Episode 47 | Ethan Edminsten | The Shocking Link Between Your Mouth and Your Health

In this episode of the Rain Brings Growth Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Ethan Edminsten, dentist and owner of Caldwell Dentistry Co. in Caldwell, Idaho.

Ethan shares the story of his childhood growing up homeschooled and moving across different states before eventually deciding as a teenager that dentistry was the career he wanted to pursue. We dive into what dental school is really like, including the intense education most people never hear about such as cadaver work and the deep understanding dentists must have of the human body.

We also talk about how oral health impacts the entire body, something many people overlook when thinking about their overall health.

This conversation tackles some of the most talked-about dental topics including:

• Fluoride and whether it is good or bad
• The truth about flossing
• Electric toothbrush vs manual toothbrush
• How oral health connects to overall health
• The reality of dental school and medical training

Ethan also opens up about something many people don’t realize about dentistry: the mental toll the profession can take. Dentistry is often feared or disliked by patients, and we discuss how he approaches patient care differently by building genuine relationships and making people feel comfortable instead of just treating them like another number.

Outside of dentistry, Ethan is stepping into a brand new chapter of life as a father, and we talk about family, hunting, archery, and balancing career with being present at home.

If you have ever wondered what dentists really think about flossing, fluoride, oral health, and dental care, this episode gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the profession and the person behind the chair.

Full Episode 47 of the Rain Brings Growth Podcast is now available.

Listen on
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Topics Covered

Dentistry and dental school
Cadaver training in medical school
Fluoride debate
Flossing and electric toothbrushes
Oral health and whole body health
Mental health in dentistry
Building trust with patients
Fatherhood and family life
Hunting and archery

Connect with Dr. Ethan Edminsten

Caldwell Dentistry Co.
Caldwell, Idaho

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:28

That's what's cool. It's like a lot of people haven't been on a podcast before, and I'll give them the opportunity to. And everybody's got like little nuggets that they can share with the world. And everybody's got a story, even though if they don't think it's a a cool one. I got a my buddy that runs the Wild Chaos podcast. He says the same thing as me every time. It's like you talk to someone and they're like, I don't have a story, and then you start talking to them. You're like, what the heck, dude? You don't think you have a story? But I guess if that's like all you've lived, that's all you know. So yeah. But yeah, dude. So yeah, it's funny how I think I met a lot of people for the first time that that Halloween. Um that we were like trigger trading and stuff, but I was just blasted drunk. So I don't remember too much of it. But um unfortunately, that was the first time I think we met.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

And then when you had the orange suspenders on in the bow tie?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

No, no, I wasn't drunk on that one. Oh, okay. Different helmets. No, I I did a fire in the front yard. I think I was just going back and forth to your fire, and yeah, and I was just drinking Coors Light. Yeah, I was rough. But yeah, it's funny. Now uh now you go in my mouth because you're my dentist.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Did it honestly some of the the people that I am like closest friends with now, I am friends because they were my patient first. Oh, really? Like it's an astounding number of people that I'm friends with that I see as patients.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

That's funny. Yeah. Well, I guess that's one way to get to know someone, right? Yeah. Yeah. Did you uh did you always think you're gonna be a dentist?

SPEAKER_01 1:59

I had kind of a weird uh a weird foray into dentistry. I had really, really jacked up teeth. Everything was crooked. Um, I had a really bad overbite, um like just buck teeth. I could have eaten eaten watermelon through a barbed wire. Uh we moved, I'm from Oklahoma originally, but when we moved to Montana, um, we went to an orthodontist that was like two and a half hours from us, and he put this appliance in my mouth that like holds your jaw forward and lets the you can it works really well with with boys and girls, but when you can get boys when they're around 10 to 11, when they hit that testosterone growth spurt and their skeletal structure, it really helps like use their own growth to modify the the jaw placement. So that really helped a lot. So I did that for a year and then then I had braces for a year when we moved to Nevada, and um I just liked how my teeth looked and I was intrigued by it. And then uh yeah, as time went on, I would go with my my uh siblings, they ended up with braces too. Actually, all of us, all four of us did. And um, that's kind of what piqued my interest. I thought I wanted to be an orthodontist when I first started. And then as time went on, I started shadowing. You shadow a lot of people. Um, when you're in college, actually, I started in high school um with a family friend of ours that let me come into his office, and he was actually kind of a um an old school guy that did his own gold work in his lab below his office, and he would do these full mouth rehabilitation uh cases with gold. It was absolutely absurd, like the amount of work that goes into it. He would wax up all of the restorations by hand and then cast them in gold and then cement them into the mouth and and basically put people's mouths back together with gold. Jeez. Um yeah, and that's kind of a lost art for sure. But um, I kind of a couple times after shadowing was like, I don't think I want to do this. And then the orthodontic side, as I started learning about general practice versus specializing, um, when you get to dental school, if you're interested in specializing, you really need to maintain um a high GPA. You need to be in the top five to ten percent, maybe fifteen percent of your class, depending on what specialty you go to. And uh I just honestly got my shit rocked when I got to school. I I really struggled the first year. Actually, that was when I started really getting getting into uh working out a lot, and I was in a calorie deficit in the first semester of my dental school and I was working out after work after school every day. I was only taking in like 1800 calories, 1700 calories a day, and I should not have been doing that. I got put on academic probation after my first semester because I just I got a D in a class that was like eight credit hours and um yeah, so I knew anyway, long story short, I did not maintain the interest or the class standing to specialize. Towards the end of it, I actually thought maybe I would want to do um attempt at getting into oral surgery residency. I was kind of getting a little disenfranchised with how the clinic at my dental school was ran. And I was like, man, I don't know if I want to just like crank out feelings every day for the rest of my life. And it um they really don't they really don't instruct you a lot on anything past basic dental work in school. So for a while I entertained that idea and ended up doing a general practice residency at a hospital. And uh it was a big level one trauma center in Nebraska, which was cool. I worked at the same hospital as my wife at the time and uh did that for a year, learned a lot. Um, so that's kind of like the dental, the dental background. I didn't I never really strayed from about 16 years old on, is kind of what I assumed I was gonna do. My dad didn't want me to be in law enforcement, and he just finished a 35-year career. It was kind of funny when we were talking about law enforcement. He was like, I don't want you to be a cop, and I called him a couple weeks ago and I was like, I don't know if you realize this, but cops and dentists are in the same group as opposed to medical doctors and firefighters. Like everybody loves doctors and firefighters, and they hate dentists and they hate cops. And I was like, I just picked the same route, just a different, longer path towards being hated by the general public.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Jeez, yeah, that's crazy, man. So let's like go all the way back. Then you're from Oklahoma, then is where you grew up.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Yeah, we left there when I was 10. Those are kind of where I really consider my roots to be like all of my extended families there. In Oklahoma. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

What is there in Oklahoma, man? I feel like there's not much there. I don't know much about it, but it feels like it's just uh big farming state. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

There's a lot of agriculture. Oklahoma is very interesting in that the entire eastern half of the state is all Native American land. Um, and so it was actually never supposed to be settled, as far as I concerned. If there's history nerds, I'll be corrected. But essentially that was gonna be the in the Indian territories when all the the civilized tribes, the five tribes were moved uh from Georgia and Alabama on the Trail of Tears, they were gonna go to Oklahoma, and that was gonna be where they they lived, and then we just gave the land away as time went on um to uh to settlers. That's why it's called the Sooner State, because they would do these land runs and basically people could uh line up at a starting point and go stake a claim of land, and then these Sooners were the people that would sneak out beforehand and stake claims where they wanted their house to be behind like before the race started. So Oklahoma has uh it's got a bunch of different like geographical biomes. I would say like southwest Oklahoma is where the Wichita Mountains are. Um it is uh it looks like it did in the 1800s. There's elk there, there's um a small herd of elk. They do have buff buffalo. Um the northeast side um has a lot of red dirt, kind of like Georgia, like when people talk about red dirt, but red dirt music is actually from Oklahoma. So like a lot of those red dirt bands are from Stillwater, Oklahoma. That's where that started. Um there's a big army base down in Lawton, that's where everybody that learns field artillery they go down there to to Lawton to learn to shoot, shoot the howitzers. Right on.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

So is your whole family then they still down there?

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Uh everybody but my immediate family. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. You guys ever go back? Yeah, we go a lot. Yeah. Yeah. My grandma still lives there. My grandpa passed away this last year, and um, she still lives on the big, they have, I think it's 40 acres, 80, 40 acres of farmland that they still have, big old barn behind it.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Oh, nice. Yeah. Was there to do what did you do as a kid there living in Oklahoma?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

We my dad rode so we had horses, uh roping horses. Um we kind of grew up outside the city limits and everything was cowboys and Indians and no shoes, and just we were constantly outside. So we were homeschooled and um we'd finish our finish our school work and play outside. We we didn't really we're never inside at all.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

How'd you like the homeschooling back then? Because I think homeschooling back in like what was that probably the 90s then we're about the same age, right? So that was actually like different than homeschooling now. But what is uh how did you like it growing up?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

I think the homeschooling aspect of it was was stellar. I I feel really fortunate. My my mom um actually has a um uh animal science degree. Um, so she's a huge science nerd. Um spent a lot of time and a lot of energy pouring herself into our education and selecting. Um there was already like different curriculums that we could you can pick from, and she would always just kind of pick and choose, and like she would like the science from this one, or she'd like the reading and math from this one. And so she just kind of put it all together as time went by. Um, we had a homeschool co-op every Friday that we'd go to to hang out with other kids and stuff that um and those were by that was our friend group growing up as people that we we homeschooled with.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Oh, that's cool. Did you did you do that all through when you lay as moved too? I never I never went to public school. Dang, and you seem like you're all right and you're normal. You don't seem like you're a weirdo.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

What's up with that? I think uh actually again, I have this conversation a lot because in the dental office I have no choice but to be I'm I'm an extrovert by nature, but I have no choice but to be able to converse with people. Um, I you can really get into the weeds about socialization of children and where we learn like peer-to-peer versus peers and our parents and like where that that tribe comes that really helps us like become who we are. Um, I actually think that homeschoolers as a whole are probably better suited as adults by the time they get to adulthood, as a vast majority of them, uh, than a lot of public school kids are. One of the one of the funny things is when we were younger, uh when we would when we would move to a new spot, um, we'd always get involved in church. We'd go over to somebody's house for dinner and and we would sit at the kitchen table after dinner hanging out and talking with the adults in the at the house that we're at, and their kids would be off playing on their phones or you know, just sitting on the couch, nothing to say. And and so that became kind of like a running joke in our family was oh the homeschoolers don't know how to interact. And I actually I think that it's a pretty small group of people that have gotten a really bad rap for homeschooling.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah, I was just listening to the Wild Chaos one too, and he was he interviewed his daughter and and she's been homeschooled for like last six years or something. I think she's a senior now, but yeah, that's what she was saying too, is that she can like actually converse with other adults and carry on a conversation where the public school kids like they can't, they can't do these like social, it's like they don't have the social cues now.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah, it's it really kind of makes people I think you kind of have to look inward a little bit and go, where do we expect um the term socialization to come from? You're expecting somebody else to do it for you, like where does that responsibility lie? And I think that homeschoolers, as a general rule, like kind of have that like rugged individualist mentality that like nobody else is gonna do it for us, so therefore we have to prepare our kids for the world, for the world. Um, so I think that's kind of where that comes from, is because there's so much responsibility that's just innately on that family unit that really helps push that. And that's not saying that there's public school kids that can't public like the vast majority of of successful people in this world went to public school, maybe private school. And so uh I think that because maybe homeschooling is not the norm, it's becoming much more so these days. But especially after COVID, yeah. A lot of people say we're doing it already, so why won't why send them back?

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Well, I think what did it for us? We pulled our kids and did homeschool, and then they went back to public school this year, but we're pulling them again next year. They've already got enrolled into like a public charter school. But it's like a hybrid meth. I don't know, it's like I don't even know exactly what it is, but I pull them out at public school because they went back this year and they're just jerks. But um the your kids were, yeah, yeah. So, and it's just around like the oh man, the other kids that you're around them with, you're like, you want them to socialize with these kids? These kids are freaking jerks. Why would I want my kids to be socializing with them? But I think what did it for us too is like during COVID, we're like they would get their assignments done in two hours. What do you do on the rest of your six hours of the day? Yeah, why do you have homework?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, that's like the biggest thing for me. I I if there was a bullet I dodged being homeschooled, it was I felt so bad for my friends. They'd be like, I can't hang out this weekend because I have homework to do. And I'm like, why, dude? Like, you're in school five days a week for eight hours a day.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Like what and it's just they're teaching you like so much stuff you really don't even need, like and not teaching you the stuff that you do need.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yeah, nobody knows how to do their taxes, nobody even knows what taxes are. Or who the hell is this FICA guy? You know? Why is he taking all my money? Why is he taking my money? Yeah, yeah. Dang, I agree. Yeah, it's interesting though. I think there is a big shift from the public school to the homeschool. Like, and I even went down a rabbit hole the other day and I went to the Almighty Chat GPT, and I was like, which one, which kids are more successful nowadays? The public school kids or the private or the homeschool ones? And they're like, Well, like you said, like there's outliers in both, but it seems like more people are wanting to actually hire the homeschool kids because they can think by themselves, they can actually problem solve better. Yeah, so they're like looking at these things more than just a high school diploma or whatever, because you can still get your high school stuff, but it's not like I got a GED, so I can get a scholarship. Yeah, yeah. So, but their their critical thinking skills are completely different.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah, I feel like in the education system, uh, they really there's a lot so much focus on taking tests and performing on tests, and that's where when I got to college, I really feel like I struggled with test taking. Like I'm trying to learn all of this information like I did in high school and in middle school. Um, and I can understand these concepts. But if you're asking me like, you know, a multiple choice question and I have to pick the one thing or fill in the blanks on these uh these standardized exams that I took, it's like I that was not my strong suit. And like I can still nerd out and talk about photosynthesis from my biology degree because I learned it, but I did not like taking tests, and dental school was even worse.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah, well, it's like they're just teaching you to cram all this information so that you can pass your test, and then like the retention after it, you have to like dump. Yeah, dump it. You're just learning so that you could take a test, but it's not actually like the retention part of it is is out of there. Yeah. So after you what made you guys leave Oklahoma then?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Uh my dad was in law enforcement uh with uh Oklahoma City Police Department for a long time. He was a uh patrol officer and then school resource officer and then went to a detective unit for child abuse and sex crimes. Um so he he was in that for quite a while.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Um I hear that that unit like really messes with people's mind. Like he won't be in that unit for like a couple years.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yeah, I he he would say that his his moments were like it made it worth it were just seeing horrible people break down when they realized how how deep they were. You're like, you got you're done. You're going to you're going to prison.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

And so that brought about you know some peace from it, but you can't unsee it. Yeah. Um he ended up going to the uh Bureau of Indian Affairs, so uh as a detective and assigned to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. That's how we left. So we'd moved literally like a three-day straight drive from Oklahoma. I was 10. Um, I have three younger siblings. My uh the youngest was uh four months old, something like that, four or five months old, and we just trooped across the freaking country and moved just south of the Canadian border and uh lived on the Indian reservation for three months, um, trying to buy a house. We didn't know how long we were gonna be there. And um it was kind of funny. My my dad moved up, we moved up there, and then he got sent to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Georgia and for three months. And so he we lived on the revs, and my dad flew out, and then it was just the the five of us uh hanging out, and then my mom bought us a house and moved us off the rest of we were rent renting in the government housing section for people that are working up there, but yeah. It was cool, like the homeschooling aspect and growing up out west was awesome because literally like the American history is right outside your door. You know, we would go to um we're we're big like American West nerds, and so we'd go to where um the Marias and two Medicine River split, and Lewis and Clark had to figure out which way they were gonna go, and um, you know, everything we did was school as far as the history stuff goes.

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, but you're actually hands-on with your hands on rural stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Yeah, yeah, we went to Pompey's Pillar, which is a landmark from the Lewis and Clark Trail. I saw the names carved in the rocks, and it's like, dude, we can actually go out here and touch this. That's it's freaking sick.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, Montana's such a cool state. I remember when we we went to Dutch Bros one time, and they're like, you know how they get all personal up in your car when you're just like, I just need the coffee, dude. So if you guys could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go? And my wife's like, I don't know, I think I want to go to Europe or something. And they asked me, I'm like, I just want to go to Montana. And they're like, What? That's your that's your aspirations. I was like, Montana just seems like a cool stuff a spot, you know?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah, yeah. That was when we learned uh being from Oklahoma, there's so many trees everywhere uh where we lived. Uh and when we found out that that there is actually scattered showers because the sky is so big, you can say, Oh, it's raining over there, and it's raining over there, and it's raining over there. So in Montana? Yeah, yeah. The the big sky country is real.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's that's uh one of their big ski resorts, right? Big sky or something. Yeah, dude, that's cool. What did you guys do in Montana?

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Um, actually, that's where I uh I wanted to start hunting when I was 10. When I was in Oklahoma, I started watching the the Real Tree Monster Buck VHS tapes, and I would just watch those on repeat, dude. And I had I had like a Buck Hunter game on the on the Windows 98 computer, and and so I started getting into it kind of independently when I was 10. Um, and then we moved to Montana and some of the guys that my dad worked with uh they were like they asked him if he wanted to go elk hunting with them. And so he got a cow elk. My brother went out with him that day to to shoot it. They had a wild adventure getting back, got back at one in the morning. We went back the next day and what? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, not not not lost necessarily, but had just grossly underestimated how far they had gone. Oh. And then had to get back. Pre-Onyx days. Yeah. Pre-Onyx. Yes, when you were still carrying around a map. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you it's kind of wild with the onyx stuff. Like you can if you have a battery, like the ability to read a map and use a compass is kind of I don't think it should go away, but there's a lot of people that have no idea how to they don't have no sense of direction, and that's mind-blowing to me.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah, I don't know if I could read like if you just gave me a paper map and said figure out where you're at, I don't know if I could do that. I mean, I could probably if you told me where I was at, then I could probably figure out like how to read the topographical landscapes and stuff. But just like to navigate stuff, I don't know, that'd probably be a good a good skill to learn. Yeah. So did you get a hunt on the Indian reservation? No, no.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Actually, I am I'm uh a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation tribe out of Oklahoma. Um my grandpa grew up going to an Indian boarding school and grew up at the Indian Mission Church in eastern Oklahoma where my dad's from. Um so I don't know, I should have thought about that. Uh, because we lived in New Mexico too, and I don't know. I I feel like it's pretty tribal. Um, like the tribe that owns that land, like they don't really care if you're from somewhere else. Um, but the Apache uh tribe has some big, big bulls.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, what's that big what's that big one in New Mexico that everybody goes? Is it San Juan or um San Pete or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

There's there's the White Mountain is in Arizona, and then uh it's down by Riodoso, New Mexico. I can't remember it off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah, it's that one that Cameron Haynes goes to. There's a big or maybe it's Arizona. I think it's Arizona. Uh maybe it's Arizona. Chirikawa Apache. Yeah, yeah. It's like$100,000 for a tag.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, if only. Gosh.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Must be nice, you know? Yeah. Just kidding. Yeah, that's crazy. I always wanted to go to Montana, though. I have a buddy that goes out to Montana and he hunts out there, and I think he lives in like Florida or something, but I just met him online, but he goes out there and I I can't even imagine like the people that don't live in the state and just have to spend their whole week to go hunting in another state and just do all their e scouting and stuff like that. That's crazy to me.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

If they're doing that, right? I I've always wondered like I've gotten pretty fortunate with the e-scouting route here after I moved up here, but yeah, I I can't imagine you gotta kind of be a bit of an e-scouting pro to Well then you think about like the people before even any of that came out that they would draw tags in other states.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah. Like before there was any Google Earth or anything like that, and you're just like going off of yeah, go go try out that hill over there, like going off of locals just telling you maybe that's right, and there's not.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

And they're misleading you intentionally because they don't want this Florida guy just arrowing bulls out after land.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Yeah. I know I gotta actually I now thinking about that, I do know a lady that lives down on Indian reservation down in I think it's Arizona, and she was she was sending me like pictures of bighorn rams that they were getting and stuff, and I was like, dang, maybe I should hit her up. See if she's got a homie discount. I don't want it for free, but you got that homie hookup. Oh she'd be like, yeah, it's a it's originally$60,000. We'll give it to you for$55. I'm like, never mind.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Uh the the kind of where we got to come into our own for the hunting hunting world was when we moved to Nevada. We we lived uh we lived in Montana for a year and then moved to Elko, which is like four hours south of here. We lived in Spring Creek, Nevada. Um, and some friends of ours from church had a uh a big like fifth generation cattle ranch. Did you guys move again for your dad's job? Yeah. All the moves were were him getting itchy itchy job feet and just growing his career. You said he went to the feds then? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So he was Bureau of Indian Affairs for in Montana, Nevada, and then New Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

Yeah, cool. Um, but the friends of ours that they they had landowner tags and they would charge, you know, probably like five grand for a for a deer and ten grand for an elk if you wanted to come out and hunt on their property. But then since we went to church and we were friends with them, they were another homeschool family. We could just if we if we drew a tag from the unit that their land was on, we could go out with them and stay at their cabin and stuff with them. And it it honestly, like going to hunt public land when your first deer hunting experience was on a ranch where there's maybe five people on a hundred and sixty thousand acres or something like that. Yeah, it's it looks like a it looks like a safari, like they had this old like open top um land cruiser or jeep or something that we would drive out with in the morning and and you know, I'm at we're asking, like, hey, how early we're getting up, and they're like, oh, like 6 30. Like, what okay. And we get up at 6 30, eat breakfast, and then go get out in the sun's coming up, and we're driving off, and and there's just freaking deer just jumping from everywhere by the by this dirt road, by this cabin. And I'm like, dude, I it makes you never want to hunt public land again. It's just it's it's brutal. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, it's like when you go to a controlled hunt unit, too. Yeah, it's just empty.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah, and then they act like they're supposed to act.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 24:46

Gosh.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

So so how old were you when we went to New Mexico then? Or not New Mexico, sorry, uh Nevada. Uh I was 11. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

Yeah, so we were only in Montana for a year, and then we lived in Nevada from 2003 to 2007.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Okay. Did you play any sports during any of this time?

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Or yeah, when I was a kid, we played, we started out with doing T-ball and then coach pitch. Um my brother and I were on different teams, and it was getting to be uh it was getting to be a bit much for my parents on shuffling people to practice in games and tournaments, and ended up basically making the call that we're gonna stop that for a while, and uh my mom will my brother and I will will give my mom crap for this, but they they found us a baseball group that was like a homeschool baseball league. And um it did not vibe with our very competitive nature that had basically taken root from playing this with the other with the other guys. And um, but we did it and it was fun. It was a it was a good experience, but um, I picked it back up in high school and played some baseball. Um when you're homeschooled, actually, since you pay taxes, you can pay, you can play sports on the high school teams, you can play football and you know you can do it. You can do whatever you want, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, they're paying for it, so you might as well take them up on it. Right. You do have to help with the I actually the reason I ended up playing baseball is I was interested in football, um, but I had missed out on the fundraising uh throughout the year. And so they're like, Well, it's gonna be 450 bucks for you to get equipment and play. And I was like, I'll play on the baseball league instead.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah, yeah. Dang. And so you said when did you go to where'd you go to high school then then? Was that in Elko? Or did you move?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Uh I started yeah, so ninth grade we moved from Elko to Albuquerque.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Oh, okay. Dang, so what is that like four different states now? Yeah, yeah. You grew up in Oklahoma, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico. Dang. Yeah. And that's when you started getting in uh the itch for the dentistry area. Was it when you were like 16? Sophomore area.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, yeah, sophomore junior. Yeah. Um, it it literally just came out of what are you gonna do? You what do you think you're gonna do? And I was just like, maybe I'll be a dentist, and then it happened, and then it happened.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

So did you know any dentists or anything? Or was it like oh, you said you did know someone? The guy that did our uh our braces we went to church with in Nevada.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Um he kind of fit that old school dentist mentality. He was uh he was a cool guy, did great work. I think he had an airplane, he would go down and teach at UNLV, I think, um, at their dental school, because it's like a seven-hour drive to Vegas, or you probably like a two-hour flight down there. Uh but yeah, when I I had a mutual friend that let me come shadow uh his office when I was in high school. So the first time you shadowed, you're like, Yep, this is it. The first time I shadowed, I went home and I was like, I'm not I'm not doing this. Um because it it was kind of an interesting case. Um there was sedation involved, so it was just with him and one I think it was actually might have been another dentist uh that he was working on. Um and so he we were there for hours and hours and hours on one guy. So I didn't really get like that. First experience was not really um a good indication of what running a dental practice is really like.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

Um my dad's like, I think you probably should give that another shot, and just kind of kept at it. And then by the time I kind of by the time I had thought about anything else, it was almost too late, you know. Yeah. I'm like, I'm pretty committed, so don't know what else I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

At what age did your dad start telling you, like, don't go law enforcement? Pretty early on. Really? Very early. What did why didn't he want you to go law enforcement?

SPEAKER_01 28:39

I think he the the 90s were a weird time for cops because it was after a lot of unrest. Is that like the Rodney King area? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that he he did not want us to go through what he was going through, just being treated by people, how that how they were treated. And Oklahoma City is kind of a big city. Um, it's got some rough parts of town, and every every big city does, but it was just not something he ever wanted us to take part in.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah, your dad probably seen a lot of crazy stuff over his years. He has.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, those are stories for yeah, non-podcast.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, non-podcast stories, or he can tell them if he wants to come on, that'd be cool.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

He's actually they're actually moving up here. They listed their house in Albuquerque. Uh they've got they're showing it today. Oh, really? They're gonna move up here. Yeah, nice.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

They're building plenty of houses around here. They are so you uh graduate then in or how's your high school years then as a homeschooler? Like, did you still go out and do all the you know, get in trouble and all those things, or what what was your high school years like?

SPEAKER_01 29:46

I really didn't I never snuck out, I was too afraid. Yeah, I guess your dad's a cop. There was no way, dude, I was ever gonna sneak out of the house. Um uh junior year of high school, I basically quit homeschooling and had my first job um at a Kiva, Kiva Juice, which is like a smoothie place in the in Albuquerque. And uh so I just switched over to the community college and then dual did the dual enrollment for high school. And by the time I graduated high school, I had all of my college core classes done. And then I uh did my freshman year at the community college and then had enough credits to transfer to UNM, University of Mexico and Albuquerque as a transfer student.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

How'd that conversation go when you said you wanted to quit homeschool?

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Oh, it was like a we don't really know what else there is for you to do here. You might as well like start taking chunks off of the college to lighten your course load and get better grades without having to like cram all of it into four years. Oh, so it wasn't like a rebellious, like no, no, it was like uh you might as well like if you want to get a job and have some money, then if you're gonna be driving into town, you might as well start the college classes. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we actually all ended up doing that, me and my my siblings.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

How many siblings you got?

SPEAKER_01 31:01

I said your brother, but yeah, so I've got my brother who's a dentist here in in uh Boise, and then my sister uh is a nurse, and her uh she lives in Albuquerque with her husband. He's in uh radiology residency at UNMH, and then my youngest brother is an engineer here in Caldwell. He lives in Nampa now.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Hot dog, yeah. Bunch of success. Bunch of nerds, dude. Yeah. So did your brother go down the same route then as you? Like you guys were both just both interested in dentistry, or is he older than you or younger than you?

SPEAKER_01 31:30

I'm the oldest. Okay, yeah. I think uh initially he was interested in medicine, like medical doctor stuff, and then ended up kind of getting rebuffed and had a hard time getting involved with the uh with shadowing needs because you have to have so many hours when you apply to to med school. And um I actually don't have never really asked him like why exactly he ended up taking the same route. We ended up going to the same dental school. So we had two years of overlap where I was actually his senior mentor in dental school. So when you go into junior year, you get assigned a freshman student to help kind of like help them navigate navigate school. So I requested him, and so we got to hang out a lot in school.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

What were some things when you went to dental school that you weren't expecting? It was like eye-opening that you had no idea about the dental world, or maybe the back end of it of legalities and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Um, dude, honestly, this the this is gonna sound so stupid. Um I hadn't really thought through uh cadaver um cadaver labs. I I it hadn't really thought about it. I was like old med students, they they have to dissect cadaver, human cadavers in school, and and I was like, I just I don't I don't know. I never thought about it, and then I'm looking at the lab or the schedule they hand you when you get there, and then they wheel in all the bodies, and you've got to like take out the cadavers from the packaging that's they come from the facilities that put them all together for the oh straight from the body, not even like they just take the mouth or okay. No, we did well, we did the first two years of dental school are are really close to med school. I wouldn't say that they're the same, but we get a lot of the same education as medical doctors until until we kind of diverge and then just specialize in the oral head and neck region.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

So they bring out a dead body and then then what you what's going through your mind.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

I they there are some people that really didn't handle it well. Um, we actually had a guy that walked out of dental school and quit done after during anatomy lab one day. Um but they put these uh these blue towels over their hands and their faces because that's kind of like what freaks people out a little bit is when you see their face. Um, and it's it's everybody's really respectful. Like they they have donated their their body for you to learn. Um and so, but they have to be taken out of the packaging and put onto the lab tables. And so that's like your first day is cutting open the bags and moving them with your group of people into the into the dissecting tables that you're gonna use them on, and you use the same body for the first semester, which is gross anatomy, so all the all the generalized anatomy. We stopped at the um the waste and reproductive region. Oh, so you're not just doing the mouth? No, we did the whole thing except for the legs. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we do gross anatomy for the first year. So oh, because you said it's the same as medical school for the first couple years. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the classes are the same. You kind of can get into the weeds about whether or not you're like a they do like systems-based um teaching in a lot of medical schools, but the dental school world that I was in, at least I know there's dental schools that do the systems-based thing where like you'll you'll do uh you'll do the arm. Like everybody starts anatomy. I feel like on the arm where you learn about the brachioplexis and the nerve, the nerve bundles, and you start, you start out there. But then like in med school, if you do a systems-based approach, like you're gonna learn, you're gonna learn the neuro, the neuro, the the neurology side of it, you're gonna learn the musculature and the bones, you're gonna do it all for that, and then you'll move on to the thorax, and then you'll move to the head and the neck, and then so, but ours was just like we would take actual classes for um for those subjects. So we would do neurology and we would have physiology and we'd have pathology, and it was all separate, and we had to kind of put it all together to work for ourselves. Um, but yeah, you use that same body for the whole two semester, the first two semesters of freshman year.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

So, this might be a dumb question, but if you're just a dentist, why are they teaching you about like the rest of the body?

SPEAKER_01 35:24

I believe the oral cavity in the head and neck that we are trained in is the gateway to the rest of the body. And if you need to know, I guess you don't need to know it, but you need to know drugs, how they interact with people patients, you know, pharmaceuticals. Um we see a lot of patients that are ranging from super healthy to incredibly medically compromised, and you need to understand like what's going on with them. Because if you, for instance, like if somebody somebody's had a heart trans or a heart valve transplant and you do work on them and you mobilize bacteria into their bloodstream, you can get an infective endocarditis infection on the heart valve, and then it's your fault that their heart valve failed, and then they're getting open heart surgery again to replace the valve because you didn't understand the processes behind what was going on. Yeah. So that first year um you spend a lot of time with the cadaver. And dissection is weird. It you really spend a lot of your time just picking through fat and fascia tissue to find the the structures that you're looking for. Um, and that that totally dictates is dictated by whether your cadaver is uh is overweight or underweight or underdeveloped or overdeveloped. You know, sometimes I heard I heard that somebody had uh had a cadaver that had been basically like a an athlete that had a heart attack, and so they honestly like had the the best experience in anatomy because every every muscle group, there's low fat content, so you're not trying to like spend two hours pulling through tissue trying to find a nerve bundle. Um we we do that for three, four hours twice a week.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

So two semesters, that's a whole year. How do you keep that body? I mean, obviously they put it on cold, but it's preserved. Oh, they put like yeah, yeah, preservatives and stuff. So how does that affect anything when you're doing your your um like this dissect? I don't know, what was the word you said? The dissecting? Dissection, yeah. Does that affect anything that you're looking for? Like between like a real body that hasn't been preserved?

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Oh, for sure. Color can can change, everything kind of becomes a little more like singular color, like whereas um, I don't know, like when you when you take apart a a wild game animal that's been dead for two minutes, you know, everything has its own, you know, there's red and there's white and there's green, and and all of that becomes a lot more muted. And so when you're looking for structures, um, especially small blood vessels, like you could accidentally clip one when you're trying to look for it.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah. And uh so what kind of things are you guys doing when you're dissecting them?

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Um identifying structures and and learning where they are. So your practicals for human anatomy classes, um, you'll have 50 stations throughout the room with a little flag tag in a part of the body, and they'll ask you um, usually not like too many second or third order questions, most of it is identification of what is this structure. Um and so, like when we get to the head and neck, when you finish the the first semester of gross anatomy, you have to prep the bodies for head and neck anatomy, which is the second semester. And so that was a weird day because then they hand out these hair clippers and you shave the heads and then you use a use a saw to take off the basically from the collarbones up. So then that's what you use, but then you have to take off the skull cap and then the the I think the physical therapy students, they actually use the brain. So you they use the brains, um, and then you they you take a saw right down the middle, and then you open that head up so that you can see all of the all of the foramen in the skull for where the cranial nerves are going, um, all of the blood supply, and you've got to know where all that stuff is at.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

I'm getting losing thinking about that, dude.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

I'm like, oh no, that's definitely not my forte. But yeah, that was so that was probably like the biggest, biggest shock to me. And in hindsight, it's really stupid to be like, oh, I didn't think I was gonna have to, you know, dissect bodies in school. Of course, you're gonna dissect bodies.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Well, yeah, I mean, I think of dentistry, and I'm thinking you're just like working, you know, like in a dentist office, pretty much, you know, and just learning. I'm not even thinking about all that back end schooling.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Because how many years of schooling did you have to go to? Four years of college, four years of dental school, and then I did an optional one-year residence. Nine years total.

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Jeez.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Post-high school and nine years. Dude, I don't think I I think I would have been one of those guys that they bring out the dead body and I'm like, I'm out. Yeah, I think I'm gonna go work at a prison.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Well, what's really crazy is when you know when people decide that they want to specialize, there's there's different specialties that we go into as dentists. Um, and all specialists are dentists at their core, but then they've received two to six years of of post-grad training um in that specific field. And so you'll have a periodontist, their pros at gum and bone surgeries. Um, and then we'll have endodontists that do root canals, uh, root surgeries, uh, root tip surgeries. Um, it's called an apicoectomy, so they'll fix when root canals go south. That's who we call in to bail us out, to keep teeth in the mouth. Um pediatric dentist, that's its own specialty residency. Um, and then orthodontics is three years post-grad. And then the longest one is maxillofacial surgery residency. Um, there's two ways you can do it. There's a four-year track and then a six-year track. My best friend from dental school went to University of Washington and did the six-year track. You have an intern year, you do the last two years of med school, get your MD in addition to your DDS, and then to do the finish out residency just doing um head and neck surgeries. Is that like facial surgeries and stuff? Yeah, yeah. They do a lot, they do a lot with that. And depending on, you know, like what your goal is as a max facial doc, you're either going to be in private practice, um, doing wisdom teeth, um, orthanathic surgeries for like people have really, really bad skeletal um alignment that want braces, but their bite is super off because the skelet the skull structure is not right, they'll actually um section the jaw bones and move those forward or backward to to kind of put things in proper alignment while they're in braces. So that's orthodonathic surgery. And then um traditionally, oral surgeons have been the ones that do implants, but implant surgery has uh really hit the mainstream for uh for general practice doc. So I do a lot of implants, but um I think that that being a good general practice dentist is knowing where you need to stop and where you need to enlist the help of a specialist. And I always tell my patients, like, hey, I will I will do what I know I can give you a result, I'll be happy with. And if I can't, then it's time to talk to other people. And actually, it kind of blows my mind how um resistant a lot of patients are to going to another office um for for a specialty, specialty reference uh or referral. It's like, well, I don't want to go anywhere else. It's like, well, I'm not, I'm I'm not going to pull these wisdom teeth and they need to come out, so you're gonna have to. Yeah. You go to a medical doctor. Um, that's just like kind of where the weird dichotomy between medical doctors and dentists is is um I think people in their heads have a very strict idea about what dentistry is, and and you know, people are like, well, I just want my cleaning. It's like, well, if you come to my office, I'm gonna screen you and make sure that you don't have any periodontal disease. Because if you have periodontal disease, you're technically no longer a candidate to have six-month uh, we call it a prophylactic cleaning. Um, because once you've reached that point, uh, you can't grow bone back. You know, you've got bone loss around the teeth and gum disease that's active. And so those six-month cleanings that are covered by your insurance are not gonna fix the problem. And so for a lot of us, we view that as like if we're if we do those six-month cleanings on somebody that has that, that's basically supervised neglect. And so there's a lot of you gotta really be able to talk to people um and broach those conversations gently because it's a really easy way to run people out of your out of your office.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Yeah, yeah. Thing. Yeah, in my experience at the prison, I went to a lot of those orthopedic surgeons because they would get in fights and break their jaws and all that, like the the ortho or what is this bone, whatever it's called right here. Oh, your maxillary the maxillary, yeah. Yeah, so I gotta see like a lot of those um surgeries. I don't know if you know the dude that does he he works right across the street in St. Als. Downstairs. Do you know him? I don't. He's always wearing cuyu. Is he really? He's got like an orange bronco. And he's just always like we were always just talking hunting stuff. You would you'd probably really get along with him. His name's Dr. Cole Anderson, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah. I know who he is.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

I've not met him. But yeah, there's there's a shocking number of people that can handle um craniofacial trauma. Um, you'll have plastic surgery can do that. Um, some ENT uh surgeons will do that, and then oral maxillofacial surgeons.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

So that it's a broad field of people that are trained in that.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

Yeah, he's got a cool, he's got a really cool uh office there. But yeah, we've seen a whole bunch of just people just get in fights, they break their bones, and then I've been in the surgeries too, because when you're in the prison world, if an inmate has to get a surgery, the officers have to be in there too in case he wakes up or goes crazy or something, and you have to be able to go hands-on. But it's cool to see doctors change when they're when they're under uh the patients under. You know, they're like normal people listening to like Deaf Leopard or something while they're doing surgeries, and like yeah, it's cool. But yeah, um, yeah, there's a lot of people that break their their jaw bones out there. It's it's wild.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

I have a story that I think we may have to talk about outside of the podcast, but I have I have worked on a on a prisoner before that that was injured. Um that was taken in the hospital by some U.S. marshals. That was cool. Oh really? Um yeah, he was in his mic belly chains and everything, and he was a cool guy. I I enjoyed talking to him, but I had to work on him.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Here in Idaho?

SPEAKER_01 45:24

No. Oh.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

Super early on when I was on call. Oh yeah. Yeah, no, that's cool. Yeah, we whenever they are in the doctor's office, they're they're still in chains and everything. Unless the doctor asked us, but usually it's like a hand doctor. If they need their hand or something, then we can take them out. But it has to be doctor's orders only to take them out. Yeah, usually it's only one hand at a time. But yeah, it's crazy. So that was oh man, I can't get over that. That's crazy. The the cadavers. So were they always adults, or did you ever have kids? No, all adults.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

You would well, maybe if you're one of the pediatric, I think that once you understand the anatomy, the pediatric world, um, they're not gonna be doing that. All of that is straight clinical training. So they're gonna be working at a hospital, like a children's hospital. Um, because a lot of pediatric work um involves um sedation and putting kids to sleep while you're doing the work on them because it's just too much traumatic experience for them.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Yeah, my autistic son, he's gone to what'd he get? He got something done at the dentist. Um, but yeah, he just won't do anything. So we had to get him sedated and it was like a whole day out practice thing or something. It wasn't even at his regular dentist. They had to do it. At the hospital, or did they have a no? It was just like an office. Okay. It was like an office somewhere, but it wasn't his his uh same site. Yeah. Yeah, he's all I think he'll always have to be sedated if there's anything that's gonna have to be done on him, unfortunately, because I don't think he'll he'll sit still.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

But yeah, we when I was in residency, we we had a lot of OR time um taking adults with special needs. Um and the vast majority of them are probably non-verbal autistic patients that you know one minute you can be having a normal conversation, like talking with they're not speaking to you, but you know, you're interacting with them, and then next thing you know, you're you're looking in their mouth and they try to headbutt you, and you're just like, Hey, you're you're gonna have to go to the operating room. And our wait list to get into the OR was like two years to get patients in to do work in the operating room.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Yeah. We had some crazy well, we'll get into that later, but like I saw and go through your schooling, so then you get into the you get the the first couple years, and then you really go into a dental practice, then right? Or a dental dental school, because the first two years is pretty much medical school.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

Um it's not pretty much, it's it's the same coursework, but it's all like one dental dental program track. And so you're doing a lot of didactic schoolwork. Um, and then at second year, you're still doing a lot of didactic work, but you're getting more into the the dental side, um, learning um to use drills, dental drills, and how to prep teeth for removing decay and how to restore teeth, and you do it all on models. And then as time goes on, you go from the models to working on what's called a a um like a dummy lab, a simulation lab. And so we have like this um plastic patient head that sits in front of the chair, and you've got like a fake, like a like a practice setup with like drills and and uh the bracket table and everything, and you're working learning to transfer those hand skills that you've been doing on a tabletop, now you have to do them in a fake mouth because anybody can can use a drill on a tabletop in front of you, but then you've got to be able to translate that and flip it upside down and do it in a mirror with water on a human being, and so that's like a that's a huge learning curve. Yeah. Yeah. Second year is when you work on your first patient um with your senior student. So now you're a sophomore, they're a senior. Um, you use one of their patients, they find a super straightforward filling for you to do, and then you have like a clinic day where everybody does their first filling on a live patient.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

How much school do you have to go through until you can finally be like getting paid on the job training?

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Uh you don't have to do a residency as a dentist. So so four years of undergrad, four years of dental school, and then you can go right into work. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

Yeah. Yeah. So you so you uh went through all your school in New Mexico then, right? Or did you have to go out of state for anything?

SPEAKER_01 49:21

I went to Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Oh, okay. Yeah. So that was totally off then. Yeah. So they're the fifth state. Yeah, there's no there's no dental school in New Mexico. I think they're starting one. I've heard that they're starting one.

SPEAKER_00 49:31

So did you move then to Nebraska for eight years then? Uh for four years.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

So I went to University of New Mexico in Albuquerque for four and then moved to Omaha for for the four years of school and then stayed there for my residency for another. What was life like in Nebraska? Omaha is awesome. I I feel like if you're an outdoorsman, to a degree, there's a decent amount to do. Um, there used to be a lot of pheasant there. Um, but people like to bird hunt, but only like two, I think it's like two percent of Nebraska's public land. So you've got to know people. There's tons of corn, lots of farming. Um, and so as far as like hunting opportunities, you're limited to a few areas around Omaha. I actually shot my first uh deer with a bow when I was there at a little wildlife management area just south of Omaha, right on the Missouri River. And so it's a tag system. I think they do like a hundred tags down there. Um, yeah, and I was just in a ground blind and shot this whitetail. I know. That was cool. That's cool. Yeah, with my dad's old um Browning Bridger to compound boat. It had to have been from like 1988 or something like that, because he it was old when he got it in like 1996, 97. Probably no let off. No, no, no. And it yeah, it was crazy though. It went all the way through. Went all the way through. But then I realized uh because I had taken that bow elk hunting unsuccessfully in New Mexico before that. And so I was set up with these like 125 grain muzzy broadheads, and then I shot this little white tail with it, and it sounded like a wet stake hitting a rock at 100 miles an hour, dude. It was just like thunk, and I I saw the arrow just fly. And went back the next spring, took the took the tree stand out that I had uh had there and found the arrow. Dang, yeah. A lot of FOC on that one. Yeah, yeah, just straight down. He was like 20 yards away. Uh, but Nebraska's cool. Um, the city of of Omaha itself is uh it's about 45 miles from Lincoln, which is where the main University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Cornhusker Stadium is. And so sometimes we'd we'd land tickets to go to a Husker game. Uh Creighton basketball is a big deal. Um, so and then the College World Series baseball is in Omaha. Oh, okay. Um, so there's a lot, there's a lot to do. Uh most of the time you're just too busy with school, like because you're we're there Monday through Friday, 8 to 4:30 every single day. So you had two days off a week. Um, and most of it was spent studying until you really start learning, like, and you're in the swing of school, and then you could start trying to, you know, spend some time doing whatever else it is you want to do.

SPEAKER_00 52:00

So um, how was it adjusting from the homeschool, not having homework to go into college and freaking medical school school? I'm sure you had plenty of homework to do then.

SPEAKER_01 52:09

Yeah, college. Uh I did so I did a degree in biology and I minored in psych. That was like the fastest, easiest way to get all of my like upper level three and four hundred level courses done without having to take extra school. Um, we didn't have a ton of homework. The worst homework class was this biochem class that we took that. I honestly was kind of a huge waste of time. The the amount of uh busy work required after it was just like it was not put together well. I didn't learn anything um and managed to like skate through with I think I got I think I got an A or B in it because it just we all worked together on the homework. Um, and that was the vast majority of the grade, but um homework wasn't bad. It was learning to study, learning to study that was the the big thing for me. Is that hard? Yeah, because you never had a study before then. Yeah, I I I basically like just learned everything as I went. Um, so college and learning to study, that that's a skill, and and um I'm still not very good at it. I I I really excelled in dental school um with the hand skills. That's kind of like what that's why I like dentistry and I like that it's procedural and I get to be hands-on because I'm good with my hands. And I and I learn these things uh didactically, but spitting them out on tests, like I said, was never my strong suit. Yeah. Um back on the Omaha uh subject though, they have like the best steakhouses.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

Omaha Steakhouse, right?

SPEAKER_01 53:31

I see the yeah, that that's a big, big company. Um, but there's a bunch of them that have been there sin for a long time. Um we had one special one that we liked called 801 Chop House. I think actually it's a smaller, um a smaller restaurant group because there's one in uh Kansas City and there's one in Omaha too. Or uh no, excuse me, in Denver. Okay. That was like our favorite steakhouse in downtown. So we would always splurge. Actually, there was a I think there was a groupon that we would we would just I mean, everything you do, you're spending like student loans on. And so we're trying not to go, you know, break the bank, but you'll you can buy a groupon and go out and eat. So we did that a lot.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Dang. Yeah. So when you finally graduate and then you do your one year, what was your one-year additional you said you did?

SPEAKER_01 54:13

It's called a general practice residency. So there's two one-year tracks that you can do. One's called a advanced education in general dentistry, an AEGD, which is mostly clinical, and then a general practice residency, which is in a hospital. So I would take uh I was one of six residents. Um, we would take turns being on call for the emergency room and then the uh um like the organ transplant clearance team, um, and then like a big procedural team. So like if somebody needed like an organ transplant, you had to clear them from a dental uh infection perspective. And so you had to make sure that they don't have any teeth that are going bad on them because if you get a new liver and then you've got an infected tooth that makes your liver fail because your body's in an immune response to it that has to go. So you gotta take all that out and get it taken care of before you can get the surgeries.

SPEAKER_00 55:02

Okay. Yeah. What was your coolest experience doing that for that year?

SPEAKER_01 55:07

Um I think uh I think having the opportunity to learn to work professionally with other people in medicine, because it's been so isolated within the dental field, whereas medical students they're learning other sides of medicine as they go, but we just learned dental. And so being able to learn to communicate with with medical doctors and and just to kind of get a grasp of how medicine works, because that was something that I never really had a was exposed to. Like, how does a hospital work? Like, who are these teams of people? Like, what how is a hospital organized? Because we would go on call and we'd need to go see somebody, and they would give us this uh like they give them the room number and it's like seven numbers long, and you have to look at the map of the hospital because there's like eight towers. The hospital there is gigantic, it's huge. It's like it's probably three times as big if you put St. Luke's and St. Alice downtown together, it's probably like four or five times bigger than that. It's huge. It's a big learning uh level one trauma hospital. Um, so yeah, you have to basically get the map and and figure out where you're gonna go. But yeah, just being exposed to like the higher levels of medicine and seeing how dentistry fits into that was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 56:18

Did you ever have any close calls like in school that you weren't gonna you weren't gonna pass until you said that first year you had a hard time that was that first year with the cadavers? Was that the same year?

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So my my bane of my existence was my histology class. Um histology is the study of uh microscopic study of tissues and how they show up on microscope slides. And so um all the different tissues in your body are made up of different layers, and where they come from is part of the next part of the class, which is head and neck embryology and oral histology. Um, and so I I got a D. We had a really stupid grading point um scale in at Creighton. It was like to get a B, you had to get an 86, and to get an A, you had to get a 93. So you could you could make it all the way through dental school getting solid like 89s, 90s, and have a B average. And so if you you know you get an 85, which is smack dab in the middle of a B anywhere else, then that's a C.

SPEAKER_00 57:24

What is your grades um effect in in college? I mean, if you pass, you pass, right? Or is it in college?

SPEAKER_01 57:31

If you're not gonna, if you're not applying to go on to grad school, they don't really matter. Nobody that you go to work with is probably gonna request transcripts of how you did in certain classes. Although, you know, if like you're a biology major and you want to go work at a um like an immunology lab or whatever, you're probably gonna have to go to grad school for something like that. But they may ask you like how did you perform in immunology? Um, you know, or they'll get letters of reference from your um from your professors in those classes. Gotcha. They're gonna want to know, but um, but GPA and then your um the DAT, which is the test that dentists take, med students take the MCAT, we take the DAT. So between your DAT scores and your GPA in college is gonna dictate where you get into dental school. Oh yeah. Dang.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

Yeah. Dang, dude. So you go where was it? You said you met your wife and all this.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

She um she moved back to Omaha from um across the street from me to go to get her accelerated BSN for nursing. So she has her bachelor had her bachelor's in nursing, that's what she was in school for. Um, she got her first degree in uh exercise science, and then she worked as a traveling leadership consultant for her sorority for a year, and so then she came back and started nursing school, and that's how I met her.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

You met her inside the hospital?

SPEAKER_01 58:49

No, I met her uh across the street from my house. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Yeah, yeah. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 58:53

Yeah her name's been Caitlin across the street, and my phone, my buddy and me came up with that one day while we were she came walking up and we said hi and asked her if she wanted to eat dinner with us, and she was like, No, thanks, dude. And and uh it went it it it progressed much better from there, but we ended up I was actually doing that that deer hunt. I was sitting in the I hate blind hunting, dude, but I was sitting there texting her and uh we set up a date and like two weeks out, which you know I'm never supposed to like schedule a first date out that far, but it works for us, so yeah, but yeah, that's that's how we met was in Dillon School. Did you take her to your steakhouse? We did not. We went to his Chicago Pizza Kitchen. We went to uh it was fall, um, which in Omaha is amazing. Kind of like Boise, like the amount of tree. I'm not uh I'm not from here, so I have a hard time saying the Boise S, but uh um a lot of big trees, and she's kind of a fall junkie, and so we we went out to dinner one night and walked around this park, which is actually where I proposed to her when we got uh engaged. That's the same park we had on our first date.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Oh, really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

How long were you dating before you got engaged? We were we dated a year, uh actually just shy of a year. We started dating in October of 16 and then got engaged in September of 17. Married in October of 18. So you're just persistent. She shot you down the first time. You're just yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

Come on, yeah, come on, more chance.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, so we got married when I was in my residency. Oh, cool. Yeah, in October. We started residency July 1st and then we got married in October.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

Is that hard having like two medical, two people in medical because you guys have like different shifts and everything, so you hardly see each other, or how did that work?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:29

Uh, as a nurse, it was actually pretty, pretty nice. They uh most nurses start out start out working nights, so they work three twelves, and so she would work three nights a week, and those would be the nights that I would hang out with people or play video games with my buddies because then but I was in residency, I didn't have any homework to do because you're basically just working in the hospital, um, which is crazy because like that that's absurd to say that in residency I didn't have anything to do outside of school because everybody that's like if you're in oral surgery residency, like you're getting worked like 110 hours a week. And I honestly, like mine was pretty, pretty chill. Um, but yeah, so during COVID was like a super stressful, stressful time because she worked in the uh medical ICU at University of New Mexico Hospital, um, which was uh it was like the big polling hospital from eastern Arizona and southern Colorado and and down into Texas. Like they were they were just inundated during COVID. And so that was a super stressful time for us because then she also started grad school and she got her doctorate um as a nurse practitioner, and she started that two years after um she finished her her uh we moved back to New Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

So was your residency your first job then? Yeah, yeah, as a dentist. No, just in general, or did you have jobs like while you were going to school and stuff too?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Oh yeah. So when I was in, so my first job was at that smoothie shop. Oh, which sucked super bad. Um that was not a fun place to work. Uh I worked there for two years. Um, I became a shift manager, was given a key to the store, handled the money, never got a raise, showed up for work, uh, was getting paid minimum wage in Albuquerque, which was like$6.50 an hour. Um, got accused of stealing out of a tip jar one day when there were two customers that came in. It was snowing outside. And I worked from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon by myself. And at one point I went up and like checked to see if anybody had uh given us tips, and they were watching me on the camera and I didn't know this. And I put the tip jar back down, and the next thing I know, like the next day, uh a friend of mine comes in that was working with me. She's like, Oh, I'm gonna come into work for a bit. And I was they said they wanted me to help. They thought I don't remember what the wording was. And then my manager came in and he accused me of stealing out of the tip jar. And I was like, You thought that I I stole what 50 cents out of a tip jar? There was like no, there wasn't even any cash in there. He's like, Yeah, that's kind of weird. I was like, There were two people. We made like 40 bucks the whole more like for six hours of work. Like, what are you talking about? And I maintained my innocence, I didn't take it. Um, yeah, I was like, it's under a camera. How stupid do you think I am? Um anyway, they called the owner down. He's like, if you're maintaining your innocence, we'll call the owner and you can talk to him. I was like, Well, freaking call him, tell him to come down. Yeah, and so he drove down and I was like, I didn't take the freaking money, and I don't appreciate being accused of stealing two dollars. Like, what purpose does that serve? Yeah, um, so they let me keep my job. I immediately started looking for another job. Um, because I didn't want to get I didn't want that like on my mental record that I've been fired. Yeah, so I stayed on, got a job at Starbucks, immediately was making more money. Um, it was closer to my house. Um, and then I quit. Yeah, I was like, I'm done. We're not doing this anymore. So did Starbucks for a while, and actually, a lot of people say that Starbucks was like super, super helpful with people that are going to school and scheduling. That was not my experience. Like, there was a lot of times where I'd say, hey, I need to be off this day. I've got tests. Because I mean my goal was not to be working at Starbucks for the next 10 years. Like, I'm trying to go to dental school, and um, I eventually ended up quitting. And then we um what happened next? So I yeah, I quit for a while that uh and focused on school, but I I would say most of the time I was in uh college, I was making some kind of money um just to have, you know. Um, but then my brother and I started subcontracting for a uh construction uh lady, a contractor in Albuquerque. Um, and so we we just did that over whenever we weren't working, she was super chill. She's like, anytime you want to work, just let me know and I'll find something for you to do. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so we did that for the paid for your hobbies.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool, man. So then you get out and uh did you just go start working for another dentist, or did you start your own thing right away?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:39

I I did not start my own thing. Um, I took a scholarship. Actually, I tried to get into the army and got medically disqualified for the dental um scholarship because of my my eyes. I had a medical disqualifier and eye condition that there's no waiver for. So I really wanted to like I wanted to get out of school debt-free and was like, well, I'm the first generation of my family in a while to not be in the military. I'd love to do the military and then do what I'm gonna go to school for at the same time. That didn't pan out. Um, tried to go to the Navy, they said we'll get you a waiver. And I was like, cool, that I didn't apply for the state scholarship, um, which you can get a four-year where they pay basically that you don't get any money from the scholarship, they put it towards your tuition bill, so they cut it almost in half. And Creighton, when I started dental school, I want to save was like$50,000 a year. So for four years, they cut it in half. It's like$27,000 is what you what you have to fund, whether that be through student loans or uh however else you're gonna come up with that much money for school. Um, so I didn't apply for the state scholarship because the Navy said they were gonna give me a waiver, and then they were like, Well, we can't give you a waiver. And I was like, I didn't think you would, but now I've missed out on this first year that I was gonna get a discount. And then was fortunate enough to take out this, get get onto that scholarship for the last three years of school. The downside to that is uh they you only if you get four years of school, you only have Stay for three years. So I did three years of the scholarship and still had to go work for three. Yeah. So I knew I didn't want to stay in New Mexico for the long run. I'd moved around too much and it was just uh long term. It's not where I saw myself putting down roots. Yeah. Um, so I worked for a big corporate uh company called Pacific Dental Services um on the northeast side of Albuquerque, and it's a huge, huge business um in the West, pretty much. Uh I think they have stuff down into Texas and and they're moving eastward, but there's these big, big dental companies that are called DSOs, dental support organizations. Um, and some of them allow people to uh have ownership stakes in the office and some of them don't. Um but if you see places that have like really um uh uh uniform, like you'll see like several offices and you'll start to see trends if you start keeping an eye out for it, like uh whether the name has like a really perfect ring to it, and you'll see designs and stickers on the windows that like you see throughout other offices, those are probably Pacific Dental supported practices. It's like a cookie cutter, kind of, yeah. And they're very successful for a reason. They really like they have a lot of systems in place that help you grow as a provider. Um, and since I knew that I didn't want to stay there, I was like, well, I'm gonna. My goal was to pay down as much student loans as I could, do my time, and then in that time period, figure out where we wanted to move with Caitlin. Um, so I did that job for a while, and then it was never busy enough uh at that location. Um, it was kind of a stretch to keep me on and keep paying me because I there was just it there was like a multi-factored thing. Like I was pretty new. Um, and you think you know a lot, and then you get into private practice or into practice in the real world, and you're like, oh my god, I'm not very fast. I've got to get this done. But then in the back of your head, in the back of your mind, you're like, well, I need to provide quality work, but it's taking me a lot longer than I thought, and now I'm late, and then the next patient's been here for half an hour and I'm running behind. And so there's a huge learning curve of like getting out of school where it takes you all afternoon to do one filling under supervision, and then you know, translating that to private practice because now you have to talk to patients and and be the face of the healthcare provider that they're seeing. And so dentistry is weird because like we're like part salesman and part healthcare provider because so many of us are in private practice. It's not like going to the hospital or like going to see your primary health doctor that's part of a giant group. You know, most of us are are either part of one of these big support organizations or private practice. I'd say that's like where most of it falls.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:44

Um, and so you have to like help make patients aware, like they're they're they're coming to you to ask you to help them get healthy, but a lot of people, and I think like that's part of the human condition, is sometimes we'd rather be ostriches with our heads in the sand. Like I that's those are the people that are like, I just want my teeth cleaned and I want to leave. It may not be the practice for you then because you're gonna get a very thorough exam here, and I'm gonna tell you what needs to be done. And so uh we can always you can always have those conversations with people who's like, this is really what you want. Like, you know, we can provide that, but you have to be aware that that's not how we normally do things. Yeah. Um so I worked for them for uh about 18 months and then worked for another private office, uh private company in Albuquerque that was um uh like a very Medicaid-heavy practice. Um Medicaid is like super different between states in New Mexico. Taking uh Medicaid can actually be quite lucrative. Um, they they will automatically uh approve any filling and any extraction that needs done. And then anything else you have to pre-authorize. So if a patient needs dentures, you have to ask and the Medicaid uh group if they're gonna pay for it. And then they'll write you back a letter and say, hey, we'll approve the dentures. Well, then now they have teeth. Which is kind of crazy to think about like you know, you're gonna take out everyone's every somebody's teeth, now they have nothing to chew with, and then you're gonna cross your fingers that the powers that be wave their magic wand and say, Oh, by the way, yeah, you can have your teeth. Yeah, that's crazy. Um the private practice I was at um in in the northeast side of Albuquerque. Um, but I learned a lot and I loved the people that I work with. I still talk to a lot of them today. Um yeah, and so I did that for the next half of the time I was there. Then I worked at a private practice in Boise um as an associate, and then for about 14 months, just moved up here in July of 2022.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:49

Yeah, what made you want to move then? Like, what was that point that you're like, we gotta get out of here?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:54

Um New Mexico for me, uh I feel like New Mexico had a hard time ever recovering from the recession, and it just continued this like downward spiral of crime, property crime, burglaries. It's a breaking bad. It's yeah, my my joke when people ask, like, what's New Mexico like? Like, have you seen Breaking Bad? And they say, Yeah, I was like, it's like that. Pretty we I lived about about five minutes from that from Walter White's house. Oh, really? Yeah, where they filmed it. It's all filmed there.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

Um, unfortunately, that chick is like she put a fence in front of her yard now, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:33

Yeah, because people were throwing pizzas on her roof.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:35

Yeah, yeah. I just seen a video with her the other day now because she put a fence over there, and then there's like these super cars that came out, and then she was actually pretty chill with them. She wanted to sit in their car and stuff, but but she was uh she said she said they didn't actually film inside there all the outside stuff, but everything that was inside was actually in a in a studio studio, but everything outside was at her house, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

Um, and it really it's kind of unfortunate because I I love New Mexico. Um, I mean, I spent the vast majority, like 15 years off and on. Like that was my home base. Um, and it's as far as the outdoors goes, like New Mexico is phenomenal. Like you, if you like to ski, you know, you've got like six ski areas within three hours of you.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:16

It's crazy because you never thought I think of New Mexico as like they got snow.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:19

Yeah, it's it kind of flies under the radar for a lot of things. Um, it's almost three times the elevation that Boise's at. Really? Yeah, where our apartment in Albuquerque was at 6,300 feet. Albuquerque's higher than Denver. Denver's like at one mile, but Albuquerque's 5,500 feet. Oh, no. The vast majority of the northern half of the state is super, super high altitude.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:40

Yeah, I never even thought of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

That's interesting. So it's actually cooler there in the summer in Albuquerque at least than it is here. It gets way hotter here.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:48

Hmm. So speaking of meth, what's what's that work like working on like on a patient that's definitely had drug use?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

Uh I think it kind of depends on on what somebody has had in the past. Um and is it pretty well? I mean, it's pretty easy to tell like when someone's done certain certain drugs versus others, or I would I would say that that rampant um drug use like uh meth methamphetamines is probably the most obvious. Um, you know, you get people here and there that that smoke a lot of weed that when they they want nitrous. That's that's what I think that's really funny is people are like, Well, I want nitrous because I get freaked out, and then I'm turning up the nitrous and asking, like, do you feel that? And they're like, No. And I'm like, Did you smoke weed today? And they're like, Yeah. I'm like, well, that's why you're like the nitrous didn't do anything, dude. Like, you've already you're why go on the swings when you've already been to Disneyland, like that's how you're you're brain. Well, they're just trying to get they're they're trying to like well, some of them are genuinely afraid of the dentist, you know, and they they want the nitrous, but it doesn't work because they smoke pot. Oh so you're getting high all the time from marijuana and you're not feeling the effects of the nitrous oxide. Um, really, the the downside to to methamphetamine when from a dental perspective is that it dries out your mouth, and a lot of uh users end up seeking constant stimulant, whether that be from sugar and and Mountain Dew, uh, so a lot of soda is is consumed by meth meth users. But when you have a dry mouth with sugar, it's like a recipe for disaster. And once you're hooked, like oral care is not high on your list. And so you've got like the trifecta of having your mouth be absolutely destroyed in a short amount of time. So rampant decay happens because of the dry mouth with the with the sugar intake and the lack of click keeping it clean. And that point, like just taking out the teeth is pretty much it depends, depends on how bad they are. Yeah, because um I would say that I don't it's probably pretty rare that I see like active addicts coming in and seeking dental treatment. Yeah. A lot of times, like the vast majority of people that I've seen are prior users that are trying to get their lives back on track. Yeah. Um so so that yeah, but the meth stuff, the meth mouth comes from the from the dry mouth and the sugar. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

I would have thought it was just like the tooth decaying from the drug or something. I didn't even think of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:14

Yeah, the the drug doesn't really do anything to that, but it does dry out your mouth. And it's um honestly, like that's dry mouths and sugar are are why a lot of people end up with cavities, especially as we age as a population. We start ending up on multiple medications, your mouth gets dry. And by age, uh default, like your salivary production goes down of saliva is what like keeps your teeth clean, that and your tongue. Um, and so it's kind of weird. You start seeing these patterns of like uh, you know, when I when I'm doing exams on people and checking out their gum health, well, like the outside edges on the top are dirty because they're not brushing them, but the insides don't hurt when I probe them because their tongue is actually like naturally keeping it clean. And so I'm like, hey, like that hurt on the inside, on the outside, right? And I yeah, and I said, Did it hurt when I probe the inside? And they say, No. And I was like, that's because it's clean. So you've got to like improve your improve your home care. I tell people that are like it uh that are using manual toothbrushes, they they'll be like, Well, I have an electric one, but I don't use it. I'm like, just throw the manual away, just don't use it. Unless it's like in your truck as an emergency, like you need to brush teeth or something during the day, but like just use an electric toothbrush. It makes that big of a difference, huh? It's huge. And a lot of it just comes from the the cyclical cleaning nature. Like because you know you don't ever just use an electric brush, you just hold it on there and let the brush do the work. Like you should be brushing your teeth with the electric brush running at the same time. And so if you do that and you imagine like how many times you can draw a little circle with a toothbrush versus drawing the circle while it's vibrating and cleaning at the same time, like it's actually thousands of times more efficient when you're using it correctly.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:49

Why is there such like a big um some people like fluoride and some people say it's bad for you? Like, what's the what's the fluoride thing? I was wondering if you're gonna ask about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:57

So this is I will say that that before I go into that realm, uh, there are like my opinions.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

Um not not American Dental Association, not IPO State Dental Association. Yeah, yeah, the asterisk. Yeah. So fluoride keeps teeth from decaying because uh we're gonna go like a little bit of a nerd dive here in chemic chemistry, but essentially like your teeth are made up of of hydroxyapatite crystals, which is um basically what's in your bone, what's in the inner layer of the tooth called dentin, and it's in the outer layer of the tooth called enamel. Um, there's actually a cool magic school bus episode that talks about this where they they um there's like a hood ornament made out of sugar. And then when they put it in the water, it dissolves, but then they're watching it like reconstitute itself because there's sugar in the water. And that and when you look at stuff under like an electron microscope, that crystals form like a lattice work um under microscope. Um and so as teeth break down where plaque is building up, it's actually not even the sugar that's decaying the teeth, it's the bacteria that eat the sugar, and and by sugar can mean any carbohydrate because when those break down, they break down into sugar, whether that be lactose, sucrose, uh bread, chips, like all of that gets broken down into things that those bacteria can eat and they excrete acid byproducts. And so acid level acidity in your mouth is what causes teeth to fall apart. And so our bodies exist at around a 7.2 pH. Uh enamel starts to fall apart at anything under 5.5. But a Dr. Pepper is like a three. Stomach acid's like a 2, 1.8 or something like that. So now that we have talked about what causes teeth to fall apart, as teeth fall apart and they the the crystalline structure of the tooth gets a spot where it starts to break down. Um and typically it's between the teeth under the contact, which is the only thing that floss will clean. Like floss is all that will work. Um, and by cleaning that off, you don't get that hot spot where bacteria are just excreting acid and it breaks down into the inner tooth layer. So fluoride, um, as the as the if it's in your mouth with your toothpaste, um as the the the chemical is floating around in your saliva, you have these ions, fluoride ions, and they are floating around in the saliva, which is also full of phosphate ions and calcium ions from your salivary glands. Um and so when that reconstitutes that crystalline structure, because it has like a memory, the crystals do, and as they as the two structure kind of reconstitutes, it will pull those fluoride ions into the lattice work. And so instead of just being hydroxyapatite, well, now it's like cross-linked with fluoride, which makes it way stronger. So when it's kind of like I don't know, it's kind of like rebuilding a uh a motor with like stronger parts, you know, like it's it's beefed up and it's gonna have a harder time breaking down in the future because it just makes things so much stronger. Where the uh things kind of start to get into the weeds with fluoride is that in high doses when you ingest it, fluoride is an endocrine disruptor, so it can mess with your hormones. Um, that's about the extent of my knowledge that I'm willing to like, because I don't I'm not a professional on like what fluoride does in your body, but it is an endocrine disruptor.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:20

Um like at high doses, at high doses, it's kind of like the same thing where people are like don't drink aspartame, but it's like a a di coke's not gonna kill you. Versus like 24 is not good, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:32

Yeah. So um I typically like when we were in school, we had to go on a field trip where we saw how water, city water was fluoridated, where they put fluoride into the water, and it's in like parts per million that are safe for human consumption, safe for human conduct. Yeah, um, and so I'm not really sure. I I know that there are studies out there that link fluoride in city water to decreased caries risk because caries is actually the dental term for cavities. Cavity is like a the the lay term, but caries risk goes down when fluoride's in the water just because you're exposing your teeth. Um, but how many people do you know that really drink like tap water often? I I really don't know many. I will drink out of the sink like a without a cup, like I'll just put my mouth under the under the sink. My my wife drinks water out of the out of the fridge with the filter. Yeah, um well filter it it depends on what kind of filter you have. If you have like a reverse osmosis and stuff like that, that will pull that stuff out and clean the water.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:35

Um what do they put the fluoride in the water for then? The city water. The city city does that for your cavities? Yeah. It's not like for I thought maybe like stagnant water or something. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:44

Yeah, it's it's actually literally just for dental health.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:46

Really? Yeah. Um it's weird that they would care. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:51

I think because in the past, depending on where you were located, uh the the public health crisis of rampant decay as our as our diet in the United States has changed to hyper-processed foods um and carbohydrates and sugar, uh, the cavity risk went through the roof. Um, and when you're in an underserved location and people don't have uh because you can get into the weeds about dentistry versus medical, but like dental insurance doesn't work like medical insurance do does. And so if you don't have the money to put into your mouth, and then your teeth are just falling apart because your what food is available to you is bad for your teeth, but the water that you're drinking, if there's a way to combat how much decay is in the public's mouth, then that's kind of why they did that. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. I wonder when that started. I mean, letting it on my instructors and my ability to tell you that because I actually don't know when that happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:49

Oh no, I no, I'm just I'm just curious. I'm not like asking you, but I'm just curious, like when they're they decide like that was an epidemic, they're like, let's start putting Florida in the morning. I'm sure it had to be decades ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:59

Yeah, several decades ago would be my guess. I would I would go out on limb and guess probably like the 60s or 70s, maybe 80s. Yeah, that's interesting. So the the kicker is is that would you have patients that come into the office that are very outspoken about like, I don't want fluoride on my teeth, I don't want fluoride on my kids' teeth. And I'm like, my job is just to tell you that fluoride is gonna help your teeth. Like, I'm not here to comment on what else happens with it. But people want to do fluoride-free without making the necessary lifestyle changes that are gonna help keep their cavities low. If you, if a if someone brings their kids in to my office and the kids have cavities in every single tooth and need to be referred to a pediatric doc to be sedated because there's so much work to do, and the mom's drinking Dr. Pepper and and smoke cigarettes and her mouth's dry, and she's drinking soda all the time, the kids are drinking soda, and all they eat is processed food. You might not want to think about a lifestyle choices, and then B, how how good of an idea is it for like for topical applications of fluoride every once in a while to go on your teeth? Yeah, probably is gonna be beneficial. Yeah, she's worried about the wrong cause, the wrong root cause of the issues rather than yeah, like why is it coming back on us? Like and and it honestly, like there's uh I actually loved your videos about about healthy foods and like how you can you can still source healthy foods for a decent amount of money, but there is a sad reality that a lot of food that's accessible to a lot of people is unhealthy and cheap. Yeah, and so you know, if you live in a food desert in the inner city and all you have is a discount gas station, that's where you buy your food, that's not that's not gonna end up in a good situation.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:51

Yeah. So at that point, those kind of people that don't have those kind of options that just wear dental care and and put in the topographical or not topographical, but you know, topical, topical application.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:02

Yeah, and so you know, that's where where you see uh especially where there's big cities where there's dental schools, uh, dental students go out and outreach programs, do um, you know, we talk to we would have go out to schools, talk to students, teach them how to brush their teeth. Uh you know, we go to the classrooms and hand out toothbrushes and stuff. And then we do these sealant clinics where uh, you know, from a public health perspective, like these kids need to have a screening at school and they need to have sealants placed because sealants help block the deep grooves from catching food. And so uh I wish there could be more of that, but it's um yeah, it's like with one little drip dip into the into the rabbit hole, like it opens up like a freaking inhale of like topics for how to how to combat that. And uh, you know, there's I know a lot of people that just use, and I honestly I should do more research on this, um, but using toothpaste that doesn't have fluoride on it in it, but actually that has hydroxyapetite, which is what the teeth are made out of. And so uh I should actually do some more research into that and see like is hydroxyapatite toothpaste help reconstitute those teeth it at least as strong as they were before, or is it stronger because you have such a increased concentration?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:19

Yeah, I remember like these old timers, they would just brush your teeth with hydrogen peroxide, like just straight hydrogen peroxide. What's a do you have you ever heard of that?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:27

I I haven't heard of that, but I heard people brushing their teeth with like like baking soda, or maybe it's baking soda, yeah. Baking soda, sorry, yeah. Baking soda is super aggress uh abrasive. Um so I you know I have patients that are like, well, I use arm and hammer uh toothpaste. I'm like, dude, that's like it's so it's full of silica, like grit. And so you actually can wear down your teeth depending on how aggressive you are, how what kind of toothbrush you're using. Um so yeah, I would just say consult with your dentist on like what they think is best, like as far as like best for you. You know, there's products out there that's best, you know, are for gum, gum health, and then tooth health. And in all reality, I think a lot of the the branding behind toothpaste kind of is a lot of smoke and mirrors when all reality is is like people just need to brush and floss. And it's like it's like broken record cycle for dentists. But if truly, if if most people did everything that we told them, we wouldn't have a job. Yeah. Actually, is there an actual way to whiten your teeth? Yeah, yeah. Uh most of it involves like a hydrogen peroxide gel that helps um eliminate stains out of the enamel. Um, and so whether you do that professionally at a dentist office, which is gonna like really whiten your teeth, uh, we put like a little barrier guard along the gums and then paint that gel onto your teeth, and you have to keep it keep you have to keep the the lips and the tissue away from it because it's so strong it'll actually burn you and blister the soft tissue. Um, but then there's other companies, you know, like m remember like when the crest white strips came out. Yeah. Basically, uh you can you can buy like a higher grade of that from a dentist office. They're like take-home trays. It's it kind of bridges the gap between spending money at Walmart on the whitening strips and get one that actually like is gonna help a lot. But I always tell patients when they're wanting to do that, you're like, you need to take a picture of what your teeth look like before because if you're whitening them every two days and you they're getting whiter, you're not gonna notice. So you need to be able to like reference your pictures side by side. Yeah, it's like you're like chasing the chasing the the white that you want, and they just get wider and wider and wider until they're like whiter than the bright CR eyes or white CR eyes, and that's how you know that like either patients have veneers or they've like overly whiten their teeth. Yeah, um, because there's like a there's a realm of like what's considered aesthetic in teeth, right? Um, and and when people blast past that, you know, and they're doing veneers that are in like a bleach white shade. I mean, that's more power to them. If you want to do that, that's fine. But I think that um natural aesthetics and maybe a little bit brighter than natural, like pops really, really nicely when you see people smile and you put their teeth back together.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:06

What is it that actually stains your teeth?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:09

Um coffee, tea, red wine, cigarette smoke.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:15

Is it the smoke or is it the drying your mouth out? So does it actually smoke?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:19

Yeah. Well, the smoke, the particulate in the smoke sticks to the plaque on your teeth. And when plaque doesn't get taken off, um, those stains just kind of intrinsically soak into those outer layers of the hydroxyapatite crystals and the enamel. Gotcha. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:33

So what's the best way to do that if you're like a coffee drinker and then stuff?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:37

Rinse rinse your mouth out after you drink coffee. Just like with water? Yep. Yeah. Um, you don't need to brush your teeth after you after you drink coffee. Tea actually seems to be um my hygienist and I were talking about this. Tea seems to be the worst thing for for stains. And I wonder if it's because it's a little more savory than coffee. You know, coffee is just a hard-hitting, you know, acidic wake up. And so I don't think people really sit with coffee in their mouth as long as they do with tea. But tea drinkers seem to have like more stain when we do do cleanings on them that they you spend time cleaning it off. Um, but yeah, I think it sticks in the into the plaque and the biofilm that's around your teeth, and then it just stays.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:19

So from a I'm a different perspective, not like the staining part of it, but you're talking about like the Dr. Pepper puts you at like a three acid. What if it's like sugar-free? Does that change anything at all?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:29

I think uh by nature, the carbonation uh brings down the acidity. Um I might actually have to Google that. That might, that's a good one to to know. But essentially, the the carbonation is acidic in nature.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:46

Um does and then like does aspartame have the same cavity like kind of production as sugar? It's not the same. Not the same. Artificial sweeteners won't produce like a cavity or whatever. No, okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:00

Is sugar-free soda as acidic? Let's see. Most sugar-free sodas are just as acidic as regular phosphoric acid, common in colas, citric acid and citrus, and then the carbonic acid from the carbonation. So the pH is still really low just from the carbonation side of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:19

Okay, yeah. What about alcohol versus non-alcohol um mouthwash? What's that whole debate? Because I've heard some people say like you shouldn't have that much alcohol in your mouth for like a mouthwash.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:30

Yeah, so alcohol, the alcohol actually helps kill bacteria. Um, so if somebody mouthwash isn't really a topic that comes up a ton in the dental office, at least in my office. Um, but mouthwash kind of just helps as like a final rinse to like what you you know, you've flossed first and then you brush, and then if you want to rinse with mouthwash, a lot of times mouthwash uh is used for fluoride. So if I have uh a bunch of kids with a lot of cavities, I'll I'll tell them, like, hey, we really don't want to have to the earlier you cut into an adult tooth with a burr to do a filling, you start what I kind of call the life cycle of the molar. You get you get the first filling, and then may depending on how well it's taken care of, it will fail at five years or 10 years or 15 years. If somebody turns a new leaf and brushes and cleans everything like a maniac, they could last 20 years. Um but uh I I would like to, if there's something that's reversible in a child, especially, I I would rather them like brush a good and then maybe rinse with like a like an act mouthwash that has fluoride in it. And you don't obviously you're not drinking it, but I tell patients like you just spit it out and leave it on your teeth. Like don't rinse it off. That way you get that concentrated effect of the fluoride into the in there. But the yeah, the alcohol in the mouthwash is mostly like an antiseptic to help kill bacteria. It's like gingivitis too, right? Is that the yeah, gin most of the time gingivitis comes from uh an acute inflammatory reaction to to plaque and bacteria that are stuck to your teeth. So if somebody uh you know you go a while and you've got like that thick, like like clingy rope of of nasty soft material along your gum line, your body's immune reaction to that is what causes that bright red bleeding gingivitis, which is it's just an inflammatory reaction where you don't have any bone loss associated with it. So gingivitis is gum disease localized to the gums only. If you let it go on long enough, you can end up with periodontitis, where the gingivitis actually causes your body's immune system to pull that bone away from the teeth. Because your your immune system is smart enough to know that it doesn't want bacteria in the bone. And so it's kind of like a self-uh worsening problem, though, because as the bone loss continues, the gum tissue stays high on the tooth, and you get deeper and deeper pockets uh for plaque and bacteria to build up in, which keeps the bone going further and further away from the tooth. And so periodontitis is number one leading cause of tooth loss in the United States. Um, I've had patients, you know, like they come in and and they want veneers, and then they bite down, and all of their teeth just kind of like flex outward because there's no bone holding them in. Like we gotta go do a lot more than veneers here, dude, because the teeth are not gonna stay, like they're not gonna stay.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:26

Dang, so that's crazy, man. Yeah, so we'll switch it up a little bit. Uh still in like the dentist realm, but I know we've talked a lot about how you said like dentists are just hated. Like, what how does that how does that play on you, like as a dentist? Like when people come in and they're like, Well, I don't really want to be here, but I'm here, or whatever. Like, mentally, how does that you just I mean you probably get it enough, like 10 times a day.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:48

Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm reminded constantly of how much people hate me. Uh, which is kind of crazy, you know, because I think everybody thinks that they're the one that hates the dentist, but like you probably hate it less than the person that was just here and the person coming in after you. Uh, it's a vulnerable position to be worked on, you know, to have to lean back, mouths, mouth open. Uh it's uncomfortable. You have to go through an injection to get things numb so that I can provide good work. Because I've if you're moving around and I'm trying to provide you with a good service and your movement is keeping me from being able to do my job, like that's why we anesthetize people. Um, random side note though, nobody that was born. Well, we basically stopped using Novocaine in 1967, I think is when they stopped using it. Um, so Novocaine's not used anymore because too many people were allergic to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:36

So Blake Shelton's lying, dude. When he says gnomed him with Novocaine. Yeah, liar.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:41

Liar. And it honestly, like it's it's stuck around. People just say it, but we use lidocaine often, um septocaine, ardocaine, like we, they're all different anesthetics, but the less antibiotics or less um less reactive to it. Uh, where were we going with this? Oh, how people view dentists. Yeah, uh, I think it it totally depends on the person. Um, but I think a lot of people as children go through a traumatic dental experience uh because it's terrifying. Like if you're five years old and you need to have a filling done, however, that dentist, however good of a job that that provider did at setting expectations and helping that child navigate a pretty traumatic response is going to like ride it into your freaking DNA as you go forward in life. You know, I've I've got uh I could have a 50-year-old man who's like ready to cry sitting down in the dental chair because it just evokes this like deep seated terror response that has been there for 40 years, 50 years. Um, I think I think it just comes from you know, from traumatic experiences. And it may not even be traumatic and traumatic to an adult, but to a kid it is. Yeah. Um, and so I I think that dentistry, uh, because most of the time that we work on patients, they're awake. And so depending on your personality and how well you are at helping people be at ease is gonna dictate how well you push on and carry the stress of that. Um, I don't do well when I'm getting feedback that sounds negative, even so I'm checking with people like, you're are you okay? Like, why are you making this noise? Are you feeling this? Is this hurting you? Are you uncomfortable? Because I if if I'm sitting here trying to do my job and somebody's like groaning, I'm gonna ask you what what's wrong. I don't want I don't want people in pain.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:38

And I I like to joke people and say, like, hey, contrary to popular belief, there's no dentist out there that wakes up in the morning and goes, I can't wait to hurt somebody today. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think the dentistry is a very repetitive field. We do the same 40 maybe procedures, top 40 procedures out of our code book that of things that are done. We do them all the time. Um it's very technique sensitive. Uh, it's hard on your body. You know, we're constantly bent over at the waist, um, trying not to lean too far for your necks. We're all using you know microscopic loops to see with magnification. Now I've switched over to something that's ergonomic so I can look sit looking straight up, look out. Looks like I'm looking out the window, but the telescopes are pointing down into the mouth, and so I can sit up straight now. My neck doesn't hurt anymore, which just takes like a huge mental load off because you're you know you're trying to get some work done, and then like you just feel your your entire like back of your head, neck, and shoulders starts tingling, and and you're you're minutes away from a you know day-ending spasm.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:43

Yeah, that's things that people don't think about. Yeah, it's like tattoo artists. I was talking to a tattoo artist the other day, and he's like, dude, heart back is just wrecked over the years. I'm like, Oh, that I didn't think of that, you know, those things. Yeah, you're in the same position all day long and you're you're doing very detailed work, yeah. So you can't move. It's like and and like you said, you want to be done in an efficient amount of time, so it's you know, you're trying just to get it all done.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:05

Gosh. Yeah, if you meet like an old dentist, like look at their back and neck, they'll be walking around like just all stooped over and stove up, dude. And it's like, were you uh did you ride saddle bronx, or were you yeah, as we're living, or were you a dentist?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:18

You're a dentist, yeah. Yeah, you're either a hard, a hard uh rodeo guy or you were a dentist.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:24

Yeah, that's funny. Um, but yeah, I I think that the the negativity that surrounds the field can weigh pretty heavily on you. And you know, traditionally, like dentists have had a super high level of of suicide for their field. That's what I've heard. I was surprised when I heard that. Yeah, we were actually passed by um medical doctors and construction supervisors recently.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:44

Yeah, that's it's like the top top three or five in the in like behind like military and law enforcement and stuff. Like that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:51

Yeah, I think um traditionally, and I think dentistry's come down off of that the pedestal that it was on for that, because it's extremely isolating. You're the one person in your practice that is making all of these healthcare decisions. You're the only provider role other than the hygienist, which that's where like with me and my hygienist, like he's he and I get along so well. We talk about you know the disease control processes that both of us are are trying to control. And I he calls himself the gum gardener. And uh, and so that for me, like he takes a huge weight off of my shoulders um from a provider side of it, like it can be isolating. Um, but now that we, you know, so many people are in group practices or they have somebody else, another doctor that they work with. Um, you know, my brother's a dentist, my partners are here in Boise, and you know, we've got, you know, I'm they've been in it a lot longer than I have. If I've got questions, you know, they're an open door, like I can call them anytime I need, and you know, they'll get back to me and and we'll we can brainstorm things. But yeah, if I was if I was working alone, um, it would be it would be super stressful. Um and yeah, there's an isolating factor to it. And then I'm sure there's guys that you know looked up at 20 years and they're like, I've been doing nothing but fillings for five days a week for 20 years. Yeah. The repetitive nature of it and and working with people in pain. Like if you get really bad sympathy pains, like dentistry is gonna be hard. Yeah. Yeah, because everybody, you know, half the people in the day are coming in with a problem that has to be fixed, and you've got to be able to to like kind of compartmentalize certain things, and they're a patient to you, they're a human being that's in pain, they're seeking help, and then you're trying to like help them navigate mentally what's happening, as well as to to come up with a plan that's gonna help them, help them get where they want to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:46

Yeah, that's crazy, man. So, what do you do to just keep your spirits up then? You just make sure to dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:53

I listen to whatever music I want to in my operatories. I had a patient one time that was like, Why are we listening to this? And I don't like this. And I was like, It's not for you, dude. Yeah, it's for me. My assistant's like, oh my god, dude, how many more freaking Morgan Wallins songs can we can we listen to in this office today? And I'm like, dude, I that like I'm I've always been a uh I love music. I've always been a my parents had a band when we were kids, and uh, so I music like really chills me out. So I get to I just listen to what I want to, as long as it's not like I'm a big metal heads, but the metal doesn't make it into the office, so it pretty much just stays like whatever country I want to want to listen to that day. Yeah, yeah. So music, um fitness the fitness side of things has kind of become more of like a necessary thing than something that I like really enjoy. I I do I like being I like being active, um, but when you're freaking toast at the end of a week, you're like, I don't want to freaking where I'm gonna work out as soon as I get home from work, or am I gonna do it at four in the morning before I go in and see these patients all day? And um, but yeah, I I noticed like when I started running more, like that was really therapeutic to like just get my heart rate up in the morning, um, do some cardio and then work out in the afternoon after work. Uh the baby has not helped the bad side of it. So yeah, congratulations being a new dad. She's 11 weeks old. That's awesome. Yeah, how's that been? It's been it's been an adventure. Um, we had a kind of an unfortunate string of events in the hospital. We were there for four days. Um my wife's a freaking trooper. She pushed through a lot of um a lot of crappy things that she had to deal with uh with the delivery. Um, and we just did it together, you know, like we were I part of being a business owner with the dental side of things and then uh being in the hospital with with my wife, like we're not getting paid because I'm not working. So I took off those first or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. She worked the day that she went into labor at the hospital. Um uh so she's a freaking animal, dude. She's a lot tougher than I am. Uh um, but yeah, that that was a that was a big adventure overall. Um, four days in the hospital and then spent the last the fifth night in the Saturday night in the ER. Had one night at home, and then I was back at work on Monday morning. Um, I'm so thankful. My my wife's parents, my in-laws were here to help her with the baby. Um, and just to navigate kind of a less than fortunate turn of events after the baby got here. Um on my wife's side of things. Um, but we pushed through it and it was awesome to to kind of get to where we are now where you know she's smiling at us and we wake her up and it's like, oh wow, you're not just a little newborn screaming blob that screams nonstop 24 hours a day, you know. Yeah. Um that was going back to work after the the baby was born was was like it was a mental game. I was so tired after the five days at the four four days in the hospital and the fifth night with in and out of the hospital at the ER. Um I keep track of my heart rate a lot when I'm working and uh when I'm doing dentistry, more or less, like it's fairly therapeutic. Like managing the patients, managing the office is like the stressful side of things. But when I can just sit and like do my job, I see my heart rate come down. And but last summer when I was running a lot, it'd be like at 55, 58 beats a minute. And uh, took me like an hour and a half of these three fillings, and I was like, I feel like I'm gonna die. This is on Monday morning, and I look down and my resting heart rate is one of one ten. Jeez. I was like, ah, this is like level two. This sucks. Like gosh. Um, but yeah, we pushed through it, and uh my wife's a a legend, she's gonna be off work through March 23rd and then back to nurse practitioner life, and baby's gonna stay with a nanny two days a week. My sister-in-law is gonna help out too, and she's gonna get to play with her cousins a couple days a week, and it's gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:48

How's uh how's everything changed in your life now being a dad? Like your priorities and everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:53

Yeah, you I I I've never we didn't go into uh parenthood by any means with like rose-colored glasses. We're the last of our friend group to have kids. My two younger siblings already have kids. Um, so I knew it was gonna be tough, but like the uh the severity of the sleep deprivation for those first three to four weeks was was heinous. Uh, and I would definitely say I have like a lot more respect than I ever thought that I would uh for people that end up going through that a lot longer than we did. We've been like unbelievably fortunate. I don't even like telling people that she sleeps eight to ten hours a night right now because it's like it's not even fair. Like, people don't want to know that their baby's dead sleep. Yeah. I'm sure when she hits her four-month her sleep regression will happen and then we'll be up all night again. So uh, but yeah, you have to be so much more purposeful with your time. You know, like there's really no more just jacking around and and not doing something. Like if you want to have downtime, well, then you've gotta you've gotta have things lined up so that you when she lays down for an app, like you and your wife can do but whether do whatever it is that you want to do together. If you want to, if you want to read, if you want to watch a show, like you've got that time apparently, you've got to be ready and you've gotta be able to to you know hop on the she hops on the Peloton the second that she goes to bed, and you know, I put her down this morning and went and ran and worked out for a little bit. It was none, it's better than better than nothing, but it's far from the workouts that I used to do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, um, but yeah, purposeful with your time um and purposeful with your communication is is goes a lot further than I ever thought it would.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:35

So as a parent now, what are you gonna do for your kid to make sure that they're not afraid of the dentist?

SPEAKER_01 1:47:41

Uh actually we may have already traumatized her pretty bad. She in the attempt at the nursing and breastfeeding, we found out with a lactation consultant that her her tongue frenum attachment was way too big and her upper lip attachment was way too big, and so she couldn't latch to eat, whether it be on the bottle or or breastfeeding. And so she would click and there was air getting in, and then she'd get gassy and scream. And so um had to go to a dentist uh here in town that um has a CO2 laser, um, which is the best thing for soft tissue augmentation because it doesn't really hurt when they're that young, they don't really have any like real nervous supply to those things, and so he clipped her tongue and clipped her lip, and um then you know, then her you can you can see as you're bottle feeding her that her her lips and tongue like are working how they're supposed to. Um, so we have to do all these freaking stretches on her cheek and her lips all the time. Wow. Um she uh my wife pushed for three hours to get her out and was in labor for 26. And so she came out really like tight on this side and loves to turn her head to the left. And so it's like a constant battle of exercise and stretching and being purposeful with our time with her to like help her to eat, eat well, function well. Oral function is something like that I've been learning a lot about with her and with the lactation consultant that my wife used, um, who's stellar, they're called uh wild milk here in Boise. So if anybody needs lactation consultant help, like they are the they are the people to talk to. Um Maureen and Kristen are absolutely stellar. Um, but they know their stuff and have helped us a lot. And now um it's kind of translated into my line of work where I there are certain patients that like really struggle and feel like they're being waterboarded when you're doing dental work on them because they're leaned back and their mouths open and they don't know what to do with their tongue. And so I started looking at people's tongues and started seeing that these patients that that don't know when they when they open their mouth, most people's tongue drops to the back of their mouth, blocks their mouth from swallowing water. Um, and they just sit there and choke. They're like, I can't breathe. You know, like I I feel like I'm gonna die. Here and I'm like, we got to figure out like a way to like train you to let me work on you. But so many of these patients um have these large tongue ties underneath on their frenum attachments for their tongue, and they never learned to put their tongue to the roof of their mouth at rest. And so there's a lot of tongue function. Like people lean back and I see their tongue shaking, like it's already a muscle failure. And I'm like, this is wild. Like what a what a world of that's kind of like been opened to me from learning about like oral function, um, especially starting from when you know when we're babies. Are we learning to like are we just eating off of a bottle? What kind of pacifier are they using? Like, are we training them for their mouths to work as adults in addition to the fact that they need to have nutrition?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:46

Yeah. So and then thumb suckers, they they start training their mouth to just form differently, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:50:52

They can, yeah. You put a lot more pressure on your on the roof of the palate than people think. Uh, and it's a hard habit to break because most of the time babies have been sucking their thumb in utero. And so, you know, they're maybe like 10 weeks old, but they've been sucking their thumb for 10 months already when they come out, uh, or by that time, you know, like probably like 13, 14 weeks in utero, they can put their thumb in their mouth.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:14

Um, and so that's a huge habit that really, quite frankly, should be broken. And I've learned some things from from this realm already that I guess nowadays they're wanting kids done with pacifiers by like four months. Uh, it used to be a year, but that that addiction to that pressure in their mouth, and then they take it out and then they put their thumb. The thumb is worse because then they can put so much pressure on the roof of their mouth that uh, you know, I'll see an adult that had braces and they're 40 years old, and I can see that their palate is shaped funny. And I'm like, Do you suck your thumb? And they're like, Yeah, how'd you know? And I'm like, well, I can literally see like that that skeletal structure has changed, it never went back. Good luck calling a or using an elk call. Yeah, that was my first time. No diaphragms for you, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:56

Yeah, you are not gonna be archery hunting by yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:58

No, the Hoochie mama only goes so far.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:01

Yeah, good luck at the full draw using the hoochie mama. Yeah, that's funny. So you said it's kind of like a sales game, too, with with dentistry. What how do you set your your practice apart from so many others in the area?

SPEAKER_01 1:52:14

I think um, how do we set ourselves apart?

SPEAKER_00 1:52:18

Well, not like just I mean, yeah, you could take that like for you guys, but like is that just kind of a I've seen you guys start to do like TikToks and stuff now to like oh yeah, I dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:26

My office manager Celeste is a little social media witch. She's she does awesome videos.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:30

Yeah, yeah. I think that's cool because then people start to realize that you you're more than just a dentist and you guys have personality, and like because I think personality is everything if you're trying to separate yourself from somebody else. For sure, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:42

Yeah, personality is everything. And I I think that that letting that shine and and when I go in and meet patients for the first time, I'm never going to that dentist chair. I go to the corner and I sit down and I hang out and talk to people. Um, and some people, some people like that, and I'd say the majority of people like that. There are patients that are just like, I don't care to be here, I don't care to meet you. I just want to know that things are okay, so I can leave. I'm like, okay, well, we can do that. That's fine. But the vast majority of patients, they want to know like an icebreaker. That yeah, yeah. I feel like within three questions that I ask a patient, I can find some sort of common ground to converse about with them. And that's just that's how I do it. You know, there are other ways that people do it. Um, I really struggled when I was with the group, um, the Pacific office. They sent us to this training uh at their their main headquarters in Irvine, California. And uh they have these scripts they want you to like practice. And I freaking sucked so bad at trying to do their script. I initially just gave up because I was like, I'm I'm not gonna do this. Like I can't, I can't be scripted, I'm just too chill, go with the flow. Um I feel like there's probably a lot of I the only time I'm type A really in this world is about the dental work that I do. Um because I I I don't want anybody to walk out of my office with work that I wouldn't be okay with being in my wife's teeth or my mom's, you know. I A, because I want my work to speak for itself, and then B, um from a business side, like you don't want to do ever do anything that's that's sloppy because then you have to redo it. Like you're from an ethical perspective, it has to be fixed, and now you're doing it for free and you're taking up that time that you could have been you know providing money for the office. Um working as a solo provider is definitely weird. Um and we went, my wife and I took a vacation the first time we went to over first time we've gone to over I've been to overseas. We went to England, Scotland, and Ireland. We were there for two weeks, and um I like hamstrung my office for three months because of how much money we cut out of the practice by not working. Um because people can take, you know, they can take leave and because you have to. Like, well, if I'm not working, you're not getting paid. Well, you're gonna be taken out, taking out leave and stuff like that. So yeah, because you can't even do cleanings or anything then, can you? Um that depends on the state. Um, and certain states re uh allow um hygiene to perform scaling and route planning services and like periodontal maintenance cleanings without the presence of the provider. It's there's a difference between like general supervision and direct supervision, and so you have to follow your state guidelines for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:24

Cool, dude. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're you're obviously a dentist and you're got some cool stuff, but I mean, outside of that, you're you've been slaying some elk with with your bow. So I mean, you're not just a dentist, like you got you got some cool stuff to you too.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:39

Yeah, I I really uh to be honest, like I don't really feel like being a dentist is really even in like the top five things about me that like really are who I am. Um for me, like my profession is a means to an end, and I happen to be good at my profession, thankfully. Um yeah, I'm just trying to pay off student loans and live my life and raise my kid and take my wife out to dinner and go hunt in September, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:56:08

Yeah. So how's uh how's hunting out in Idaho been compared to like back in New Mexico?

SPEAKER_01 1:56:14

Um the areas that I've gone are so much thicker. The brush is so thick and everything is so steep. It's what I mean, you know, when you throw it on, I actually put that that angle filter on, you're like, that is red. I'm not going up there. You got all your lines just stacked so close together, you're like just looking up. Like, I'm supposed to get up that's not happening. Yeah. Um, I I think uh I'm still learning up here, but I mean I've been very fortunate um with the time that I have spent. This last season I was a bow hiker for eight days. Um, but uh I really want to try to do some more research into the uh controlled units and make sure I'm applying for those and get out there where I'm not getting old. I almost got ran over by a guy on a four-wheeler. I I had hiked in early because I knew there was a bull in the straw this last year. And uh I was standing in the middle of one of those little forest service trails, and uh I'd hiked in under my red light, finally got decently close, turned off the light, and there was a bull up above, and then one further ahead down in the next gully, and they were calling to each other. And then, as is pretty common, I think, for these public land hunts, then the freaking motocross race starts because everybody slept in. And I've been out there for a freaking hour in the dark, standing in the dark, waiting, listening to these two bulls, and then you know, then you hear 87 different freaking four-wheelers and side by sides kick on, and everybody's just driving to the spot that they think that they're gonna get lucky. And you know, you've been in there on two bulls for an hour, and I almost got ran over. This guy was just hauling to wherever he thought he needed to go. Can't see the forest for the trees, you know. Gosh, so that's so frustrating. Yeah, New Mexico hunting, it's a purely lottery system. So if you don't draw, even for residents, yeah. Wow. So if you don't draw, you're not going. Damn. Um, no over-the-counter, even like certain units or anything, certain animals you can hunt over-the-counter. I think you can over-the-counter Barbary sheep, and I think you can hunt uh there might be some bear tags here and there. Don't quote me. That's crazy. Don't quote me on that. I don't actually know. I've never bear hunted. Yeah, yeah. But elk and deer is all draw.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:26

Dang. That's why they got good animals, I guess. They got a lot of good animals. Yeah. Yeah, it's unfortunate because the the lottery system sucks, but then they usually do have pretty good animals. But like for the people that are trying to hunt in that in that state, it's like, well, you're not hunting this year, even if you're a resident. Yeah. Even there's some spots in Utah like that. You have to draw for everything. I'm pretty sure there might be a couple of the county units, but like my dad's been hunting this one spot in Utah for years, and he'd put it in for just a general tag, and they said, Nope, you didn't get it. It's just a general tag. Yeah. But there's still even limited to that. Like, gosh, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:59

I think it's probably a good idea the way they've done it up here to change the out of state to a lottery because everybody just waiting and spending 12 hours on a computer waiting for your spot to try to buy a tag in Idaho. It's such a terrible system.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:11

They give you a random number, it's not even like if you not even first come, first serve.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:15

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:15

Yeah, you could just like log on right as you can, and like you're number 4,000. Good luck. Yeah. And then you're just sitting there all day, and then it's your turn finally, but the unit that you want to hunt is already taken, so then you gotta go, you know, okay, I guess I'm gonna figure out unit 15 or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:29

Two of my my friends from Albuquerque, uh, they're he they're they're two of the like the most hunting machines that I've ever encountered in my life. Uh, they wanted to come up here and give it a shot. Um, and they waited, got a tag for 46, which is south of Glenn's Ferry. And uh I had the resident tag, so I could go, you know, anywhere there's an open open season I could go. Um, but they freaking drove up here, brought the tent, brought the side by side, and we looked for deer for five days. Really? Nothing, nothing.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:09

That's what I'm saying, man. That's that's hurts.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:11

We saw a forky in two does the first morning that had come off of some ag up into the sagebrush. And then after that, we spent we spent five days glassing. Was that rifle hunt? Yeah, yeah, in October. Um it was fun to hang out, but like it sucked for them to like invest so much to come up here, like drive, like trailer all that stuff, yeah, up from New Mexico to to go. And then we just got like just totally skunked, other than the experience of hanging out.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:39

So that was over-the-counter for you though? Yeah, you could just go in there and hunt? Yeah, okay, cool. Dang, dude. What are you gonna hunt for this year? You gonna try to put it in for anything?

SPEAKER_01 2:00:46

I'm gonna put it in for elk and deer, and then uh if it doesn't happen, I'll probably go back to an over-the-counter spot.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:53

You ever put it in for antelope? I haven't. I should. I think I'm gonna try it this year too.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:58

Part of me wants to put in for moose, you know, because like we you have the opportunity. I mean, I've shot two bulls in two years back to back on public land.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:08

What a flex, dude. I that's insane.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:10

Yeah, that that doesn't even make sense.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:12

With a bow.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:13

With a bow. Yeah. Um, and then and you know, so two out of three years arrowed something. Yeah. But to have the opportunity to put in for moose and still be able to over-the-counter elk is kind of a itch in the back of my mind.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:29

Yeah, especially if you already know the area that you can go over-the-counter, you might as well just pray. And then as soon as you as soon as you draw it, then you can go back to putting in for elk. Yeah, especially to put in while you're young too for a moose. Like, you don't want to draw that when you're 50 or 60. That's a big freaking animal. Yeah, you know. Yeah. Unless you can get some.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:47

Yeah, I should put in for antelope. I don't I don't have uh I've got an old um 270 rifle that I that needs some some love. Um, but I I don't know. Everybody's moving to these sick carbon fiber wrapped, like seven millimet seven PRC rifles and stuff. And I'm like, dude, I my wife would probably kill me, dude. I've already got a bow set up. I don't need to go go balls to the wall with a expensive hobbies already. That's stupid.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. My my thing was like someone told me when you get a gun, make sure that you can always get the ammo for it. Because if you get like one of these crazy like 300 Winchester short mag, like or something like that, where it's like hard to find a round.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:30

It's hard to find seven millimeter magnum at this point because everybody's making seven PRC.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:36

I'm just a 300 wind mag guy, man. Yeah. Like I I had the 6'5 Creedmoor and had a terrible experience with that. So I was like, nope. When you have to put in a bunch of rounds on a deer and it was on a guided hunt, I'm like Was it like a 143 grain or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 2:02:54

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:55

Yeah, actually, exactly. Yeah. But everything I've ever I didn't realize how much they drop. And I and then I looked at the box and it was like an inch at 100 to 200, like five inches from 200 to 300, and then like 13-inch drop from from 200 to 300. So I nice shot when I was shooting center chest on because it was like a frontal, but I was like, whatever, I can I could definitely make this. It was like 300 yards. Because I had just been shooting my 300 wind mag before that, which is like drop. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:25

And I didn't realize, which that's on me. I should have gone out and like realized how much of a drop there was, but then yeah, just like hit way low and hit the hit the front leg. So it's like just running way carrying the leg. And I'm like, this is a guided hunt, like down in the Pontigance in like southern Utah, and I'm like, this is just freaking embarrassing. Oh god. I'm blaming the gun, but it was on me too. But it's like, and then the guide looks over and he's like, that's why they call it a 6'5 need more.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:50

I'm like, Yeah, you're right, dude. Everything everything I've ever shot was with the 270 or the 150 grain bullet. And then yeah, I went to bow. I actually haven't rifle hunter in a long time.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:02

Yeah, dude. I I that's on my bucket list to kill an elk with my bow. Like over the counter. I've killed one in Utah, but that was on a guided hunt. I mean, it was over the counter on public land, but still, I want to be able to like DIY everything. Just hard. Maybe we should just make it happen this year then. Let's do it, dude. I know I know some spots. I know you got some spots too, so we'll have to figure it out. But yeah. Cool, dude. Well, let's uh let's get your let's get your place a plug, and then uh people could come see you and you can get in their mouth.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:35

Uh well my practice is in Caldwell, Idaho. It's called Caldwell Dentistry Co. Um I'm one of the owners. I'm the only doctor there. Uh it's a nice little kind of like a boutique styled practice. There's only three chairs, got one hygienist, two awesome assistants, and an office manager that just takes care of everybody and kind of runs the show. And um yeah, I've been there about two years now. So going on three. It's pretty great. Cause well dentistry co right by West Valley Medical Center. Yeah, right across the street from the golf course. Yeah, the golf course. Yeah, dude. I actually saw a golf ball land in the parking lot over that freaking fence in front. I was like, oh my god. Yeah, that's why I started parking back behind all these cars, dude. I'm gonna park behind the behind the building from now on. Yeah, that's scary. Yeah, well, I appreciate you having me on, man. I I can't see all the clips and stuff on Instagram, so I'm freaking stoked to come on and chat.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:31

Well, it's a wild world. I mean, like, dentistry seems like it's just so cut and dry and boring, but like when you really start digging into like it's a it's a doctor and like all the cadaver thing, like the cadaver thing was crazy to me. So like I would have never thought that. That's crazy. But yeah, we'll have to get on again, and maybe we'll do like a hunting podcast, just hunting stuff, because there's a lot of stuff we could talk about there. For sure. Cool, dude. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, appreciate it.