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This week, I am excited to welcome Dr. Mike Robichaux to the show. Dr. Robichaux has been practicing dentistry in Slidell, Louisiana since 1974. He has created a unique, holistic, biologic approach to dentistry, where he invites his patients to participate in\u00a0all decisions that must be made to develop an appropriate treatment plan. After nearly four decades of studying and observing his patients’ journeys\u00a0towards health, he has made some several important discoveries that have drastically impacted his practice.<\/p>\n
Dr. Robichaux describes his practice as holistically and biologically-oriented, with health and patient-centered focus. Dr. Robichaux has dedicated his life to learning and teaching fellow dentists and their teams. In 1999, he achieved Mastership status in the AGD. This award is only given to dentists who have achieved the fellowship status and have completed a challenging course of hands-on study in 16 dental disciplines, totaling 600 hours of Continuing Education.<\/p>\n
Since 1994, Dr. Robichaux has been a board member and chairman of the curriculum committee for the Louisiana Academy of Continuing Education. He has been on the board of directors of the American Academy of Dental Practice Administration, an academy dedicated to leadership, balance and success. Today, Dr. Robichaux joins me to share his journey of\u00a0growth as a dentist and the leader of his practice. With his help and expertise, you can create a practice where your patients can take control of their path to health and increase their chances of\u00a0achieving the outcomes that are most important to them.<\/p>\n
Welcome to Practicing with the Masters<\/em> for dentists with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. Allison believes that there are four pillars for a successful, fulfilling dental practice: clear leadership, sound business principles, well-developed communication skills, and clinical excellence. Allison enjoys helping dentists and teams excel in all of these areas. Each episode she brings you an inspiring conversation with another leading expert. If you desire to learn and grow and in the process take your practice to the next level, then this is the show for you. Now, here\u2019s your host, Dr. Allison Watts.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Welcome to Practicing with the Masters<\/em> podcast. I\u2019m your host, Allison Watts, and I\u2019m dedicated to bringing you masters in the field of dentistry, leadership, and practice management to help you have a more fulfilling and successful practice and life.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to go ahead and officially introduce you, Mike, before we get started.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll give you a proper introduction and then I\u2019ll let you tell us a little bit more about yourself as well. I just want to welcome everybody and say thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us tonight. This is fun to have a group of like-minded people and come together, people who love learning. My intention for this is just to make us all better. Make us better dentists and better leaders, better people in general. I appreciate you being here, Mike.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Allison. I\u2019m honored.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know that\u2019s your intention as well and you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart, taking your time out as well. For those of you who don\u2019t know Mike, I\u2019ll go ahead and introduce him.<\/p>\n Mike has been practicing dentistry in Slidell, Louisiana since 1974. He has a unique holistic biologic approach to dentistry, inviting his patients into all decisions that must be made to develop an appropriate treatment plan. After four decades of studying and observing his patients\u2019 journeys toward health, it is his opinion that the more control the patient has in this journey, the greater the chance they will achieve the outcomes that are most important to them.<\/p>\n Dr. Robichaux describes his practice as a holistically and biologically oriented, health-centered, patient-centered practice of dentistry. Dr. Robichaux is dedicated to learning and teaching. In 1999, he achieved mastership status in the AGD which is awarded to those dentists who have achieved fellowship status and have completed a challenging course of hands-on study in 16 dental disciplines, totaling 600 hours of continuing education.<\/p>\n Since 1994, he has been a board member and chairman of the curriculum committee for the Louisiana Academy of Continuing Dental Education. From 2009-2012 he was on the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Dental Practice Administration, an academy dedicated to leadership, life balance, and success comprised of dentists that are seeking cutting edge ways to deliver high quality dentistry within quality relationships with their teams and patients.<\/p>\n His hobbies include golf, golf and golf. I guess you like golf.<\/p>\n [Laughter]<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s about it. Pretty simple.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think dentistry is probably a hobby for you as well in a way because it seems like you sure enjoy it.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 He and his wife Mae, who I\u2019ve had the pleasure of meeting and she\u2019s lovely, lovely, lovely, have been married for\u2014is it 42 years or has it been longer than that now?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 45.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 45 years. And have two sons, Myles and Hal, are your two sons. Welcome, Dr. Robichaux. Am I saying that right? Or do you like Robichaux?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robichaux [Roe-bih-show].<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Robichaux, since we\u2019re doing the proper Cajun thing. Do you want to tell us\u2014I had some other information, a little bit about your practice and the holistic approach that you take. Want to tell us a little bit more about that? Also, I kind of want to know how you got to where you are today.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay. It all started back in, I guess it was \u201963, I saw this 15-year-old on a school bus and I said, \u201cThat\u2019s it. That was the one.\u201d It turned out to be. So we\u2019ve been together now for going on 45 years. I was in the first class at LSU. There was 30 of us in 1968. We started, I graduated in \u201972 and went to the Navy and spent a little time there. Ended up in Slidell in 1974.<\/p>\n It was pretty easy back then to start a practice. I joined a guy and I rented some space from him. We shared and eventually built the building. I kind of stumbled on something early on. I couldn\u2019t understand it until I looked back. I knew that I wasn\u2019t technically competent to be able to do the things that I was seeing coming through. I was safe for the routine stuff but I was really technically challenged for the complex dentistry for sure.<\/p>\n I also knew that I needed some help in the behavioral side, how to talk to people. Thirdly, I knew I needed to do some personal development. In 1974, I was like 28 years old. I was still trying to find myself. I had a wife, a child, and another one coming. So I intuitively knew that I needed some personal growth. I don\u2019t know where that came from but I can remember while I just saw that Robert Schuller passed away, the Crystal Cathedral, are you familiar with him?<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That name sounds familiar.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, he was a preacher. He created this ministry but he spoke like I never heard anybody speak like that. He ended up building his Crystal Cathedral is still there. He just passed away. So he was the first one that got me thinking about personal growth.<\/p>\n So I got ahold of Norman Vincent Peale\u2019s books and I read that and got a hold of M. Scott Peck\u2019s The Road Less Traveled<\/em>, which is still one of my favorite books today. Of course, I don\u2019t remember who gave me, I think it was Harold Wirth gave me As You Think<\/em> by James Allen. I read both of those books, those last two books, many, many times.<\/p>\n When I started, Dawson was at his prime. I got his book and I ended up going out to see him. Got introduced to Alvin [Falastri 00:06:24] whom I just loved and taught me a lot of different things. The person that taught me the most about occlusion was Bernie Williams out of Kansas City, he was with SOS. I know some of the people on this call know about Bernie and SOS, and how brilliant of a human being he is. He\u2019s retired now but how much he taught me.<\/p>\n He not only taught me about occlusion and physical medicine but I watched him interact with people. I watched his intensity in listening. He taught me behavioral things that I didn\u2019t even know at the time that he was doing that.<\/p>\n I was fortunate to meet and spend a little time with Bill Farrar. For those who don\u2019t know about Bill Farrar, he\u2019s the one that said that the disc was in front of the jaw joint and we were popping onto it. Everybody else was saying we were popping off of it. So I spent time with him in Montgomery. Early 80s came long and [Qwest 00:07:20] came along, so that sounded pretty good. So I\u2019ve taken my practice in all kinds of directions and I’ve never killed it.<\/p>\n [Laughter]<\/p>\n It\u2019s like I\u2019ve tried, but it never died. It just recovered from everything. So I went to the Qwest route. Increased my employees to 12. Well it felt really good and all of a sudden it started feeling really bad. So I said, \u201cThis didn\u2019t feel right.\u201d So through attrition I just shrunk my staff to now I have like four and a half people.<\/p>\n I was fortunate also at the same time to go to an AADPA meeting, my first AADPA meeting at the Houstonian. Bob Frazer was there. So I\u2019m sitting in this lecture and he\u2019s talking about he wouldn\u2019t hire anybody who brought no name brand products. I thought that was pretty interesting. At that same meeting, the keynote speaker was Wayne Dyer. I’d never heard of Wayne Dyer. So he\u2019s fascinating and still is. I’ve read almost all of his books. They\u2019ve been a big help to me.<\/p>\n A turning point in my life came in 1987. I was at a dental meeting at the dental school at LSU. Harold Wirth was the moderator of our dental meetings. I won’t go into all the details but he ended up dying that night. He collapsed in my arms.<\/p>\n There were 200 dentists there and of all the people\u2019s arms he fell in, he fell in mine. I figured that that was no accident. It bothered me for a long, long time. I really believe it\u2019s the reason I\u2019m on this phone call right now because of the life choices I’ve made since then.<\/p>\n In honor of Harold, they had a special lecture at the dental conference in 1988. It was Mike Schuster. I’d never heard of him. So I\u2019m scouting, because I\u2019m the program chairman the next year and I\u2019m scouting and I\u2019m in his room and he starts talking. I\u2019m thinking he\u2019s talking directly at me. He\u2019s describing my life and why I\u2019m struggling here and doing all this. So I became a client in 1992.<\/p>\n Also during that time, something I\u2019m not very proud of but I tried a business outside of dentistry. Ironically, the word was going around that insurance companies were going to take over. There were going to be these closed panels. Some on this call may remember that. But closed panels that the people were going to assigned to dentists. Kind of like the talk that\u2019s going around today. In spite of all the mentors I had, I didn\u2019t listen and I tried something because I thought private practice wasn\u2019t going to be possible.<\/p>\n Well, I was wrong on both ends. But I learned a lot. I went on and I met through Frazer I met Lynn Carlisle and got exposed to the patient-centered practice and the health-centered practice. Got really fascinated and couldn\u2019t get enough information about it.<\/p>\n Then in 1998, I had a little health scare. I had a kidney failure. My kidneys were beginning to fail from heavy metals. I was mercury toxic. So I went through some things with that. In order to protect my health, first thing you know, I\u2019m doing things that people are looking for. They were looking for dentists who would remove mercury safely, so that\u2019s how I got into the holistic side of dentistry because it was strictly by accident.<\/p>\n The other mentor I had, the other person that really helped me a lot was Bill Strupp, down in Florida. He taught me how to deliver excellence at a real easy pace. He taught me a lot.<\/p>\n So I\u2019ve ended up in the holistic realm, the oral systemic connection has been\u2014and now it\u2019s becoming real popular. I\u2019ve been in this about 10 or 12 years, maybe even a little longer than that, well since \u201998. I see a lot of sick people. People who have illnesses, who are not happy with the medicine is taking care of them.<\/p>\n They’re tired of drugs so they start researching their problems and they start looking on the net, some of which is bad information. But they continually read that in order in for you to be healthy, you have to get your mouth healthy. No infected teeth. You have to get your mouth cleaned up. So that\u2019s who I see.<\/p>\n So they come and we tell them the whole story about their mouth. These people are health-oriented. They do everything. They value their oral health. They do everything that they can financially afford. Some takes time. We do a lot of staged dentistry, phased dentistry. I have developed through the years minimally invasive, progressively conservative, minimally invasive approach to dentistry. Which fits those people to a T. They don\u2019t want their teeth cut down. They want conservative dentistry. So I’ve done that.<\/p>\n I have an ad. Can I just read it to you?<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Because it\u2019s really, this ad brings more people into me than anything that I have. It comes from Simon Sinek\u2019s book Start With Why<\/em>. I said, \u201cIf you are a person who places a high value on your oral health, believes that the health of the mouth is intimately related to the health of the whole body, if looking for a dental practice that listens to you without judgment and will help you get what it is that\u2019s important to you and finally understands that excellence is a choice that\u2019s made each day. Then maybe we are a fit for you. We help people move toward wellness. We are aggressively conservative and practice minimally invasive dentistry.\u201d<\/p>\n I get a lot of people from that ad. I never thought I’d get people from that.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wonderful. Where do you put that ad, Mike?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I put it in, there\u2019s a magazine called Natural Awakening<\/em>. It\u2019s across the nation. They have franchises. Like there\u2019s a local franchise in New Orleans. The woman that runs it, she just sold, she\u2019s retired, but she became a patient. She said, \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of dentist I\u2019m looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s awesome. I never thought about doing that. Like that\u2019s almost like an ad you would look for a team member but you’re describing the patient that you want.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, without a doubt. Because Sinek, as most people know by now, people like to do business with people that believe what they do. And people like to work for people who believe what they do.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you interviewed my staff and asked them to list five of the most important things in their life, I bet you we would all have pretty close to the same thing. We all have the same values. So everything that I do, they buy in. They say, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s right.\u201d It\u2019s not like I\u2019ve got to convince them. So they buy into it.<\/p>\n That ad, I never thought I’d get people from the web but I get most patients now come from the web, come from that kind of ad. Pretty interesting.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love that. Thank you for sharing that.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So that\u2019s where I am. I\u2019m a little small practice in Slidell and we\u2019re still here. As I said, I\u2019ve tried to kill it through the years and it hasn\u2019t died. It just keeps going.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You haven’t tried hard enough.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve done some crazy things.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I wanted to ask you. We talked a little bit when we were getting ready for this call about the path you take your new patients through. Can you walk us through\u2014so obviously you’re targeting who you want to come in. So they’re already coming, or most of them, probably are coming wanting what you have and they know it\u2019s going to be different probably than what they’re used to. Can you share a little bit about your new patient process?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sure. Most of the patients who are coming for the holistic, what they think they’re coming for, they keep reading about they want to get mercury out of their mouth. They just keep reading that and they know about it. So they come in to get the fillings out. So I don\u2019t like prescription dentistry. Just do this, this, and this, and that\u2019s all I want. I don\u2019t like that. That doesn\u2019t enrich me. It doesn\u2019t feel like I\u2019m doing any good.<\/p>\n So we start a process, and I\u2019ll just tell you, we do a preclinical. I don\u2019t do like Bob Frazer. I took Bob Frazer\u2019s courses and I love what he has. It just didn\u2019t fit in me. So I don\u2019t do a three appointment. I do a two. I do a preclinical interview, a co-discovery exam, and then I do a review of findings at another visit. Does that make sense?<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, but you’re saying that the preclinical and the co-discovery are in the same appointment.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Correct.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay. Instead of three separate appointments, you have the preclinical and co-discovery together.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Correct. But it\u2019s a holy triad, I call it a holy triad. It\u2019s the one thing, if I could look back on my career, if people say, \u201cWhat\u2019s the one thing that you think created the most leverage in your life with your practice?\u201d It would be the holy triad: the preclinical interview, the co-discovery, and the review of findings. Nothing has come close to that in terms of building relationships, establishing trust. Well I\u2019ll just tell you about it if you want me to.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All right, Ryan, is that you?<\/p>\n Ryan:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s me. Dr. Robichaux, can you talk about the difference to you between your co-diagnosis and your review of findings appointment?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do right now.<\/p>\n Ryan:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I try to do good segues.<\/p>\n [Laughter]<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you so much for that.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, I\u2019m going to share that with you right now because that\u2019s important. After so many years of doing the preclinical interview at the chair because I never had any room in my office, my office was built in 1979. I don\u2019t have a consult room. So I had two hygiene rooms because I had two hygienists at one time.<\/p>\n Well nothing irritated me more than that with buzzers coming at me and I just thought, I converted one of the hygiene rooms, a part of the room into a consult room. I bought a table at Office Depot by myself. It had sloped glass on top. I put it together. I wanted a desk with nothing, no fingerprints on it, nothing but a monitor and a phone. Nothing on top of that desk. I got it. I did it.<\/p>\n So we go into this room and we\u2019re sitting and we\u2019re talking and the most powerful question I ask them at the beginning is, after we chitchat about the referral, how they got to me or whatever. I say, \u201cWell how can I help you? How can I help you?\u201d I don’t know what it is about that question but it just sets the tone and then they start talking. \u201cI got this. I want to do this. I\u2019ve got this health issue.\u201d<\/p>\n So I\u2019ll say after they\u2019ve finished, I know their chief concern and all that, I\u2019ll just say, like I told this young lady today, I said, \u201cBecca, talk to me about your teeth.\u201d They\u2019ll say, \u201cWell what do you mean?\u201d I said, \u201cWell if you lost your teeth, would you be upset?\u201d They said, \u201cOh, yeah.\u201d They go on. So when you’re 80 years old, she\u2019s 27, I said, \u201cBecca, when you\u2019re 80, what do you want for your mouth? What do you want to be like?\u201d<\/p>\n We could see them kind of thinking because that\u2019s a right brain exercise. A lot of people, especially dentists, or dental people, we\u2019re not good with the right brain. We\u2019re good on the left brain, you give the injection, you cut the tooth, you take the impression, you do all that. But the right brain, a lot of people struggle with that. They\u2019ll talk to me, \u201cI want to be able to eat.\u201d This and that. So I ask them the most important question at that point, I said, \u201cWell have you ever thought about why you want your teeth?\u201d<\/p>\n Some people can\u2019t go there. They can’t go to the right brain. But when they can, I literally can tell by looking at the movement of their head and the way they’re doing. They’re moving to the right brain and they\u2019re about to describe some emotional attachment to their teeth. One woman looked at me after she did that gyration with her head, she says, \u201cMy teeth are the diamonds of my body.\u201d I said, \u201cThank you very much.\u201d<\/p>\n Another woman said, \u201cI saw my grandmother put her teeth in a glass of water on the window sill every time I went to her house. I never want to do that.\u201d I said, \u201cThank you very much.\u201d<\/p>\n Another woman said, \u201cI have this fear I\u2019m going to go into the hospital to have surgery and they’re going to take my teeth from me and the door is going to be open and people are going to be walking by and coming in.\u201d She says, \u201cI just don\u2019t ever want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Another woman said, \u201cMy mother is 58 years old. I do not want to be like my mother.\u201d Well I just want you to know, and everybody on this phone, once they make that emotional contact with themselves\u2014I didn\u2019t do it, they did it\u2014once they connect to the emotional reasons about their teeth and why they want their teeth, they do everything. It\u2019s just like, \u201cI\u2019ve got to get out of the way because I might talk too much and I might interfere with what they want to do.\u201d I can talk them out of it if I\u2019m not careful.<\/p>\n But once they do that, they will hear everything about from the gums to the teeth and everything. They will do everything to get their mouth healthy. The trust factor goes up. They start telling me things about, gee, some of them talk about their love life and I\u2019m thinking oh my gosh. But they just start telling me. My wife says, \u201cWhy do they tell you all of these things?\u201d I say, \u201cI have no idea.\u201d But they just all of a sudden feel trusted. They feel trust.<\/p>\n We\u2019re about to go, the dental assistant is in there with me and she\u2019s writing notes. I don\u2019t write. Even though we\u2019re digital, she takes notes and then enters them into the computer later. She leaves and we do what\u2019s called the dreadful story. I was talking to somebody the other night from Pennsylvania. They thought the dreadful story didn\u2019t really fit right here. Do you know what the dreadful story is, Allison?<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The dreadful story, and I could send it to anybody on this call. I could email it to you. It\u2019s a PowerPoint. It\u2019s a story that I\u2019ve observed over 45 years in dentistry of how people lose their teeth. It\u2019s a story that we begin with the difference between a medical model and what they’re in.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll tell them, I say, you go to medicine today with doctors, people go when they have a problem. If you asked the doctor, how would you know if you were healthy, the doctor wouldn\u2019t know that. They wouldn\u2019t know what to say. They say, \u201cWell what\u2019s bothering you?\u201d So physicians, medicine today, is not interested in healthy. They’re interested in no disease. That\u2019s not the same thing.<\/p>\n Dentistry, I\u2019ll tell them that most dental care is delivered when something happens. They break a tooth. They get a filling or they get a crown. They get a root canal. They had a toothache, they get a root canal. They\u2019re shaking their head, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n So this is my opportunity to tell them, I say, \u201cWell what you\u2019ve entered into is a health-centered practice of dentistry. We focus on wellness.\u201d I said, \u201cWe actually have a health model that if you ask me how would I know if I was healthy dentally, I can tell you.\u201d So I bring up this picture. I got it from Mike Malone, if everybody knows Mike Malone at AACD. Schuster said he gave it to Mike Malone, I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t want to get into all of that.<\/p>\n [Laughter]<\/p>\n Anyway, I got this picture. It\u2019s a cross-section of a tooth: gum, bone, tooth, pulp, another tooth hitting it. I said, \u201cIf you could get your gums and the bone around your teeth free of infection and inflammation\u2026\u201d Then I take my finger and I go across the tooth, I said, \u201cIf you could make sure there were no openings in any tooth. Thirdly, if you could dissipate the forces throughout all the teeth and control those forces, you would be healthy. That would be a dental health. You would be healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n I show pictures. I have two young people in their 30s, 35, that are pictures of health. They\u2019ve got beautiful anatomy. The front tooth and the eye tooth are the same length. The lateral is a little shorter. The gums look like an orange peel. I\u2019m showing it to them. I\u2019m showing them what health is.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cThe good news is, you don\u2019t have to be like these people. You\u2019ve just got to move that way.\u201d So the conversation is so different than anything they\u2019ve ever had already. Then I go through it. I show them what plaque is. I show them decay. I show occlusal. I show an MOD and I show an MODFL. I show a root canal and a broken tooth. It\u2019s just this whole story on how we grind our teeth and then we lose back teeth. We lose all the teeth. I have a picture of somebody with no teeth.<\/p>\n I said at the end, like I told the lady today, I said, \u201cBecca, what we\u2019re going to do now is you’re in this story somewhere.\u201d She\u2019s shaking her head. \u201cYeah, I\u2019ve had five root canals.\u201d She\u2019s 27 years old. Started crying by the way. She said that I was the first dentist that listened to her. I had to go get Kleenex. I told my staff, I said, \u201cI did not make her cry.\u201d Because they look at me like I did that. I said, \u201cI did not do that.\u201d But I had to go get a Kleenex.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cBecca, we\u2019re going to go next door, we\u2019re going to go see, everybody I sit, sits where you are, is in this story. We\u2019re going to go see where you are. The game we\u2019re going to play is what would you be willing to do to stop the progression of this story? How does that sound?\u201d She says, \u201cGreat, let\u2019s go do it.\u201d So we go. That\u2019s where the preclinical interview is over. Ryan, that\u2019s the end of that.<\/p>\n Now we walk and the dental assistant is waiting at the door of the operatory. We go in. Before we lay them back\u2014this is a big moment right here\u2014I like it even before they put a bib on them because I want them to know what normal is. So I said, \u201cBecca, look straight ahead.\u201d She looked straight ahead.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cI want you to clinch your teeth as hard as you can but keep your face soft so I can’t tell.\u201d She did that. I said, \u201cHow much time during the day are you like that?\u201d She says, \u201cAll the time.\u201d I said, \u201cThat\u2019s not good. That\u2019s not going to help you get what you want.\u201d See I always go back to what it is that they want when they’re 80 years old.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cLet me show you what normal is.\u201d I get in front of her and I said, \u201cYour lips are touching, right?\u201d She said, \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re teeth are apart?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n I put my hand in front of her face and my hand is just kind of dangling there. I said, \u201cNow the tongue is like a sailboat on a pond in south Louisiana when there\u2019s no wind. There\u2019s no sail on the boat. There\u2019s no motor. The boat has no energy. I want you to experience that right now.\u201d Some people cannot do it. So I said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got homework.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t have time right now but there\u2019s a little exercise that we show them to help them do that. Maybe sometime if somebody wants to chat I could do it later. Then we go through the exam. We give them a mirror and we show them the gums. Show them what a probe looks like and how we\u2019re going to check the gums. I do the exam and bring them into it as much as we can.<\/p>\n At the end, I sit them up. I say, \u201cAs you can tell, you have some issues going on here. With your permission, I’d like to get a panoramic x-ray and maybe some few little close-ups.\u201d So we\u2019ll do that. I\u2019ll leave the room and I\u2019ll come back and we\u2019ll look at the x-ray together. We\u2019ll just chat a little bit.<\/p>\n Then I always try to have them have hope before they leave. I don\u2019t want them to leave feeling bad or depressed. I said, \u201cBecca, just so you know, there are a lot of people who would love to have your teeth. We tend to dwell on what\u2019s wrong but you\u2019ve got a lot of stuff that\u2019s good here.\u201d Oftentimes, I\u2019ll tell them, \u201cYour mouth is like an antebellum home. You’re like an antebellum home, your mouth is. Cyprus beams, cedar here and there. But you may need some little wiring and some plumbing here but you\u2019ve got good teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n One woman told me yesterday, she said I was the first dentist, she\u2019s 45, she said, \u201cYou\u2019re the first dentist that ever told me I had good teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, you have great teeth. You need some attention but you have great teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n It just changes the whole dynamics. So I tell them, \u201cYou\u2019ve got a little gum issue and you\u2019ve got some old stuff here. You\u2019ve got some issues with your bite. We\u2019re going to talk about that next time.\u201d So they’re leaving understanding that they have something. They don\u2019t know what it all means but they have that.<\/p>\n I personally take the photographs and I tell them, \u201cLook, I\u2019m 68 years old. I don\u2019t do anything that\u2019s not important.\u201d They look at me and I said, \u201cGets me in trouble at home, but over here, I don\u2019t do anything that\u2019s not important. This could be uncomfortable but it\u2019s very important.\u201d So we do that and they leave.<\/p>\n They always, always, always say, tell my dental assistant, \u201cI\u2019ve never been examined that way in my whole life.\u201d So they come back. Ryan, I\u2019m going on to something else now. I tell them that I\u2019m going to take these photographs and I\u2019m going to be alone with my notes and the x-rays and photographs. I said, \u201cI\u2019m going to get a sense of what\u2019s going on and come up with some kind of idea of where you can go with your mouth.\u201d They feel good about that. So they\u2019re coming back.<\/p>\n In south Louisiana, if you want to have a meaningful conversation with somebody, you go in the kitchen and you sit down and you get a cup of coffee and you talk to them. So that\u2019s my vision of when they’re coming back, we\u2019re going to have a talk. I bring coffee in there. I ask them if they want some, no, yes, or whatever, tea.<\/p>\n We sit and I tell them upfront that my intention today is to help you make good decisions. That\u2019s my intention is to give you enough information so that you can make a good decision. I say, \u201cI have no agenda here. One choice you\u2019ll always have is to do nothing. That\u2019s always a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n So we have these conversations. I\u2019m showing them and they’re seeing. The photographs, I\u2019m a big believer in photography. If anybody goes to my website, that\u2019s the kind of pictures we take. I don\u2019t like the intraoral camera. I like photography. It\u2019s self-explanatory. At the end, I ask them if they have any questions. I\u2019m kind of going through this real fast. I ask if they have any questions and they\u2019ll ask them and we\u2019ll talk. I said, \u201cDo you want to talk about the fee?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah, that would be good.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you did everything I present in the review of findings\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n If anybody wants the template for the review of findings, along with the dreadful story, I’d be happy to share that with you. I have a path that they go on: nonsurgical perio, the closings of all the openings in the teeth. Oftentimes they have to make a decision about their bite. Do we accept it and sleep with an orthotic? Do they do splint therapy? Do we find CR? Do they see an orthodontist? There\u2019s a little choice there.<\/p>\n I give them choices about failing root canals. You can extract or you can have it retreated. What would you like to do? The decisions they\u2019ve got to make. Then I give them a fee. I just give them an overall fee, a close guess as to what it would take. Just to close the openings and the periodontal part, the non-surgical perio, and the orthotic.<\/p>\n We get treatment plans anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000, $12,000. I had $12,000 the other day just doing minimally invasive\u2014Allison, you and I talked about the adhesive dentistry that we\u2019re doing know that\u2019s revolutionary. People are just\u2014and Dr. Wathen knows about that because they’re doing it at Baylor. It\u2019s just unbelievable. I think it\u2019s the whole process. I think it\u2019s the trust that occurs at that preclinical interview.<\/p>\n I think it goes back to the phone call when they call in and they meet Maureen or Mae. They go to the website, it\u2019s all congruent. What they felt they keep feeling throughout the whole way. So they all have the same experience. That\u2019s my goal: that everybody has the same experience. So if they refer somebody, they’re going to get the same experience. I think that\u2019s very important. So that\u2019s the holy triad. I hope that makes some sense.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That makes a lot of sense. Jill has a question.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can you hear me?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hi. This is all great. I totally agree with everything you’re saying. I just want to know what adhesion dentistry is. I\u2019m not up on that.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, my friend down here in Thibodaux, his name is Bruce LeBlanc from Thibodaux. So Robichaux, Thibodaux, and LeBlanc. You know where we are. He\u2019s come up with his own version. Adhesive dentistry is bonded dentistry. He coined the phrase maximized adhesive dentistry.<\/p>\n He has developed a technique that is the best technique I have ever seen in the 45 years that I\u2019ve been\u2014well we haven’t been doing bonding that long\u2014but we started doing bonding in \u201972. We were using Nuva Light back then. So adhesive dentistry is minimally invasive dentistry is what it is.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, rather than composite.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Correct. It\u2019s the adhesion part. You know how it is, you prepare the tooth. We bond, we prepare the tooth to receive the restoration.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sure.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well it\u2019s the adhesive dentistry, that first part, that adhesion to the tooth, then the restoration adheres to the tooth where there\u2019s no separation. So that\u2019s what it\u2019s called.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay. I guess I was just confused. I guess I\u2019ve always heard it as resin or composite or bonding.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Correct. This is like another level that\u2019s never been achieved. To my knowledge, I don\u2019t think anybody has ever gotten it this tight and this powerful. You can go to my website and see some of the results that we\u2019re getting.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All right.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thanks, Jill. Thank you for asking. It is pretty incredible. I\u2019ve been talking to Mike a little bit about this because this seems to be\u2014I know in my life when something shows up\u2014you know, like if someone recommends a book to me once, I go, \u201cOh, yeah, that\u2019s nice.\u201d Then if someone recommends a book again, this is how adhesive dentistry is coming up for me. Like I hear it and I go, \u201cOh, yeah, that\u2019s nice.\u201d Then I hear it again and then it\u2019s like, \u201cMaybe I better pay attention.\u201d<\/p>\n Then I have another conversation and it\u2019s like, \u201cMaybe I need to take some courses or learn how to do this\u201d because now all of a sudden I have patients showing up who I\u2019m going, \u201cYou know what? What Mike is talking about would work better for this patient.\u201d Or they can’t afford to do a full mouth of crowns or whatever. There\u2019s just so many opportunities.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s nice to know as a hygienist. I mean, I have not been a dental assistant in 17 years. So it\u2019s nice to know as a hygienist so you can kind of get the idea of what to suggest to your hygiene patients for the doctor, know and understand that part. So I\u2019m coming at it from a hygienist point of view. I\u2019m not a dentist, but\u2026<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My hygienist is so proud to see people coming in and being able to talk to them because the resistance over 45 years of getting people to let me cut their teeth down inherently, intuitively they felt that they didn\u2019t want to do that. If you, once again, I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you go to my website, especially some of the anterior composites on this one lady that had bullet holes between her teeth. The way she looks now four and a half years later looks exactly the same as when we did it.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s life changing for the dentist, the staff, and the patients. It\u2019s just been a remarkable thing.<\/p>\n Jill:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amen. Thank you.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you. Good question.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you for the question. So how long do you schedule for your new patients to do the preclinical and the co-diagnosis both in one day?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We give them a little bit more than an hour. One of the things at this stage in my life because I really am practicing because I want to practice, but you have to make a living or your practice can’t go. So I tend to be a little looser with time than my younger days where I just packed everything in. So I will spend maybe 30 to 40 minutes, sometimes 50 minutes, depends.<\/p>\n Like the preclinical interview today with the 27-year-old went on for a long time. She started crying because she was very ill and very ill as a young woman. She cried because I started connecting her symptoms and everything to the things that could be going on in her mouth and nutrition. We had a nice conversation. So we spent an inordinate about of time with her. But to me, if that\u2019s all we did, that would be fine. I mean if all we did was the preclinical. We give a little bit more than an hour.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You get a lot done in that time.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It flows beautifully. My staff, I mean, we don\u2019t take 24 x-rays like we used to do. We do a pan and bite wings, maybe some periapicals of root canaled teeth if I\u2019m not sure. So we\u2019re not doing the full mouth like we used to. We\u2019re not spending a lot of time with that. We don\u2019t have to, DEXIS develops immediately, I mean it\u2019s digital.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What is your thought about, tell me what your, like not doing an FMX or doing a pano instead. What is your philosophy there?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well, the majority of my patients are very resistant to radiation. They’re just very resistant. The Planmeca that we have is a pretty awesome machine. My periodontist still takes 24 periapicals. I just, I feel fine to be honest with you. Are we missing something? Possibly, yeah.<\/p>\n Sometimes we\u2019ll do periapicals of the upper, lower, and anteriors if the spine is in there. If there\u2019s some question on a tooth, we\u2019ll do a close-up. But the DEXIS software, it\u2019s pretty good. I mean, could we do both and do better? Probably. I just don\u2019t know, well, the patients just resist it so much. I mean, they really do. So I don\u2019t have a good answer for that.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That makes sense. It all makes sense. I mean, if you feel like you\u2019re seeing everything you need to and it\u2019s working for you.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We have not had any catastrophic misses. I have a hygienist, Jill, I have a hygienist, she cleans but she\u2019s looking for openings in teeth and she\u2019s feeling. We do, I don\u2019t want to say a lot, but we do significant amounts of i-CATs. We have an endodontist in our parish that allows us to use, they charge us $100 per patient. And BeamReaders is a group of radiologists across the country that reads it. They charge $100.<\/p>\n So for $200, if we\u2019re concerned there\u2019s a lot of root canals and we want to make sure there are no infections, somebody is going to have a knee replaced and the surgeon says, \u201cWe have to know if there\u2019s any infections,\u201d we do an i-CAT. The radiologist said, \u201cI want to know if there\u2019s any infection in the maxilla or mandible or anywhere.\u201d They do that and they come back, say, \u201cNo, all root canals are working. The bones around.\u201d The lamina dura is there. You’re all good to go. So that\u2019s what I do. That\u2019s where I’ve come to, I\u2019ve evolved to here.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I guess the part I have a question about was I really enjoyed your\u2014and I would like, however you want to do it, Mike. If you want to send me a copy of the template and the dreadful story, I can distribute it if you guys want to email me.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That would be great because I wouldn\u2019t have to\u2026<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And you wouldn\u2019t have to do it, yeah.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. I send it by what\u2019s called Hightail. It\u2019s like Dropbox. It\u2019s the old YouSendIt, it goes real quick. I mean it just goes and you can download it and then you can send it to wherever you want.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Okay. So when you say no openings in teeth, no holes in teeth, are you talking about open margins and decay and\u2026<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about when I do that\u2014when you get that template you\u2019ll see that piece that came from Mike Malone. It\u2019s a tooth in there, two teeth hitting each other. The one tooth is dissected and bisected and I\u2019m looking at the pulp and I run my finger and I said, \u201cThere are bacteria in our mouths who get up in the morning or get up at night, whenever they go to work. They get their lunch bucket and their job is to get inside this pulp. To this pulp.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ll point to the pulp. I said, \u201cThey’re trying to kill that pulp. That\u2019s what they do. They are relentless. They are looking for a crack, an opening.\u201d I said, \u201cIn the health model, there can be no way for bacteria to get into the pulp.\u201d That\u2019s my thought. So that means a crack. It means an old filling. It means a bonding, debonding. It means an open margin.<\/p>\n Today, I know I\u2019m archaic, but Bill Strupp taught me 25 years ago that he felt that eugenol, and I\u2019m not sure that I still don\u2019t believe that. I do believe it today. That it inhibits the set of the composite of the adhesion. So I still use zinc phosphate cement. I have the patient come back from the endodontist, I take the plug out. I ask the endodontist to let me do that. We micro-etch it, we sterilize it, we bleach, and I put a little zinc phosphate plugs on the gutta-percha.<\/p>\n So there\u2019s no eugenol in that chamber at all. Then I go through with adhesive dentistry. I put the things in and then I fill that chamber and I close that chamber. I tell the patient, \u201cIf the crown is good,\u201d I said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to meet the bug that\u2019s going to get through all this.\u201d I said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to meet him.\u201d<\/p>\n Like I did today, I actually bonded the restoration to the all porcelain crown. I used hydrofluoric acid and that tooth is sealed. I said, \u201cThe number one reason this root canal will fail is if bacteria get under this crown and through this hole.\u201d I said, \u201cIt ain\u2019t coming through this hole. I\u2019m just telling you.\u201d They know when I\u2019m finished it\u2019s not coming through because we take our time. Any crown, anything, if there\u2019s a crown with like a red ring around it, I\u2019m thinking, and it\u2019s been in there a while. I’m thinking the margin is probably failing and the bacteria is getting underneath there.<\/p>\n So I may replace things quicker than other people but the adhesive dentistry protocol that we\u2019re using now, if we\u2019re not too late, teeth don\u2019t die. The number of root canals over the last 20 years when I started with Bill Strupp with scrubbing and sterilizing, we\u2019ve reduced the number of root canals in my practice 90 percent. I bought all that equipment to do them and I hardly do a root canal. I refer now molars because I can’t find the fourth canal in those upper molars.<\/p>\n The number of, I mean, we take teeth that I promise you 90 percent of the dentists would say, maybe 95 would say, \u201cYou need to do a root canal here.\u201d As long as they’re not having to walk on the floor with a toothache, that\u2019s a little late. But if they’re just sensitive or they can’t chew on it. I mean, we\u2019ve had pulp exposures, we\u2019ve opened them up a little bit. Ultradent has what\u2019s called Ultra-Blend Plus. We cap the pulps with that and then do that adhesive dentistry. Teeth are not dying.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t crown root canal teeth anymore. I don\u2019t crown root canal teeth. We can cusp but we do not cut teeth down to make them stronger any more. The endodontists, they get nervous, I said, \u201cJust trust me on this one. It\u2019s going to be okay. This stuff works.\u201d We don\u2019t crown teeth. I mean, how many root canaled teeth do you see come in with the crown in their hand and the tooth is in the crown and broken off at the gum line. I don\u2019t do that anymore. There\u2019s a lot of stuff I don\u2019t do but that\u2019s just where we are.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So interesting.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m sure a lot of people are saying, \u201cThis guy has lost it.\u201d<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think it\u2019s very interesting. We have a guy in our study club, I told you that I might invite him to come be on the forum but he\u2019s definitely thinking along these lines.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Good.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think I shared with you, we just got back from Spear.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Frank is a perio prof guy. Greg Kinzer took over his practice probably close to 20 years ago now and Greg was talking about, he called it \u201cminimally destructive dentistry.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Correct. Yeah, I heard you say that the other day.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah. He was talking about doing a lot of stuff in composite.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What\u2019s his name? From South America? I think he was from South America. One of the great composite guys. I mean, magical. He said that the greater the tooth structure remaining, the better the prognosis. I really believe that. Especially if you go to my website and you see that woman that had the punched holes between the mesial and the distals and all the centrals, laterals. Thinking about cutting that beautiful enamel away. We saved that. Prognosis just incredible. It\u2019s just incredible. So I feel real good about that.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know the Mone brothers. I saw them a couple years ago.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s who I\u2019m thinking about. I forget who told me about them, they quoted them.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They were doing a lot of composite and a lot of\u2014I mean, it was very interesting and very beautiful. Do you do any indirect or is it all direct?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The only crowns I do pretty much are teeth that have crowns that have failed and implant crowns. But in terms of restoring teeth, we\u2019re in Louisiana. We\u2019re one of the poorest states, if not the poorest state in the nation. The odds of me doing 28 teeth so small, I spent my whole career frustrated that I wasn\u2019t doing what I was learning. The full mouth reconstructions and whatnot. Patients just couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n I felt I had the behavioral skills but when you start talking about something that\u2019s half of their income for a year to fix their teeth or equal to their income, it doesn\u2019t work very well. So I\u2019ve been frustrated most of my career but now if I could just share one thing what I\u2019ve come to in terms of the most important thing that I think we can do for another human being, as a dentist, is to help them stop their mouth from deteriorating.<\/p>\n Forget about reconstruction and all of that. When we look at people and I\u2019ve got slides of\u2014I\u2019ve got two, a husband and a wife, they probably spent $150,000 of repaired dentistry in their mouth. And their mouths are wrecks right now. Implants failing. Root canals failing. It\u2019s just, something happened over here, somebody did that. Somebody over here, they did that. They never experienced a disease free, stable mouth. How do you get that? So that\u2019s what I take the most complex cases and I said, \u201cWe have to stop this mouth from deteriorating. We don\u2019t need to call the carpenter. We need to call the fireman.\u201d<\/p>\n So we begin with no inflammation, no infection in the gums or bone. So we extract teeth that can’t be saved. We retreat them if they have to be retreated. We do periodontal root planing or whatever it takes, grafting, I refer almost everything now. But whatever it takes to get those gums healthy and free of disease. The bone, free of disease. That\u2019s number one.<\/p>\n The second thing is we go through the mouth and we close all the openings. If they have a bunch of crowns and they can’t afford to do a lot, we might put temporaries on there. We make nice temporaries. But most of what we\u2019re doing is adhesive dentistry. We\u2019re just building teeth from the inside out. We call them a build out. We\u2019re building them.<\/p>\n So when we finish, we go through by quadrants. We might spend a whole morning and do four or five teeth. May take an hour per tooth. The fees are good. We\u2019re getting really good fees. We tell them, \u201cIt\u2019s a whole lot less than a crown.\u201d Although our fees are approaching a crown. But I said, \u201cIt\u2019s not as cheap as a filling or if you just had a filling down. It\u2019s not a filling and it\u2019s not a crown, it\u2019s in between.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019re doing most of the build ups or build outs of the teeth. All of a sudden, their gums get healthy. The teeth are closed. They\u2019re tough too, these composites. I\u2019ve never had a catastrophic failure. I\u2019ve had chips, little chips come out of it. But I\u2019ve never had a catastrophic failure.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t get like decay getting underneath them or anything like that?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, well, I am a human being, so I\u2019m not perfect. But with the use of the technology, the bands that we use, we\u2019re getting adhesion to the tooth like we\u2019ve never gotten it before. So a lot of what we\u2019re seeing where composites are catastrophically failing or teeth are abscessing because there\u2019s no bond, we don\u2019t even come close to that. But we\u2019re not getting any catastrophic failures like fractures of these huge composites.<\/p>\n Once again, on my website, with teeth flat to the gum line we can build them. We can build them up and they’ve still been in there. I must have 15 of those and the oldest one is like two years. There\u2019s been no signs of any leakage, or breakage, or anything on those things. I feel very confident.<\/p>\n Anyway, so we go through, the gums get real pink and healthy, as best we can do and they can do. There\u2019s no infections. The teeth are all closed and we make them a bite appliance. We just stay. And we stay with them. We check in on them at a recare visit. We tell them, \u201cYou may need more dentistry later on. You may need to deal with the bite or whatnot.\u201d But what we\u2019re finding is that the mouths have stopped deteriorating.<\/p>\n They’re coming in recare visits and some of these people are a little older. I said, \u201cAre you aware that you’re not going to lose your teeth?\u201d They look at me, they said, \u201cI am, I\u2019m not?\u201d I said, \u201cNo, you’re not going to lose your teeth. Your mouth is younger than you are.\u201d I said, \u201cWhen we met you, your mouth was older than you are. We have some very young people who have elderly mouths. We have some very elderly people who have youthful mouths.\u201d<\/p>\n I said, \u201cYour mouth is younger than you. Your mouth is not deteriorating. You have no disease. All your investment is paying off. You should see their face, it\u2019s almost like they’re floating out of the chair.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s making me float right now.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They’re so excited.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love that.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s just like a burden off their shoulders. I said, \u201cNo, all that time and energy and money you spent, you’re getting the dividends now. You may get something that might have to be replaced. You might get some cavities.\u201d I tell them on those composites. I said, \u201cIf we can just hold your teeth together for 10, 15, 20 years,\u201d I think they\u2019ll last 20 years, maybe longer.<\/p>\n I said, \u201cAnd something starts to fail, you can replace this. There will be some better materials. Better than what we have and your teeth will still be alive and you\u2019ll have teeth to work with.\u201d So that\u2019s where we are right now. I know it\u2019s kind of crazy. But it\u2019s the most fun I\u2019ve had in a long time in dentistry because it\u2019s just\u2026<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do you think what\u2019s allowing that is the number one, it\u2019s the adhesion techniques. I know that Dr. LeBlanc\u2019s technique is different. I don\u2019t know it. I can’t wait to learn it. Is it the composite material?<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well the nanohybrids combined with the adhesion now we\u2019re getting is just off the chart. I\u2019m telling you, I got teeth that just as far as virtually no tooth left, we\u2019re adhering to what\u2019s left. Some of them I use pins, I still use pins occasionally on the real flat ones. But there\u2019s a band, I think I told you about the Greater Curve Band. It\u2019s called greatercurve.com that this guy from Indiana\u2014if I ever met him, I\u2019m going to kiss him on the mouth. I\u2019m probably going to get punched in the face but I\u2019m going to kiss him on the mouth because he has just made my life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a band. It\u2019s the Tofflemire holder with a band that is tapered. When it\u2019s put around the tooth, the tighter the band goes, the more it grabs the neck of the tooth. So more often than not, we\u2019re not using wedges. Then the top part of the band is flaring out towards the contact area. But as I mentioned to you, if anybody tries that, you have to turn the Tofflemire upside down.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the exact opposite of the way we used to do it. Because when it\u2019s upside down, it tightens the neck of the tooth even better. Then the techniques that we\u2019re using\u2014there\u2019s no voids anymore. We don\u2019t have any voids. We don\u2019t have any openings anywhere. It\u2019s just one solid bonded tooth restoration with no separation at all. It\u2019s remarkable, just remarkable.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you so much.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Guess we\u2019re running out of time.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We are running out of time.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought we weren’t going to have enough to talk about.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh yeah, we could go on for a little bit longer. Do you want to give, I don’t know if anybody might want to contact you to ask questions about the courses. I know that you and Dr. LeBlanc teach some courses about the adhesion. I am happy to have you send me, I can send you an email. If we can get it to go through. We were having trouble last night. But the template, the dreadful story, and there was something else that you mentioned that I actually wanted to get from you.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I definitely can send you that.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can send that to me and then I can distribute it with your permission which you\u2019ve already given.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, absolutely. The template, I have one that I have as a gift. It doesn\u2019t have my name on it or anything. You can put your name on each. I created a little logo at the bottom of my slides I use in my lecture but I put it on my\u2014I give it to them to take home. I created some little flash drives and I copy it. I give it to them with their x-rays on, so they have their records and they have their photographs. They go home and they talk to their spouse or whatever. But I could send, I have the template and the dreadful story. It\u2019s a gift because it\u2019s not my name on it. You don\u2019t have to go through taking all that off of there.<\/p>\n You know, anybody that uses it might say, \u201cLook I can get better slides than these\u201d and make your own. The dreadful story is one of the most powerful things to get people to understand what we\u2019re trying to do here and what\u2019s happening to them. I don\u2019t know how I could say it enough but if you think of that third thing, just let me know. I\u2019ll send you anything. Everything I got I got from somebody else, that fellow Wathen.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think I\u2019ve heard the fire and the carpenter story from Wathen.<\/p>\n Mike:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That\u2019s where I got it from. I have pictures of fireman and carpenters. So I don\u2019t call the carpenters first, I call the fireman.<\/p>\n Allison:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, I like that. Thank you so much, Mike. We\u2019ve enjoyed you thoroughly.<\/p>\n Thanks for listening to Practicing with the Masters<\/em> for dentists, with your host, Dr. Allison Watts. For more about how Allison Watts and Transformational Practices can help you create a successful and fulfilling practice and life, visit transformationalpractices.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/div> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week, I am excited to welcome Dr. Mike Robichaux to the show. Dr. Robichaux has been practicing dentistry in Slidell, Louisiana since 1974. He has created a unique, holistic, biologic approach to dentistry, where he invites his patients to participate in\u00a0all decisions that must be made to develop an appropriate treatment plan. After nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[303],"tags":[309,305,304,307],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Allison's-Button\"](\"https:\/\/res.cloudinary.com\/transformational-practices-llc\/images\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1587010383\/Allisons-Button\/Allisons-Button.jpg?_i=AA)
<\/a><\/p>\nCreating a Holistic Practice with Dr. Mike Robichaux<\/h3>\n
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