Turkey Teeth, Veneers & the Secret to Looking Younger | Prosthodontist Dr. Rowan Buskin

A beautiful smile isn't just about aesthetics, it's about longevity. Dr. Buskin explains how your teeth influence facial structure, aging, and overall appearance, and why prosthodontists are the specialists trusted with the most complex smile transformations. From veneers and crowns to dental tourism and the viral "Turkey Teeth" trend, discover why the right smile design is about far more than looking good today, it’s about preserving your face for the future.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Aesthetics Unscripted. I'm your host, Kim. You're a generative aesthetic and longevity expert. I'm really excited to introduce Dr. Rowan Buskin today of Dallas Prostodontics. And we're going to unpack everything about what is Prostodontics and why is it important and what's the difference and when do you need them and who is he? So let's get started. Dr. Rowan, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

So it looks like you've taken a very rare moment to step outside of your clinic. Where are you at right now?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

I'm in Mexico, having a break trying to recharge myself. Come back at work on Thursday, Thursday morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

So please, uh prostodontist. I unfortunately, even though I take really good care of my teeth, have been told that I have very porous teeth, and over my lifetime I've been intimately involved with different levels of your profession. So can you please explain what is a proptodontist and how does that differentiate you from the other specialties?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

I'm somewhere between a proctologist and a podiatrist, somewhere between the two. But what a prostodontist actually is, is a specialist in dentistry who can provide an understanding and care for the entire mouth, which means that we can restore from one tooth to 28 teeth. We can restore whether it's on implants or on gums or on natural teeth. And the uh the scope is massive, and obviously, there is a crossover between us and family or general or cosmetic dentists. And um I can explain to you why it's like that and why no one knows about us, but um, would you like me to go forward with that?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Absolutely. I think the viewers really need to know.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

So we are specialty no different to orthodontics, pdf, pediodonics, oral surgery, periodonics. We are one of those, and we are accredited and trained by the American Dental Association. The American Dentist Association has done a pretty bad job of exposing us, like an orthodontist, for example, because there's so much crossover between us and general dentistry that theoretically, I believe, in my opinion only, is that they they think that there's a competition between us. And what actually happens is that we only get referrals from general dentists when they are way too complicated or beyond their comfort zone, or sometimes when the patient feels that they have had enough of going down the corporate dentistry or the family dentistry road, and they want to be treated by someone who may know better, and that would be us.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Because it is unfortunate that your specialty has not had the orthodontic type of branding awareness because yes, exactly, because obviously yours worth of education to specialize in what you're doing, and then you're being overlooked.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Yeah, I mean it's it's not really from an egotistical standpoint from the practitioner side, it's more for the for the the population who should know that there's something out there and that we end up getting last resort kind of patients where they've hit the wall and it's desperation time, and we often get to redo other people's work, which is costly for the patient, and it involves us almost counseling the patients as to why.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

So, in your opinion, uh for a new patient um coming up with some dental issues uh that their dentist, their regular dentist, is saying, uh, you need, you know, maybe you need a root canal, you're going to have to go somewhere else. What are the the signs of what's happening within your mouth where a patient should be searching for someone of your specialty?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

I can give you my input based on your on my experience. Um, it's it's generally ready when the patient feels like they're spinning their wheels and they're gonna get the same thing done expecting the same result, which is a problem. And they will, out of desperation, will either ask for referral, or the best general dentists are the ones who actually do refer when they know when to refer. And so, although that to them may be that they are sending work out of their office, it actually should work both ways because when we are done with our work, we refer back to the general dentist to continue care. I'll give you an example. Imagine if I hey there's a patient who has excessively worn down their teeth, and all 28 teeth show signs of wear, and the patient is at a loss. So, what should happen in a in the in the real world, in the correct world, is that we could, as a prosodonist, get the referral, and so you t and so what you tell our patients, because they ask the same question, why am I here? And the answer would be that we will treat all 28 T once. And then when you go back to a general dentist, should you need a crown redone, he can redo the crown in the platform that we have created. So the patient leaves our office, doesn't stay there, and goes back to general dentist for what they call single-tooth dentistry, a crown being redone, a root canal being needed on a crown that has previously been done. That is what that would be the best way in which we integrate each other. But unfortunately, it's not that it's not the case.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Right. Well, I think this is so important, and I'm so happy that you came on today to be able to spread the awareness about this, because uh I think a lot of viewers don't understand how poor mouth hygiene or your mouth health for dental hygiene, how that affects your entire body. And it also affects the medical aesthetic side of it, like your aesthetics in general. What is happening in your whole body always shows up on your face. And if you're looking for longevity, if you're looking to age gracefully and look beautiful and feel great about it, you've got to take care of your mouth. So, how do you feel about the industry blanket under cosmetic dentistry? I mean, is that something that you agree with that terminology, or is it used and abused and it misdirects? Um, what are your feelings?

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Anyone who replaces a tooth or part of a tooth is a cosmetic dentist. I mean, it's simple as that. I mean, you can it doesn't matter how you mince it, that's just what it is. And so everything that we do, whether people think of a prosodonis as being purely functional or engineering based in the mouth, everything we do is based on aesthetics because we have you can't make a patient leave your office, although they can chew looking ugly. I mean, that kind of is defeats all purposes.

unknown 7:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

That takes away the word confidence out of our patient. Because our patients are essentially our ambassadors, and that's how we get our best referrals is from word of mouth.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Oh, without a doubt, and no pun intended or any kind of innuendo. In your business, it literally is the mouth, the word coming from the mouth. Uh absolutely. So uh some of the viewers might wonder why, other than sharing public awareness of the need for your specialty and the need for having oral hygiene and oral health. But I think um it is often overlooked that especially as we age, your facial structure and your bone structure, including your teeth, has everything to do with just losing that structure for your face, that foundation that actually helps to have uh what we consider beauty on the outside, skin deep, has to do a lot with your bone structure and maintaining proper tooth health as well. Not just the health, but like I said, but the structure. So can you share feelings about that?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

To me, the mouth and the eyes are the gateway to to getting to see someone in how in how they are, and so age plays a big part in aesthetics. I mean, we trained from in our basic graduate school, is there are different uh aspects to a particular person's smile, and so most of our aesthetics from a dental standpoint is actually comes from denture aesthetics because we're going back about 50 to 100 to 70 years, because that's what the restoration was is to make to have someone take their teeth out and make dentures. And so I guess the probably the most powerful part of our program is to learn where to put teeth into a mouth that has no teeth. Like where how like where do you start? And so that is probably that what a prosthetist has in their back pocket is where to make put a single front tooth into a face with with no guidelines. And we obviously trained that there are obviously some there are certain guidelines we you can use, but and there but the bottom line is that something has to get tried into a patient's mouth, and we could be wrong. We could put teeth into someone's mouth, and we can I I should be able to say to myself, hang on, they're too small, they're too narrow, they're too long, they're in the wrong position, and then you can you keep on going until you find the right recipe for a patient. And this is part of the art of the whole thing, I suppose, is that we all we need clues. I mean, I'm not like I'm not a prophet. I mean, I can't I can't say, well, you can have that smile. Because that's the danger with today and with digitizing everything, is that you you go ahead and you take a smile from a smile gallery. Now imagine if I said to you, you know what, let's go look at the gallery of smiles for your mouth. You'll probably turn around to me and say, This it sounds like I'm shopping for uh for a carpet for my house.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yes, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

So we so depending on your age and depending on how you like to run your practice, you are stuck with sometimes between the analog world, which is I go to a chart and I pick a tooth and I set it in wax and I put it in someone's mouth, and we see what it looks like. I give them a mirror, small mirror, big mirror, and we can that would be the what the analog world is, meaning that I or someone like me would set the teeth in wax on a stone copy of someone's mouth, and then you try it in. Today with digitizing, which I I'm generally on, I'm old school, I'm on the analog side for sure, is that what they do is that they will they video a patient as they are, and I'm actually, and this is obviously with the assumption that they have something in their mouths, whether it's fast teeth, regular teeth, only some teeth, and then they morph into the video images a set of teeth, which comes from a smile gallery, and then the patient can either at that time approve the image on a screen, make changes so that so that the practitioner can go ahead and put a new set of teeth into that smile, and then ultimately they're gonna convert that with printing into a printed set of teeth to look at in the mouth, and there's a cost involved for that, like anything else. And then they get a chance to see what those teeth, which they approved on the screen, look like in their mouths. Sometimes they get a chance to go home with it because it's something they could wear, but there has to be a foundation to put those teeth onto, whether whether it being gums or teeth or implants. That's the digital part of it, and so I just happen to uh enjoy the analog part because I like tinkering with things. I like I like building big puzzles, I like putting things together, so I do it myself.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Wow, that's impressive.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

And it's actually nice for the patients because you act they actually see if I make changes, I'm right next to them. So I've got the burner that and they see me moving keys around, and it's actually they become part of what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

That's super cool. I love it. And I was so amazed listening to this whole process. Uh, it was not the world I was expecting, and I can completely see why a patient would want to reach out to a prostodontist. And I personally am upset that in my lifetime and dental journey I didn't know about doctors such as yourself because it could have really been advantageous for me to have had uh access to you and uh colleagues of your expertise. Absolutely. How do you feel about veneers in particular? Because I have a very base understanding of them. I'm not going to exaggerate. I didn't do a deep dive before we got onto this podcast. But I have seen some viral comments over the last two years about the veneers glowing in the dark when people are in dance clubs or bars and you know they put up their videos of their teeth glowing because of the veneers. I've heard um some colleagues complain about the condition of the actual tooth underneath because correct me if I'm wrong, please. You have to shave down the natural tooth to attach the veneer. I mean, walk us through this whole thing and how do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

If you're talking about uh biologic in biology fitting in with the mouth, the veneer correctly done is the most compatible with the way a tooth was originally created of any of our restorations. So basically they are in a tooth there's three layers there's the outer layer which we call enamel, the middle layer, which we call dentum, like dent and chewing gum, and the inner layer, which is the pulp or the nerve. Now they each have a certain amount of thicknesses to them, and so in enamel, enamel functions relatively quite similar to glass, meaning it is about 96% mineral, which is has no has no live cells, it's just a surface. The dental layer which is within it is about 80% uh mineral and 20% organic. Organic would mean like water stuff stuff that isn't hard, and then the nerve. So the best so the best bond you would get is directly to enamel. Therefore, a veneer should be as much as close to 100% in enamel as possible. That doesn't mean to say that it doesn't bond well to the layer below it, to dentin, it does, but the best bond would be to 100% enamel. So in a tooth, there's certain thicknesses to enamel based on where how close it is to the gum. But close to the gum line, it's thinnest, and close to the tip of the tooth, it is thickest. So you prepare the tooth based on the thickness of enamel. And so once prepared, you can you etch so you you prepare the tooth, you make an impression whether it's going to be analog or digital, and then a technician makes the veneer out of a ceramic, a high strength ceramic or a pretty ceramic. But there are different strengths of ceramic as well. But on the inner surface of the veneer of the veneer, it is etched, meaning there are my tiny, tiny, tiny little micro roughnesses. Then when you get to bond the veneer to a tooth, you etch the tooth itself, so you get a also almost like a frosted appearance to the to the enamel, and then you put the you bond it together, and boom, it's like a bond. That's the best bond we can get of anything in dentistry. I guess now with screws, we get that if you can call that a bond, that's all that's also a high strength bond. But enamel to veneer is would be the best bond. And so now the question becomes which is could be your next question. I don't need to ask your next question for you. Is what are the indications for veneers?

SPEAKER_01 17:10

I was just yes, absolutely. Let's take it there.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

So indications for veneers would be changing color, gaps between teeth, discolor uh discolorations, replacing bonding, which was there before. You're not really going to you don't you don't want to get into a situation where you are covering, protecting a worn tooth, which the patient has functionally worn, and expecting a veneer to last by lengthening it, it's all fail. And so if you're gonna go to a point where you have to to lengthen teeth, you have to do the back teeth as well, not just front teeth. You gotta do the whole thing. So it's a misnomer when when people say, Well, you know, I've worn my teeth, I've come I I need to get veneers. I mean, I'm pretty much gonna talk them out of it. I'm gonna say, Listen, I might not be the guy because I'm thinking thinking of crowns more than veneers for you. Let someone else make the mistake.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Because that sounds like a recipe for a bot's job without a problem. Because if you have a worn tooth and a long veneer, it it would be very easy, like a fingernail, to catch it on something and rip it off.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Exactly. And so I I mean, I I do veneers, um, don't get me wrong, but uh, I've got to pick my patience. Also, if a tooth has fillings around it, you have to end the veneer on natural tooth. You cannot end the end the veneer onto a filling. So if you have existing fillings which cover the back of the going toward the back of the teeth, you're gonna generally be a uh crown candidate, more of a veneer can. The cosmetics you get from veneers are replicating crowns because they're made of the same materials. It's just a matter of how much tooth is destroyed, which is uh not destroyed, is prepared to get to have a nice looking result.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Those are pearls of wisdom that I hope the viewers really appreciate because I know I do. Uh let me ask you another question when it comes to the veneers. What if you have a patient with a plethora of existing work? Like they've got some crowns, they have some fillings that actually come up and maybe overlap towards the front of the surface, then they have some natural teeth, but they're like, hey, I want the Hollywood smile makeover, but I want to do all veneers. Like, what do you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Tell them that uh you can have the veneers on the teeth that warrant veneers, but you have to mix them with crowns, and then they are made of all similar materials. So you may end up having three veneers and four crowns, and they are and but the color should be the same because they're made from the same material. The proprietary name of the material of the ceramic can be used for both options.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

How does you in your practice handle that new patient that comes in and help us all? You know, all of us professionals help us all from the TikTok and social media trends with a printed picture or on their phone. They're gonna show you a video or that picture of somebody's ideal teeth. But this person, first of all, you can tell the picture's filtered or it's AI, and that person's facial structure is nothing like the person sitting in front of you. How do you handle all of that?

SPEAKER_00 20:25

That's probably the biggest challenge, really, is the patients who okay. So I always tell tell people around me that the most difficult patient is the one that would treat themselves if they could. And they're just using me as a tool to get there.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

And so absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah, and so the thing is that you got you gotta, it's all about expectations now, because if a patient does come in with an with a picture, they got no idea how that picture relates to their own mouth, no idea. And so what what what we have to do is take that because it's all about transferring information, and so when you interview a new patient, regardless of whatever they need, and we're gonna talk specifically aesthetics here, but I probably spend the first 10 minutes listening to them, and obviously repeating their the what they say in my words to make sure that they are they know that I understood. Also, the questions I would return would be lead, not leading is a bad word, but leading towards the right information, not leading towards treatment, but leading towards the right information that allows me to prescribe the right treatment. And so they will they often will come in with a certain look, and then I would say to them, well, fine, then show me some photographs of how you looked. Growing up, and then we'll look at those two side by side and we'll see how they relate. And then it's my job to tell them what is possible and what is impossible to be done and the avenues to get there.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Any kind of advice we're you know, for new patients, especially, but any patients at IT intelligent treatment, we're always trying to educate you, and sometimes the answer is going to be no. If the patient is too unrealistic with their goals, we might have to refer them elsewhere after we've educated them on why we're telling you no. Like, no, this is not a good idea for you, and this is why. So I love that at your practice in Dallas, that's exactly what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

You see, no, it's a terrible word. Because, I mean, the three words, the three three word sentences that are used the least in life today is I love you, I'm sorry, and I don't know. The moment we can go ahead and use those those words frequently, it liberates us because we can that's a way we can actually move people on who are not going to make us happy at all in treating them.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Exactly. And they they themselves are not going to be happy with an outcome, so obviously it's not a good pairing for the professional and the patient, and the best professional will always express that in an educated, kind, gentle manner.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Non-judgmental manner, yes.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Just talking about, like in my practice over the years, we've seen with the evolution of whitening toothpaste, we've seen a lot of cases once we go through a laundry laster process of elimination, uh, contact dermatitis that turns out to be directly related to the sudden switch to a whitening toothpaste. So I wanted to ask you when it comes to new mouthwashes, when it comes to changing your dental hygienic program, your flossing, your picks, um, you know, bamboo picks versus plastic picks. I could talk to you about that all day long because I'm all about reducing our single-use plastics. But uh whitening toothpaste, contact dermatitis, um, how do you feel about all these new, the latest and greatest ingredients? What are red flags to you? What do you think is old school, tried and true, that needs to stay part of your daily routine? Please enlighten us.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

If a patient comes to me and asks me what toothpaste should I use, I'm gonna tell them that they need there they should be using a basic anti-cavity toothpaste. That's an old school what you bought, what your parents bought. And then if you want to whiten your teeth, then what you need to do is one or two things. Most of the whitening that is or that the vehicles of whitening in toothpaste are abrasives. And those abrasives are what they take, theoretically take the surface stains of your teeth, and they therefore your teeth become whiter. That's obviously without the bleaching power, but just a whitened toothpaste is oftentimes associated with an abrasive. Like you heard the word like the charcoal toothpaste. Charcoal's an abrasive, it's simple as that. It's a it whitened your teeth, and you think charcoal is black, but but it's it's it it whitens because it's an abrasive. Now, the two avenues I would go with to bleach your teeth would be num to whiten your teeth would be without having to restore them, would be to clean them, professionally clean them, like the hygienist, and then you can go ahead and bleach it in office, out of office, crest, white strips, which is that that that's of choice. But the sooner you do it after you clean your teeth, the more powerful will be the result. So if you if you if if you go to hygienists and have your teeth cleaned, then within a week or so you should probably go and apply whatever whatever you would you would like to use. And I'm not I'm I'm not an expert on that, so I cannot I'll plead I'm I'm doing the I don't know answer here. But it's uh but that's that that's the theory behind it is that you you bleach soon after you have your teeth cleaned. So if someone comes to my office and wants their teeth bleached, they pretty much told that they need to have their teeth cleaned a week before. And then you bleach your teeth.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

I want to continue on with um medical tourism.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Uh a particular interesting topic to me personally, because I understand the allure, but um I became very familiar with a phrase uh within the last two years, due to a lot of colleagues and some of my patients that go back and forth on vacation to places like Cyprus and Greece and Turkey, and it's a term called turkey teeth. Meaning uh medical tourism patients will fly into countries like Turkey to get super crazy, inexpensive dental work, overhaul their entire mouth, specifically for the cosmetic purposes, and come back with teeth that are like whiter than crazy, crazy, crazy, chalky white.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

And there's no chili buck. And there's no chilly buck.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

What are your feelings about this? And also I've noticed that the turkey teeth syndrome, and I'm not p picking on any particular country for our viewers out there, but it became a thing. So calling it turkey teeth, no matter where you went to get them, if you come back with chalk white, I've noticed some of those, or actually a good percentage of those people, have had all of their teeth are now the same length, and it just looks so artificial. It looks crazy artificial. Almost like you did it as a joke, and these are these are just like attachments or dentures you could take out afterwards. But it's not a joke, they're permanent or semi-permanent. So what are your feelings about all of this?

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Look, I mean, I can't judge how people want to spend their money. I can't, I mean I'm not that's not that's that's that's not my business. But just going besides turkey teeth and besides aesthetics only, if a patient goes anywhere out of the country to a cheaper place to get work done, the question now becomes what's what are the consequences? What are the consequences of their treatment? Because it's not forever. And so if somebody goes and gets veneers done or crowns done or implant bridges done or whatever it might be, depending on their age, unless they're like 98 years old, well they're probably never gonna redo it, they'll they'll never redo it again in their lifetime. But if somebody goes and they're in their 30s, chances are they're gonna be redoing their work once or twice in their lifetime. And so depending on depending on what was done, who did it, and how much destruction was done to the teeth below, that imp impacts what happens next. And so if you go out out of the country, say from United States to Mexico, for example, which happens often, they'll come back and they'll need one, two, three done because something happened somewhere. And that's just a that that would be that would be a good a good scenario. And then you tell them what's gonna cost, tell them, well, that's uh I paid that money for 80. And then you're ripping me off. And but the bottom line is that there's no maintenance when you leave your city, or you leave your state, or you leave your country. The issue is, as you said before, what's the maintenance, what's the recare of it of a situation? Like, and specific I had a patient who actually did go to Turkey a new patient. He had he had been to Turkey to have his teeth done. He comes back a year later, and the teeth are done in segments, although they're all single teeth, like they're threes, all the teeth are done in threes. And so the one piece part of three came loose. So he said to me, Can you not just take tack tap it off and re-glue it? I said, No, no, you have to cut it off unless you want to go back to Turkey. So I said, uh you you have you have you you've got choices here. And so I gave him an estimate, which is about three or four months ago, and I haven't seen him since. And he's probably gone somewhere else in Dallas, or maybe he's just living with a loose tooth that's gonna get decayed, loose crown. It's gonna get decayed, and it's gonna end up a root canal, and eventually be an implant. And I don't, it's none of my business what he does. It's just that my job was to tell him what the correct treatment.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yes, you can only but educate them, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Where I can put my name on the product is this is what I'm gonna do, and and that was so it it happens more often than you than you think, in in the United States for sure. It's people going to Mexico, Costa Rica, else elsewhere, elsewhere in in the Latin America, besides going to Europe, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

But I always find a lot of it when I look into uh what is trending and where, I can cut through the hype at a glance. And I'm like, we could do all of this here, and if you shop around to a bunch of qualified professionals, you'll find a different price range, and you will be able to slot in what you think you want to do into your budget. Some of it might, or all of it, might be covered under insurance, depending on the insurance, depending on the condition. I just am always alarmed by people jumping on a trend and being like, oh, I want to be the next person that gets to put a story up about this because I'm in another country right now getting X, Y, and Z done. Um, on the flip side of that, we as professionals always see the backlash. Like you said, there are people coming to you directly to fix botches. There's no backup, there's no support. But then a lot of viewers, I think, if they don't understand, please understand it's not sensationalism. People do have major complications that there's no support for. You're back in the United States, you might have a raging bacterial infection that's becoming uh invasive into your bone, into your jaw, uh, maybe even beyond. Uh people die from some of these complications, and I'm not saying that for shock value. So, for people, persons, patients, prospective patients, whatever you as the viewer uh relate to, um, how do they find you, Doctor? Uh, what is your social? What's your website? Let us know about the Dallas location.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

So the office is called Dallas Prostodontics with an S at the end. And the website is Dallasprosthodontics.com. And if you would like to get hold of me, you can get hold of me at DRB, Dr. B at Dallasprostodontics with an S at the N.com. And uh, if you have anything, a question or what would I do kind of thing, then you can just get hold of me. That's my office email. And uh I've got two other Prostodons in the office, and we see new patients, and we are I believe that I'm still growing and uh I'm not going anywhere, and I just uh I like what I do and uh would like to do more of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:11

It's very, very important. Uh everything that you shared with us today. And please, viewers, like, comment, subscribe, aesthetics unscripted, um, IT intelligent treatment on any social channel. Also to follow Dr. Rowan Buskin and uh let us know. What are your questions, what are your comments, and reach out, please.