to make sure it never becomes necessary. The 3D scanning gives us a complete map of teeth, roots, jawbone, sinuses, and airways — revealing what standard X-rays simply cannot, including cavitations: areas of compromised jawbone that conventional imaging misses entirely, often linked to previous extractions or failing root canal treated teeth, and capable of driving chronic infection and systemic inflammation long before any symptoms appear.

Where appropriate, we incorporate ozone therapy as part of treatment — eliminating harmful bacteria on contact and supporting the tooth's natural ability to remineralize. Early detection and the right tools at the right moment are the reason many of our patients never have to face the harder conversation at all.

Why a filling is sometimes not an option. Cavities begin for a variety of reasons and progress at different rates — even within the same patient. The nature, location, and progression of decay depends on oral hygiene, diet, saliva composition, tooth location, and the composition of the oral biofilm. Radiographs show us what we cannot see with the eye alone: problems between teeth, beneath the gum line, in the bone. Think of them as Superman vision — revealing what may not yet be a problem, but will be.

When a cavity reaches the nerve, or when a crack propagates into the nerve space, or when infection has taken hold, a filling cannot address the underlying issue. The nerve space must be cleaned. The infection must be stopped from spreading. A tooth cannot fight infection on its own and will not heal without intervention.

What root canal treatment actually does. Removing the nerve tissue and bacteria stops the infection and allows the surrounding structures to heal. After treatment, the tooth is no longer living — there is no reparative function, which means it becomes more brittle over time. This is why a crown is almost always recommended alongside root canal treatment: it distributes chewing forces evenly across the entire surface and protects the tooth from fracture.

If there is sufficient tooth structure remaining after damaged tissue is removed, and if the bone surrounding the tooth is healthy, root canal treatment is a strong option. That tooth can last many years — often a lifetime. Natural teeth absorb shock through tiny periodontal ligaments that allow slight movement under force, protecting both the tooth and the bone. Root canal treated teeth can also be moved with orthodontics, which implants cannot. The natural scalloped architecture of the gum line is preserved. And from start to a custom-fit crown, the entire process typically takes one to two months.

When an implant is the better answer. If there is not enough tooth structure remaining to support a crown, if severe cracks extend down the root surface causing bone detachment, or if the infection originates not from the nerve alone but from the surrounding structures, then an implant offers a more predictable outcome. In these cases, extraction — sometimes with bone grafting — followed by implant placement gives us a strong, custom-designed prosthetic built for full function.

Implants have revolutionized what we once called the last resort. They look, feel, and function like natural teeth. They serve as strong anchors for longer spans of restoration. They have made it possible to help patients who could not be served by dentures alone. Their success rate sits around 95% — essentially matching that of root canal treatment. They are remarkable. They just require more time: typically four to twelve months from start to finish, depending on bone quality.

My honest position. I will always favor saving a natural tooth when the clinical picture supports it. Natural teeth are biological structures with shock absorption, bone preservation, and tissue compatibility that no prosthetic fully replicates. But when the damage is severe and the prognosis is poor, an implant is not a consolation — it is a success story in its own right.

The best outcome, always, is the one that comes from catching things early. A radiograph taken at the right time, a conversation had before the crack becomes a fracture, a decision made with full information rather than under pressure. That is what we are here for.

A Note From Dr. Sikka

At Dr. Rossinski Dental Health, I found a practice that shares the same values I have carried throughout my career. The philosophy here — that the mouth is a gateway to the whole body, that prevention is a deeper practice than repair, that every patient deserves care built around their individual biology — is one I have carried long before I walked through these doors. It was shaped by a grandfather who taught breath as medicine, a great-aunt who opened wellness centers across Europe, and years of research that kept pointing me back to the same conclusion: everything is connected.

I look forward to meeting you.

To book an appointment with Dr. Sikka or learn more about our approach to comprehensive and holistic dental care, contact Dr. Rossinski Dental Health at (212) 673-3700 or inform@rossinski.com.