A History of Weather Patterns

I have been an observer of weather patterns for many years going back to my days at UC Irvine when friends of mine and I did a little weather study and challenged the local NBC affiliate and their anchor people Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel and Kelly Lang their weather person to a little contest.  We ended up winning the contest, having rather simplistic weather models as our guide.  Since that time there is a general concept that the United States has had some really bizarre weather patterns.  Since 1992 (the start of our current global cooling pattern) we have experienced some of the most costly hurricanes and winter storms of the century, worse flooding in the history of the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys, one of our coldest winters and record breaking heat and droughts in the west.  The question is, what is making the weather change?  Is our weather becoming actually wilder?  The answer, according to those in the know, is that the weather is not becoming wilder.  The charts, grafts and histories show that the USA has long lived with floods, hurricanes, tornados, dust storms, blinding winter storms and droughts.  Nothing we have experienced so far signals that a long term change is underway.  Usually the worse weather is spread over decades.  Sometimes however the worse weather is drilled into a few years.  The 1930s was such a time, followed by a long calm.  Perhaps it is because we have gone out of a calm, the relatively quiet 70s and 80s, that weather we currently are having seems so foreboding.  Also during those calmer times we forget about the lessons of harsh weather.  In known hurricane alleys we replace old fashioned beach houses with million dollar homes and after a flood people often rebuild in flood planes with the hope that floods like those of the past won’t happen in the future (take North Natomas for example.)  When the inevitable storm comes and destroys again the monetary damages can seem astronomical.  Many of us in the west think of “wet” years as being normal and normal years being considered dry.  Past weather records and other kinds of less direct evidence show that what people may consider a drought has occurred many times in the past sometimes lasting scores of years that may be actually normal weather.  A hurricane that hits an area that has not been hit in 20 or 30 years or floods exceed those of the past few years or drops in an area that has unusually wet years for several years people start thinking the weather must be getting worse.  But is it the weather or our ignorance of it? As we enter into our next wet season the forecast seemed to call for El Nino and substantially heavy weather patterns.  Hopefully, we are not ignorant of the potential for flooding and that our government officials will be very cautious about where they allow new housing to be built.  In the meantime, at our office when we did our remodeling almost 10 years ago we updated the building to withstand 140 mph winds and 8.2 earthquakes.  In addition when the building was first built the floor is actually 9 inches higher than the highest flood waters ever recorded in the city of Elk Grove going back to the 1850s 100 years before Folsom lake was built.  So I think we will be able to weather whatever storms mother nature decides to bring our way.  Hopefully you will be able to stay high and dry also and will not suffer the follies of the past.

Good-bye to an Implant Innovator

Christmas time 2014 was a sad time for those of us who regularly restored dental implants.  The innovator of the osseointegrated dental implant passed away.  Per-Ingvar Branemark died at the age of 85 of a heart attack in his home town of Gothenburg, Sweden.  The interesting trivia is this development of dental implants was basically an accident.  At the start of his career Branemark was studying blood flow affects on bone healing in 1952.   As part of this study he was encased in embedding titanium into the legs of various mammals and when the research ended he went to remove the titanium devices and discovered that it had fused to be bone and could not be removed.  He called this process osseointegration and at that time his research took on a totally different direction.  Interestingly enough, wanting to broaden his test subjects he actually enlisted 20 students working in his laboratory to have titanium instruments inserted in their upper arms.  Apparently every male in the laboratory was considered a volunteer and many of them have scars to this very day.  But even after years of experimentation it was difficult to convince the medical and dental establishments that titanium could be integrated into living tissue.  The conventional wisdom that the introduction of any foreign material into the body would inevitably lead to inflammation and ultimate rejection.  Dr. Branemark was further challenged in his work and at lecture in 1969 he was challenged by one of the senior academics of Swedish dentistry who referred to a Reader’s Digest article involving Dr. Branemark saying, “this may prove to be a popular article but I simply do not trust people who publish themselves in Readers Digest.”  As it happened, that senior academic was also well know to the Swedish public for recommending a particular brand of toothpicks, so Dr. Branemark immediately rose up and struck back saying, “I do not trust people who advertise themselves on the backs of boxes of toothpicks.”   Following that, the United States Institute of Health financed his projects and in the mid 70s Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare approved Branemark's implants which would therefore replace the implant systems that I learned at UCLA in dental school in the early 70s, which were blade implants and subperiosteal implants, which were often prone to rejection, which is the reason for the distrust of Brandenmark's research.  The turning point came in 1982 in Toronto where he finally won wide spread recognition for his materials and methods.  His dental implant system is currently sold by Novel Biocare, a publicly traded company, but there are many many different implant suppliers in the United States at this time.  I personally restore more than 6 brands of implants from different surgeons.  In addition to dental implants, this research has gone a long way to provide the millions of people with other osseo integrated replacements.  So even if you are not a dental implant patient, you may have an artificial hip or knee, then you should take a moment to thank Dr. Per-Ingvar Branemark for his help in resolving your complex medical needs.  Thanks again Dr. Branemark we miss you and our prayers go with your family.

The Economy of the Tooth-fairy

For those of you that are tooth fairy fans, I thought you might find this information interesting.  Guess what, the tooth fairy left an estimated 255 million dollars underneath pillows in 2013.  A recent survey, “The Original Tooth Fairy Poll,” has found that tooth fairies' average gift amount has hit a record high, averaging $4.36 per tooth in 2014.  That is up 25% from $2.50 in 2013.  Obviously reflecting a change in our economy.  The poll surveyed 1000 parents and found that in 40% of homes the tooth fairy was more generous if it was the first tooth that had been lost, leaving an average of $5.74 for the first tooth, a 27% increase from 2013.  The survey reported that in US homes the tooth fairy visited 81% of homes with children who lost a tooth, and that in 88% of those homes, cash was left for children either by itself or in combination with other gifts.  Kids who received gifts most often got a toothbrush, toothpaste or dental floss.  As for the reasons behind determining how much is left for each child, 44% of parents reported it was the amount of spare cash they had on hand while 39% based the amount on the child’s age.  By the way, not to be too political but if you feel that your government may be coming too intrusive, you might be interested to know that if your child comes in to our office or any other dental office with a permanent tooth eruption problem in which we have to remove a baby tooth, in order for us to give your child their baby tooth for the tooth fairy, Congress had to pass a specific law allowing us to give your child the extracted tooth, as the new EPA requirements no longer allow medical care providers to give their patient's bio-hazard materials that have been removed (gall stones, etc.) and this includes baby teeth.  Fortunately Congress in their “wisdom” is allowing us to give the child back their baby teeth.  If you want more information about poll results you can go to http://www.theoriginaltoothfairypoll.com and get more information.

                                  

The Vaccinate Debate

Wide spread use of vaccinations of our children, and more recently adults, has been a “hot topic” on the news lately with the spread of a measles outbreak from my old hang-out, Disneyland.  Obviously Disney has nothing to do with the outbreak.  The park is only a place where lots of kids hang-out, some without the vaccine for measles and others who are contagious with the measles virus.  Vaccines for deadly diseases have been used extensively since Dr. Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine in 1952 and Albert Sabin licensed the oral vaccine.  As a child we all got the sugar cubes with the polio vaccine on it thus eventually eradicating the deadly disease with only 223 cases worldwide in 2012.  My mother was a registered nurse and when one of the other kids in my neighborhood got the measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc, she made sure that we went down to their house to play with him so that we would get exposed, and thus be immunized as an adult.  With that as my history I find the news coverage regarding the measles outbreak to be interesting.  The 170 kids in California with the measles outbreak would have been matched on my block alone in the 50s with all the moms exposing their kids when “Johnny” got the measles.  Today there is definitely controversy with the possible side effects of vaccines (including Autism) possibly caused by a mercury based preservative called Thinerosal that has been removed from all vaccines since the late 1990s. There are many studies that show that these concerns regarding side effects were always unfounded, yet the rumors persist.  There are also religious and moral obligations to the very nature of vaccinations.  To comment on that aspect is well beyond my pay grade.  However I will say that if you are making a choice for your child, remember that you may have to deal with the consequences as a parent if your child is the one that gets the disease if he or she is not vaccinated.  Please carefully consider the risks, benefits and alternative treatments (RBAs) closely before making your decision to vaccinate or not to vaccinate your child.

Like Us On Facebook

Social media seems to be taking over the world today including dentistry.  Just look at our office.  We have changed our name in part due to the influence of social media.  We see it every day here with our Facebook check-in gifts and other Facebook contests, our posts on Instagram and our new website. We see patients using their mobile devices constantly while waiting for x-rays, examinations, even to the point where they are playing internet games while they are having dental work done.  But the one app I have the most fun with is the selfies that patients take when they are undergoing treatment.  One that comes to mind specifically occurred the other day and it was the oldest patient that we have ever had take a selfie to post on Facebook for her great granddaughter. She is 85 years young and was not sure how to operate her  iPhone so I had Autumn help her take the photo and post it for her great granddaughter on her Facebook account.  It was a riot and so much fun.  By the way did you know that Facebook founder and CEO Zukerman’s father is a dentist in Long Island and that he lectures nationally on the influence of social media in dentistry.  But that is a story for another blog.

That's My Job!

Just in case you all missed it U S News and World report recently did their annual review of the best occupations in the United States this year, 2015, and the #1 job is dentistry.  Yes, that’s my job!  U.S. News and World report says dentistry offers “a comfortable salary, low unemployment rate and agreeable work/life balance.”  Dentists also topped the publication for this best healthcare occupations.  In fact Dr. Richard Balachovic, President Chief Executive Officer of the American Dental Education Association, is quoted as saying, “today’s students want it all and dentistry really does deliver that.  What other profession allows you to care for patients, make a good living and work as part of a team and have flexibility.”  Dr. Gerard Kugel, editor and chief of Inside Dentistry, says, “I agree that dentists do more than just treat teeth.  We diagnose dental and medical issues and if we do our jobs correctly we improve the quality of life for our patients.  It is a career that is rewarding both financially and personally.”   US News says that the flexible work schedule and low unemployment rate of dentistry also helps propel them to the top spot of the top 100 jobs in the U.S., which includes business, creative, construction, healthcare, social services and technology professions.  They listed the 4 following reasons for choosing dentists as #1: a low unemployment rate, a decent work/life balance, good salary and they predicted employment growth of nearly 16% between 2012 and 2022 with more than 23,000 new openings.  In short can there really be a better job than #1?  I don’t think so.  That is why I remain a dentist and am loving every minute of it for the last almost 40 years.  If you know anyone that is interested in getting into my profession, I would be more than happy to talk to them.  Just give me a call so I can help steer them in the right direction.      

  

The Reasoning Behind Staff Trips.

One of the discussions that our hygienist always seem to be having with our patients when I walk into to their treatment rooms for examination is about our last or next trip.  A frequently asked question from the patient is “how do I get a job here.”  Well first of all it is not that easy.  The hygienist who is cleaning their teeth would be one of our 5 hygienists that have been here for over 30 years, 25 years, 18 years, 15 years and 10 years.  That is relevant as the average career span of an auxiliary in a dental office in our area is 3 to 5 years.  And in fact, the average hygienist only works as a Registered Dental Hygienist for 5 to 7 years before changing careers.  So waiting for a turnover in our office is not a way to get a job.  That is the reason that I pay for the trips.  It is all about stability and camaraderie between our staff members.  It started in 1984 with our first trip to Hawaii for the Hawaii State Dental Society meeting in Honolulu Oahu.  I purchased the typical 5 day $399 per person package with hotel and air fare.  The 7 of us went and had a great time.  But the one thing that the staff asked is on the next trip could they bring spouses?  I thought about it for awhile and decided we would do what we could to make it happen.  In planning the future trips obviously we had to keep in mind that all of our staff have different financial constraints so I have always striven to make the trips either all inclusive vacations or condos in resort areas so there would not be any extra financial burden for the staff.  84 trips have come and gone over the last 31 years and all have been great successes.  This year our spring adventure was an all inclusive Great America trip and a day long private tour of Levi Stadium.  This was an alumni trip with four retired staff members and their families joining us which made for our largest group of 73 people.  The 4^th of July trip is to Heavenly Valley's The Ridge over Lake Tahoe and our winter retreat is a Princess cruise with balcony rooms for couples and inside cabins for families.  While some may say this is an extravagance, I cannot disagree more!  The trips allow the staff and their families to come together outside the office and form bonds that last for years and it makes for a much better working environment.  For proof, the next time you come here just look around at talk to our staff about how they feel about their work.  After all, don’t you want to have medical care providers happy with their jobs.  Doesn’t it work out better for you? Isn’t it worth it?  I think so!