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Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
This podcast is designed to help with suicide prevention. That is the #1 goal! This is also a Podcast of perseverance, self-help, self-Improvement, becoming a better person, making it through struggles and not only surviving, but thriving! In this Podcast the first 25 episodes detail my life's downs and ups. A story that shows you can overcome poverty, abusive environments, drug and alcoholic environments, difficult bosses, being laid-off from work, losing your family, and being on the brink of suicide. Listen and find a place to share life stories and experiences. Allow everyone to learn from each other to reinforce our place in this world. To grow and be better people and help build a better more understanding society.
The early podcast episodes are a story of the journey of my life. The start from poor, drug and alcohol stricken life, to choices that lead to success. Discusses my own suicide ideations and attempt that I struggled with for most of my life. Being raised by essentially only my mother with good intentions, but didn't know how to teach me to be a man. About learning life's lessons and how to become a man on this journey and sharing those lessons and experiences with others whom hopefully can benefit from my successes and failures.
Hosting guests who have overcome suicide attempts/suicide ideations/trauma/hardships/difficult situations to fight through it, rise up, and live their best life. Real life stories to help others that are going through difficult times or stuck without a path forward, understand and learn there is a path forward.
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
Episode 41: Modern Dentistry's Hidden Crisis: Dr. Edward Feinberg on Saving Your Teeth
Dr. Feinberg brings 70 years of family expertise to discuss how modern dentistry has shifted from prioritizing health and longevity to focusing on economics and workflow, often at the expense of patients' long-term dental health.
• Dental implants are being overused and inappropriately replacing teeth that could be saved with proper crown and bridge work
• Modern "butt joint" crowns can never truly seal against bacteria, leading to decay and failures unlike traditional techniques
• Gold remains the best material for dental work, while materials like zirconia are used primarily because they're "cheap and white"
• Patients should always get a second opinion if a dentist recommends extraction or treatment seems unnecessarily expensive
• Computer-milled same-day crowns violate basic principles that allowed previous generations of dental work to last 30-40 years
• Veneers are primarily suitable for young people and commit patients to eventually needing crowns
• AI in dentistry risks prioritizing profits over comprehensive care unless carefully guided by ethical practitioners
• Dentists are increasingly becoming "one-trick ponies" who only know implants rather than the full range of restorative options
Visit www.theonwardprogram.com to access Dr. Feinberg's free courses and document library with valuable information for both patients and dental professionals.
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Welcome. Welcome back to Brandon Held. Life is Crazy. We're doing a recording here on a Sunday, which is the first one ever, and that's all good, because I think it's an important topic that we need to discuss, topic that we need to discuss and not necessarily in lieu with my podcast, where we talk about trauma and overcoming trauma and healing and all that, but still important information people need to know and people understand.
Speaker 1:So I have a guest today. His name's Dr Feinberg. He reached out to me and his focus is dentistry and he wants to talk about the issues with some of the issues with dentistry and some of the things we should do as customers. And I'm interested in it because, personally, I have three chipped teeth molars in the bottom of my mouth that I've never gotten fixed because I have trust issues with dentists.
Speaker 1:I've been to dentists, I've had them looked at, I've had them give me the diagnosis of what I should do and what they think I should do, and then they've come back with the costs when I have insurance and I'll be honest with you, it seems outrageous what's out of pocket for me when I have insurance. So I've never gotten my teeth fixed because I have trust issues. So today we're going to bring in Dr Feinberg and we're going to make sure he can help us or not help us, but tell us exactly the things we should look out for, the things we should be aware of, and we're going to get into some other stuff a little later on. So how are you doing today, dr Feinberg?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great.
Speaker 1:It's good to have you here. Thank you for being on my podcast and just give a little high arcing overview of what it is you want to share with listeners today.
Speaker 2:I have a very unusual background in dentistry and I was trained completely different from everyone else that I know. I grew up in dentistry. My father was a master and pioneer of full mouth reconstruction and crown and bridge dentistry, and between my dad and I we have 70 years of documented evidence for the techniques that we're using to restore teeth, primarily crown and bridge work, and I'm watching my colleagues having a great deal of difficulty with crown and bridge, and the techniques that are being taught actually violate the basic principles that allowed my dad and myself and my dad's teacher to have so much success. I have cases in the mouth that I did that have lasted 30 and 40 years and I know that with the techniques that are currently being done in dentistry, that is not going to be seen very often, and there are definite reasons why. So I've developed a teaching website, wwwtheonwardprogramcom, to teach dentists how to do crown and bridge properly.
Speaker 2:So because dentists are having problems with crowns falling out and decay under crowns, they are not confident with the techniques they have for crown and bridge work and there's an absolute epidemic of tooth extraction in order to place implants. And while implants can be a wonderful restoration where they're indicated, they are being overused and used inappropriately, and I am watching teeth perfectly good teeth that I could save easily being extracted in favor of placing implants. And implants are not lifetime either, and I have had the patients where the implants lasted 20 years and that was it and then they couldn't have any more. So I think that's an important consideration is to choose be able to choose which option is really best for which patient, because there really is no one size fits all and we have now creating a workforce of dentists that are one trick ponies and only know how to do implants and not much else.
Speaker 2:And that's very upsetting to me because I came from a completely different place and I look at patients completely differently from my colleagues and I find that it's very difficult to make them see things from a different perspective because they've been practically brainwashed in a certain way of thinking, which I think is very sad. When I look and see all the cases that I have done, I have a collection of over 100,000 pictures that go back to 1950. Most of these things they think are impossible and can't be done, and that's sad, and I really believe that if we're going to advance as a profession, anything new that comes down the pike must be compared to the standard that came before. Otherwise we are not advancing, and technology that doesn't conform to basic principles that are tried and true is not an advancement. And there's a lot of such technology in my area of dentistry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've said a lot of really relevant great things there and we'll get more into the technology part of it here in a little bit. So, yeah, like you were saying there, a dentist is no different than a doctor, right? People go to a doctor, they get a diagnosis, they go to another doctor to get a second opinion, and so you would say that if a person goes to a dentist and they get some kind of information from that dentist and it makes them question whatever, they should go to another dentist and get a second opinion.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That is my advice to patients. Dentists are no different than physicians. We have good, bad and everything in between, and if you don't like what one dentist told you and they said they can't save your teeth, well, maybe another one can, and you have nothing to lose by getting a second opinion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great, I completely agree with you. I never honestly really thought about it like that before, to be honest, because usually I go to a dentist even a new dentist and it's been one and done for me. But the last time I went and I got some proposals on how to fix my chipped molars, I was so frustrated I didn't even I didn't even try to see another one. So that's on me, that's something I need to do, I need to take care of. So how would you propose that we can work on the way dentists are heading in the dental field? How do you propose that we can get them to go back, if you will, to the roots pun intended of what is done in dental work and how to truly save teeth versus extracting teeth and putting dental implants in?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know the answer to that question and that's exactly what I'm trying to do and I'm like a lone voice screaming into the wind. That's how I feel. I have all the evidence on my side and I'm just. I just can't believe some of the things that I'm seeing after the career that I've had, and I definitely want to change things for the better, not just for the profession, but also for the patients. I don't think it's fair. Some of the things that I've seen patients have had to go through and I think that there should be a big discussion about how to change things for the better. So what I think happened in dentistry is that the professors wanted to teach techniques to the students that they thought would be easier than what came from dentistry's roots, and they did not realize that they were violating basic principles that enabled so much success. If you look at old-time dentistry that was made of gold and processed acrylic, a lot of those cases lasted in the mouth over 50 years, and there were definite reasons why, and it wasn't just the material gold, it was the basic principles of health, for example.
Speaker 2:What's being done now is what I call butt joint dentistry, and what I mean by that is, when you prepare teeth for a crown. It's customary to put a ledge on the tooth and a butt joint crown will make the restoration to that ledge. Well, those teeth can never be sealed. Bacteria measure two to 10 microns in length, and the best marginal adaptation that we can get is 120 microns. So what my dad and I and my dad's teacher comes from dentistry's roots is to model the crowns on the principle of the mason jar cover, which is the best known thing ever devised for food preservation. And so I don't have those problems that everyone's having with decay under crowns and crowns falling out. That's not the norm, and so that's what I see all around me. And they don't have confidence in the techniques that they're using. And then somebody came along with a machine that mills a crown out of a block of ceramic that in one day you could have a crown. Well, that's a butt joint crown. Those are not going to hold up. We knew in the 1960s when they made the same kind of crowns but they were baked in an oven with high fusing porcelain. We knew what the problems were. So, making a machine to make the same thing, it's the same problems because it's the same thing. What's the difference? Whether it's baked in an oven or whether it's milled out by a computer, there's no difference in the outcome, and dentists are responsible for the outcome of treatment, not the means by which the outcome was arrived, and I think it's very important that dentists understand that.
Speaker 2:Now, I'm not against technology at all. I love technology, but it has to conform to the basic principles that I believe in and that I know to be true. So there are a lot of things being done for economic reasons, for economics and workflow Rules. The roost today, when in my day, when I started, it was health and longevity and doing something that really makes a difference for patients in the long run.
Speaker 2:And for me as a dentist, the best feeling in the world is when you have your patient come in for their hygiene visits and you get to watch the work that you did last in health for decades and nothing has to be done over. That's not everybody, because there's a point at which dentistry has to be remade depending upon changes that occur. So I have patients where changes occur after 10 to 15 years and the dentistry has to be replaced to compensate for the changes, and I have other patients where the changes are so minimal and gradual that they get away with it and don't have to replace them for 40 or 50 years, and that's what my goal is. We can't always predict how the body's going to react and how it's going to age or change over time.
Speaker 1:So I think you said one thing that's really valuable. Whether it's a dentist or a doctor or anyone in the healthcare field, what should be done should always be what's best for the patient. That's the way any kind of healthcare should be handled. That's the right approach, and unfortunately, healthcare has become a business and about the bottom dollar, and what's best for the patient is not really always what's done, because the finances are considered in whatever is being practiced, and that's sad. It's sad for us as patients.
Speaker 1:Some cases it's even sad for the doctor, because the doctor doesn't have the power. They're under someone else's purview, they have an employer, maybe they're not in business for themselves, and so even they're limited to what they're allowed to authorize and do based on the business of being a doctor. So if I'm a person going to a dentist and I don't understand what microns and everything you talked about there, what's the most basic way to find out? What should I be asking? If they want to cap my tooth and I want to make sure I'm getting the right kind of cap, not this fast food 3D printer type cap that you were talking about how would I go about that?
Speaker 2:There are a lot of materials. One of the materials that's being used for dentistry is this stuff called zirconia, which came from nuclear power plants and belongs there, in my opinion, because it is a butt joint type restoration. It can't be used in the way that we did classical crown and bridge and the only real reason that it's being used on such a massive scale is because it's cheap and white. That's the only real reason. It is a very hard material to work with and if you have to take one of these things off you can absolutely damage the teeth under it. So the best materials for dentistry are precious materials which are expensive, and the best material ever devised for dentistry is gold. Best material ever devised for dentistry is gold, without question. Always was, probably always will be. People don't want to show gold. That's a big problem. But the porcelain to metal that utilize precious metal, those are good restorations when done properly, and that's what I used for my entire career and for the alloys for porcelain to metal vary from silver palladium, which has zero gold, to high percentage gold alloys, and they all handle the same way because once they're an alloy, they're not the same thing as gold that's used for crown and bridge work.
Speaker 2:In my opinion that if you're going to do something, you should do it right. In my opinion that if you're going to do something, you should do it right. So if most dentists feel that they only need to get five years out of a restoration before an insurance company will authorize a new one, that's very much more expensive in the long run than if you do something properly the first time and then you don't have to replace it for 20 years. That's my goal. I want to see them, I want to see their problems solved, and that's what I teach when I do crown and bridge.
Speaker 2:It's a three-dimensional approach that creates ideal architecture, so that the patient's starting with correcting all the things that are wrong. Otherwise, most dentists today seem to just look at this as tooth coverings and nothing more, and I try to minimize the forces on the supporting structure, create ideal architecture and distribute the load so that the teeth can be maintained, because as you get older, the body can't tolerate as much as a young person. So that should be a major consideration in what you're doing, I think, and so this is what I teach yeah, and you make some great points there and I can even back that up.
Speaker 1:so back when I was in the army over 20 years ago, I got a gold tooth on a top molar. This colonel he did a great job explaining it to me. I'm going to put gold in your mouth, but it's going to be on a back molar. People won't see it, but it will last you the rest of your life and it has been great. I've had no problems with it. Conversely, about 10 years after that, I had a civilian dentist cap a bottom molar and I don't really know what the product was that he capped it with, what the material was, but that is now one of the bottom teeth that I have cracked. The molar has broken in half off my mouth, so I only have half the molar remaining of the covering, not the actual tooth itself.
Speaker 1:Saying makes absolute sense and it's affecting me personally right now. So let's move forward a little bit. Something you and I talked about offline before we started the podcast, and that's AI. I think everyone is afraid to some degree of where AI is taking us in this life and in our world, and we all know it's a beneficial asset and a helpful tool as an assistant, but some people are trying to move AI into the forms of replacement, to replace people like doctors and dentists, and you name it right. They want to take AI down this path, and I feel that's a dangerous path. So I would love to hear what you have to say about AI in dentistry.
Speaker 2:Now that you mentioned it, you know I had just spoken to you about the butt joint crown that they mill out of a computer. Well, this company in Connecticut invented a robot. When some poor soul sat, for this robot to actually prepare the tooth on a patient, make the crown and insert it without a human being involved in it. And that's not good dentistry, because the basic principles are violated. In my opinion, the whole concept was not good, and now they're going to have a robot do this. That is really not good dentistry, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:And from what I've seen with AI, ai still makes a lot of mistakes and can't be the final decision maker of anything it has to be. It's a tool and where it's useful it's a great tool. But when it's stretched beyond what it can do, then that's when we start to see troubles. So I'm concerned about how AI is going to be applied to dentistry. So I'm involved with the Dental AI Association and I guess I'm making a lot of noise because I'm chairman of prosthodontics for that association and I feel if we don't have a hand in how this is developed, it's going to be a terrible tool for dentistry and I don't want to see that happen. There's a lot of controversy within my profession, but I think that AI has to be programmed and if it's left to its own devices, it's going to come up with bad information and bad ideas and not useful for dentistry at all. That's what I'm concerned about. But the companies like Microsoft and Google and some of the major dental companies they're mostly obsessed with making money and getting to corner the market first. They don't care about safety and about taking things step by step so that you can create something really excellent. So there's a lot of misinformation and wrong thinking on the internet when it comes to my area of dentistry and that concerns me a great deal. So I'll give you a perfect example.
Speaker 2:Last year, time Magazine put out an excellent magazine issue all about AI, and in one of the articles they told this story about how this woman she went to seven neurologists and all seven diagnosed her with long COVID whatever that is and they prescribed treatment for her and she didn't get better. And her sister plugged her symptoms into chat GPT and out came the diagnosis of limbic encephalitis. She was treated for limbic encephalitis and was cured. Now you could see, ai is a great tool because it's very often able to see things we can't see as human. What really AI is great at is identifying patterns and trends.
Speaker 2:One area that is being used in dentistry that's excellent is image interpretation, because each pixel in an image represents the density of the object, and the computer can see things that the human eye can miss, and it also has the ability to compare that x-ray to thousands of other similar x-rays and maybe come up with a better answer. But it can never be the final decision maker and reading x-rays can be very subjective. So I thought well, what if they come up with such a tool for dentistry to identify dental conditions and describe different treatments? That's going to be a disaster, because in my area of dentistry I know that I've done. I have so many options for treatment in my armamentarium that most dentists never heard of. One of the things is the precision attachment case, which is the best thing, one of the best cases ever devised for dentistry, invented in 1906, works great with implants, as well as the worst natural teeth that you ever saw, and nobody knows anything about it and they're not even interested, which is really sad, and that's not an advancement, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:So the ability to offer options for patients has to be programmed into any AI that's going to come up with an answer. And it's sometimes very difficult to come up with an answer when you have to consider what is best for the patient, what is the best treatment that is the least invasive, and everybody's an individual. What would be the best for each individual? So you have to have options for treatment that are good for patients who want sophisticated dentistry, but also for patients who were not candidates for sophisticated dentistry. They have to have options also. You can't just dismiss them, and that's what I see happening. They have only a few things in their armamentarium and they can't help patients, that they're turning them away, that they can't help patients, that they're turning them away, that they can't help them.
Speaker 2:So AI is going to have to be able to provide all these options for treatment and also direct dentists where they can go to get the education they need. To provide those options, because it's not readily obvious or available and, unlike the popular opinion, that you could get everything from a YouTube. That is not true, and so a lot of these misconceptions are leading people down the wrong path, and I think that needs to be reversed. So we need to have a panel of experts who come together and really plan out what different types of treatment for different diagnoses that can be done and where to get the education that they need, so that AI could be a useful tool for diagnosis and treatment planning.
Speaker 2:Like it shows, it's a useful tool for medicine, and so I would like to see that done, and I'm making a lot of noise, but I don't know if that's going to happen or not, because there are forces at work that we have no control over, and that's where all the money is. Everything boils down to money and corporatism calling all the shots, and their focus is not patient health and patient longevity. Focus is not patient health and patient longevity. That's not at all. It's the bottom line money, and that's what their focus mainly is, and that's so sad. That's not what made America great, and we are not going to be the leaders if we don't change these attitudes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, completely agree.
Speaker 1:That's already why we have problems in healthcare in general and other aspects of life, but we're talking about healthcare here today and their argument is that AI is like a student that can be taught everything, and they believe that someday AI will know everything that humans know.
Speaker 1:I just don't see how AI can learn the human element, the human touch right, it's still, at the end of the day, a machine that works in code, and the human touch, the human element, is not a code in a machine. It's the way we work in our brain and the way we think, and I don't feel like that can be duplicated, and I don't want to see AI replace humans in any aspect of jobs, especially in the medical field. They're great assistants, like we talked about, but you don't want to take away that human element, and so, also, I wanted to bring up, just to be clear, dr Feinberg isn't here to promote Dr Feinberg, the dentist. You haven't heard us talk about him being a dentist or his dentistry or anywhere to go to, just because he wants clients to be his client, right? He's trying to help dentistry overall as a whole and, from what I understand, you only practice dentistry even once a week, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's correct. I'm really focusing on my teaching website for dentists. I'm writing my third book. My first book was a textbook and the book I'm writing now is also a textbook, and my second book is a book of essays on different issues in dentistry which I think most people might find very interesting, and that's on Amazon and in it I discuss some of these issues that we're facing in our profession in great detail and I guess I've become kind of scathing. I don't wanna be known as a whistleblower because I'm very much involved in my profession. I really care about it. I'm in a lot of dental organizations. I'm very involved with the ADA and always have been for my whole career, because I really do wanna make things better. I really do wanna make a difference. That is my real focus. So I don't have any other agenda.
Speaker 1:That's my agenda, yeah no, that's great, and I just wanted to kind of drive that point home with the listeners as to why you're here, because you're not here to promote Dr Feinberg, you're here to help with dentistry overall, and that's the part I want people to understand. And also, people should heed your advice when it comes to getting their teeth capped and make sure they're getting the right materials capped on their teeth so it's long lasting and doesn't cause problems in the future. Now there's one more thing I want to talk about with you that I have questions about, and it's pretty common now. You see a lot of people getting veneers on their teeth. Right, you see people spending a bunch of money basically to get their entire mouth veneered, and I just want to know what is the longevity of veneers? How do you feel about veneers overall?
Speaker 2:I think veneers are only good for young people because in young people the nerves are very large and if you do crown and bridge, they're more likely to get involved with root canal therapy than an older person would. When nerves shrink as you get older, the younger person is also able to tolerate more than an older person. So, for example, you cannot take off enough enamel tooth structure that what you're putting back isn't bigger for a veneer, because the veneers only really bond well to the enamel and not to the underlying dentin, so they're almost always bigger. A really good practitioner of veneers can minimize that, because if you look at some of these people who have them, they're huge and what they're doing is they're putting extra force and pressure on the supporting structures, which is the bone and the roots.
Speaker 2:A young person is going to get away with it, but an older person may not. So the older person should have crowns because you can make the teeth smaller, you can put less stress on the supporting structures, bring the forces up close to the supporting structure, change the architecture and connect them together. To distribute the load so that each tooth doesn't have to carry the burden by itself. To distribute the load so that each tooth doesn't have to carry the burden by itself and very often just doing those things alone, that's the end of any periodontal problems. But every person who has veneers is committed to doing crowns one day, because they have irreversibly cut the tooth structure. And one day, when the dentistry needs to be replaced, veneers will not be the right treatment, and I think they all need to know that, and I don't think they're all being told that. So there is a place for it, but it's primarily for young people, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Well, that to me, is great information, because I see a lot of older people get veneers.
Speaker 1:It's almost wild to me and this is just me, brandon, a personal opinion, personal thoughts, and I want to make that clear I like to see people grow old gracefully right, you can do your creams, you can take care of your teeth, you can do the things that you need to do as you're growing older to take care of yourself the best you can. But it's wild to me when I see an older person like myself or much older, and the skin starting to sag and we're having age spots and our hair is gray or we're bald, but we have these perfectly white, straight, structured teeth from veneers and it's to me it looks out of place. It doesn't even look right. It's a square peg in a round hole. In my opinion, you have all these flaws on you as a human, but you've got these amazingly veneered, perfect teeth and it just looks wild. But that's my personal opinion. That's good information to know that it doesn't last and you know the treatment you will need after.
Speaker 2:That is going to be much tougher yes, and I think really it's really being only done for aesthetic reasons and not for health, that's yes, that's not what it's designed for.
Speaker 2:So a young person could have something, but one day they should have crowns and that's what it's for. That will be the better treatment, and there's a tremendous trend toward oversized dentistry. So if you have a live tooth, the most you can take off is a millimeter to a millimeter and a half of tooth structure. So you have to be very careful that you don't put back more than that. But if you go into any dental lab and you start measuring all these restorations, you'd be shocked. They're three and four millimeters thick or they're too long, and what you're doing is you're overloading the periodontal foundation and a lot of this is being done and the dentists don't give a second thought to it because they've never been trained properly to think that way.
Speaker 2:I measure everything and I'm very diligent and I try to put back less than what was there originally. You have to be really good and pay very close attention to detail in order to do that, and people today don't want to do detail. They want to put something in, make a quick buck, and that's their focus, and you can't do good dentistry that way. You can't slap something in quickly. You've got to give the mouth a chance to adapt and not just put something in drastically and change things overnight, like what I see doing. That's not right and you don't even know if it's going to hold up.
Speaker 2:So now when I go to the lectures, I like to show follow-up of cases. I want to see the x-rays 10, 15, 20 years later. Then I'll know if what you're doing is any good. When I go to the lectures today, I don't see any follow-up. They just show oh look, how pretty this looks on the day of insertion. What does that mean? Nothing. We have no idea if that even worked. And if it didn't work, is that something you should be doing? I don't think so, and I think there's been like a lot of this emphasis on looks and not on science. And how does this hold up? And how does this hold up in patients who are compromised, like patients with diabetes, heart disease, cancer? I can show cases that held up in spite of those things, and that means that if you can show that, you're doing something right, because that is not what you would expect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's sad because that's the world we live in, and I know some people aren't going to like what I said about the veneers for dentistry looking out of place, but I get it.
Speaker 1:I get the mental health side of it, where you're maybe subconscious of your teeth or your mouth and you just want to do what makes you feel better mentally and emotionally.
Speaker 1:I get that's why we have all the plastic surgery we have and all the different things that we can do to our body to help us feel better and look younger, whether or not it's actually good for us right, and whether or not there are long-term effects that might affect our health. These are risks that people are willing to take because they want to look better, and it's your body, your choice, your life. I was just given my two cents and I had no idea until you told me, dr Feinberg, about how that affects people that are older getting this done. So to me that's fantastic and great information, and so I want to thank you for being on my show today, and I want to give you the last couple minutes here to just give out any last piece of information or advice you want to give and again promote your website for other dentists to go to and learn about these teachings that you are trying to make sure everybody knows.
Speaker 2:Well, I also have a lot of good information that's available to anybody who's interested in dentistry.
Speaker 2:So, I have a whole bunch of courses that are free. I have a documents library that anybody can access and look at any of the articles that I put on it, and I have two books on Amazon. One, the book on essays, might be of interest to people if they're interested in some of the issues that I think are affecting dentistry that I don't like. My website is wwwtheonwardprogramcom, and I also would like patients to understand that they have choices and they should have choices. One choice is to do nothing. They have that choice and they have that right, and if you don't like what somebody told you, you should get another opinion, because if one person can't save your teeth, maybe another one can.
Speaker 2:I've seen that there's a big push to extract patients' teeth and they're teeth I could save. I think that's horrible, especially this all-on-four concept with implants, where they pull out all the teeth and they put these four little implants in and then they overload it with these big superstructures that often you can't even clean under. That's not where implants came from in the beginning, not at all, and you have to be able to clean under these things. That makes no good sense at all. And then also, implants are feats of engineering. You cannot overload these things or you're going to have an engineering failure. So I think a lot of these things are going to fail and because they flatten the ridges in order to do this, a lot of those people won't even be able to wear a denture and a lot of them, I think, are going to be screwed. So I'm against that whole concept. I think there are better options and I have better options in my armamentarium, but because that is the prevailing thing, it's very hard to buck the system and say this is not right, this is wrong, this is the wrong approach.
Speaker 2:I can't get anybody to listen and I have all the evidence on my side.
Speaker 2:I've done implants where I put three in the front and make a fixed bridge that's solid because that's where the good bone is, and a precision attachment removal for the back that's worn 24 hours a day and only removed for hygiene and nobody knows you have it and those are the best cases and restore the entire arch that came from dentistry's roots, and I have some of those cases in over 26 years and I can't get anyone to listen.
Speaker 2:So I'm trying to appeal to patients to make some noise about this and get people to turn around and start thinking about better choices that can be offered to them, that they could have. That's my feeling and, because of my unique background, I'm telling it like it is, and I want patients to understand what's going on in our profession so that they can make the best choice for themselves and after all, it is their choice and they can do what they feel is right for themselves. And as dentists, we're supposed to be here to help them. And don't ever let anybody push you into any kind of treatment. It should be entered in because you really want to do it. You've examined all the pros and cons and then you decided this is what you want to do.
Speaker 1:And that's a great message. Yeah, that's all a great message and that's why I wanted to have you on today to help you promote this message. That's why I wanted to have you on today to help you promote this message, so patients could understand what they should be looking for when they're going to a dentist and they're getting dental work. And also, hopefully, some dentists will hear this and if they actually care about the patients and the belief in them as a dentist Right, the belief in them as a dentist right. Because when someone does crack work on you and over time that the work that they did on you was bad, that will come back to get you at some point. It will affect your practice, it will affect the way people look at you as a dentist, and just telling the patient that, oh, this is the way things are done now, that's not going to work. People want solid results that are going to last. They don't want to have to keep getting something done repetitively over and over again. And so thank you, dr Feinberg, for this valuable information. I know I learned some stuff. I hope everyone else that listens learned some stuff and they know how to handle themselves when going to the dentist in the future.
Speaker 1:And I also want to say to everyone, as always, thank you for listening to this podcast, your time to listen to this show and I appreciate that because time is a valuable thing and I never take that for granted and I just would ask you to go to brandonhellcom and you can click on podcast and you can hit subscribe and just help me out keeping the show going. It's totally voluntary. You can pay $3 a month to whatever you want a month, just to help me out and keep the show going. I would appreciate that. I also have my life coaching services on there and I also have my Instagram BH Life is Crazy, and I have my YouTube channel where you can type in Brandon Held. So thank you again all for listening. Thank you, dr Feinberg, for being here today and I will talk to you next time. Who is the crown Tap into the cage as we perform here Upon the stage?
