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I got a potty mouth

July 21, 2008

Hi. I’m a very sad American Indian. I am crying because I just learned that my children have Bisphenol-A in their dental sealants. BPA is bad. It means my boys might end up with man-boobs.

This is about dental pollution, people. It may be ignored by mainstream science, but this problem is real enough to sell newspapers, magazines, and make you read online articles.

 

What I’ve Heard About Dental Pollution

Everywhere I go I hear about how it’s not fair that the citizens of cities have no choice about the fluoride in their drinking water. Sure, it makes teeth stronger, but there’s a conspiracy of pollution! And it’s the people who are so poor that they can’t even afford cups, they have to tilt their heads sideways to drink under the sink faucet, they are the ones who get the most fluoride in their bodies.

Does fluoride save lives like chlorine does? Wait, I didn’t say that, because it’s going to sound like I am in favor of putting poisons in the water. 

You dentists also are protecting the right to fix the holes in people’s mouths with evil substances. If you drill a tooth and put in a silver filling, you have to make the filling soft with toxic mercury. Why can’t you just heat up the silver and pour it in the cavity?

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Anecdotes, Dental Debates, Research
Tags
BPA, Composites, Fluoride, Galvanic currents, Lead contaminated crowns, Mercury Toxicity, Sealants
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Kids cause you to lose teeth, too

July 13, 2008

We finally figured out why the German guy was asking Dustin Hoffman “Is it safe?” in the movie Marathon Man. Obviously his wife was planning on having her third child and he was worried about the folk saying from his native country, “Every child costs the mother one tooth.”

Leave it to the Americans to show that these words actually hold a great deal of truth. Across the socioeconomic strata the results of data examination were consistent: women who gave birth to more children tended to lose more teeth during their lives.

So the next time a pregnant patient is worried about the baby “robbing calcium from her teeth,” dentists can acknowledge that there is a real correlation between making babies and an increase in dental disease. And then take steps with the mother-to-be to minimize the oral flora aggression that seems to rise in their mouths.

Hopefully this will mean fewer drills aimed directly through the central incisors.

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Categories
Preventive Care, Research
Tags
marathon man, pregnancy, tooth loss
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STA, OraVerse, or GumEase (oh my)

July 7, 2008

For a moment, imagine that this is one of the forms your patients fill out at an initial visit:


Anesthesia Options

We understand that each person has unique concerns when it comes to pain management, and would like to give our patients the opportunity to explore all of the anesthetic techniques available in our modern practice. Please read the following paragraphs and make a checkmark next to the one that best describes and addresses your needs:

1.  Please do not get a needle anywhere near me. You can numb my face with a sledgehammer, but you’d better not even let me see the tip of an etchant syringe or I’ll flip. Pain is preferable to an injection in my case. I will be willing to try electroshock treatment or even a couple of frozen teething rings wedged under my lips, but definitely no shots. With your delicate situation, we have a dental TENS unit available. Two electrodes will be placed in opposite areas of your mouth. We will then run a current of electricity that will fry your noodles allow a fair amount of pain management. Your hand signals will help us control the frequency of the current. TENS feels very similar to sticking your finger in a light socket.   Our other non-sharp alternative is called the GumEase, which is a frozen saline-filled ring that numbs the teeth at the roots. If you are not cold sensitive, cryoanesthesia is better than nothing. And it’s warmer than ice cream.

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Categories
Operative Dentistry, Products
Tags
Anesthesia, Dental Wand, GumEase, Ligmaject, OraVerse, STA system, TENS, VibraJect
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Upgrade to Vista to downgrade to XP

June 25, 2008

Our resident gadget expert,The Computeritized Dentist, just wants his network to run properly and leaves the technical specs to the geeks. We asked him to read an important message that we got from Microsoft today.

The Computeritized Dentist will now translate this June 24, 2008 letter from Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte detailing the fate of Windows XP, among other things:

“Today, almost every dental office in the world that is computerized uses a PC with our software platform. And unless you want to ditch everything you’re already using, you’re stuck with us - and all the peripherals that try to get along with us.

“Windows XP is a dinosaur, and you may have heard that it is scheduled to be installed in the Museum of Planned Obsolescence on June 30, 2008.  Ha, ha, there’s really no such museum; that was just a clever metaphor that I thought of myself. 

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Practice Management, Software, Technology
Tags
Bill Veghte, Microsoft XP, peripherals, Vista
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Dental Design Rip-offs

June 22, 2008

Looking around your dental practice, you wonder where the ideas for all those gadgets came from. Do you need help uncluttering the deja-vu from your mind?

Run your mouse over the product images to get a sense of their origins.

Unfortunately, the Luxatemp guns do not fire over long distances. That and they’re kind of runny.

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Fun, Products
Tags
Enamel Pro, Gaiam, Luxatemp, Oroscience, Vector
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Recent Posts

  • Freeze Teeth for the Future
  • How’s your hearing?
  • VR Glasses Revisited
  • BrytonPick: Stainless Steel Cleaning Blades
  • Chairside iPhone modding
  • I got a potty mouth
  • Kids cause you to lose teeth, too
  • STA, OraVerse, or GumEase (oh my)
  • Upgrade to Vista to downgrade to XP
  • Dental Design Rip-offs
  • Consumer Reports: What, no bill’em?
  • Keeping it clean
  • The real reason for the mask
  • Patients won’t even notice it
  • inTerra - better than stumps

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