original post & transcription: http://biocompatibledentist.org/holistic_dentistry/actual-patient-review-for-dr-vinograd-brighton-dental-san-diego/

“Along with non-toxic dentistry, and helping fearful patients, the awareness and prevention of Gum Disease is a priority in our practice. We invite you to sign up for a free cleaning during our awareness week.” – Dr. Daniel Vinograd, DDS

To schedule your free cleaning in our San Diego office, call (619) 550-4904

Dr. Vinograd’s latest lecture on biocompatible dental materials at the Gerson Institute:

original post & transcription: http://biocompatibledentist.org/holistic_dentistry/how-to-brush-your-teeth-gums-properly/

There are numerous physical and psychological problems that arise when a woman is pregnant. Until a woman confirms pregnancy, she experiences anxieties since being pregnant is a miracle to most people. After experiencing the first signs of pregnancy, a woman needs to get herself ready to bear any problem linked to carrying the foreign body although it’s a pleasure for her. Among those, the following are three most common problems during pregnancy.

Morning Sickness

Although it’s deemed a problem, it’s mostly expected by most women as it can generally be one of the real signs of pregnancy. It’s not necessarily that it will occur only in the morning. Basically, morning sickness can arise at any period of the day – even when laid on the bed after dinner. Morning is sickness usually associated with nausea, and the most possible time to face nausea is during the first trimester. This sickness may last till the end of the second trimester.

Remedy to Morning Sickness

• Avoid fried and fatty foods
• Drink water regularly to avoid dehydration. Take in a cup of warm water in your empty stomach prior to taking coffee to kick off your day.
• Take lemon juice with moderately added sugar 
• Take enough rest. Relax for some time in bed or watching TV shows.
• Divert your mind to some melodies (music) that will ease any dizziness and relax your mind.

Swollen Ankles

A swollen ankle is a very common problem during pregnancy. Whilst a little swelling is usually normal, an abnormal acute swelling will certainly require a visit to the doctor, because the swelling could be as a result of Preeclampsia. This is a condition commonly experienced in pregnancy first-timers and those over 35, and it’ll normally manifest itself in extreme ankle swellings, with the associated symptoms of proteinuria and hypertension being present as well. Medication and bed-rest may be essential to prevent the condition form turning into Eclampsia, which can be a fatal condition. Prevention is certainly the best cure, so in case you’re concerned about experiencing swollen ankles or beginning to notice some changes during pregnancy, there are a few things you should know to avoid the pain.

Remedy to Swollen Ankles

• Always rest on the left side and elevate your legs where possible. This will increase the nutrients and blood flow to the placenta. Good circulation averts swelling in the extremities.
• Drink adequate water and have a balanced diet. Enough water prevents dehydration, boosts circulation, and gets rid of toxins. 
• Avoid standing for long time periods; consider stretching often. Use a stool if your job requires standing. Work off-time will be very necessary too. If you can’t avoid standing or sitting, ensure that your exercise and stretch a lot. This promotes blood circulation and averts fluid buildup.

Back Pain

Pregnancy back pain is something completely normal and even though it may seem to last forever the pain usually subsides after 20 weeks into the pregnancy. The backache and back spasms result from the softening of the support ligaments and back disks because of an increase in progesterone during early pregnancy stages. There are pains linked to the growing belly and the widening frame. These puts forth pressure on the back also, and that’s the reason why as close to 90% of women grumble of back pain when pregnant.

Remedy to Back Pain

• Take enough rest. And I mean enough’, since too much rest can definitely lead to back pains and stiffness. 
• Take light exercises. Exercising stretches out your back muscles, keep your blood flowing and ease most of the back pain. Exercising is the best way to ease and deal with back pains since it isn’t right to start medication early for the baby’s safety.
• Massage. Tell your spouse to massage your back gently each and every day and you will relieve the strain and stress.
• Explore new sleeping positions every time you go to bed. For example, try to sleep on your side if you often sleep on your back and vice versa. Bend one or both of your knees into a fetal position. You may opt to place a pregnancy body pillow e.g. the snoogle pregnancy pillow or a rolled up towel in between your knees or beneath your stomach. The key thing here is to experiment till you get the best position for your comfort. 

A snoogle pregnancy pillow is particularly designed for the pregnant woman. It eliminates the need for all those pillows being placed in deliberate spots. The pillow helps align the spine, support the woman’s back and belly, and also relieve heartburn. An example is the Leachco Snoogle Total Body Pillow, which is a patented full body type design. Its unique form follows the natural body outline and contours supporting you in line and in comfort from top to bottom. The advantage of this full body pillow is that after starting using it you won’t need to use any other pillows to attain good quality sleep as it provides all the support that you need to eliminate those aches and pains.

By following the above remedies and having a balanced diet you will most definitely enjoy your pregnancy as motherhood is considered the best time of a woman’s life!

Going to the dentist for a regular cleaning and check-up can go a long way in helping to prevent a number of dental problems, as well as aid in helping you to maintain good oral health. Don’t wait until you already have a toothache to visit your dentist. Plan ahead and you can save yourself a lot of problems along the way.

One of the main reasons why adults lose teeth is from gum disease. If you have the problem diagnosed in the early stages, you can easily treat it and reverse its progression. When treatment isn’t provided, a more serious form of the disease can occur. By going to the dentist for regular visits, brushing twice per day and flossing, you can help to prevent gum disease from occurring.

Based on information from The Oral Cancer Foundation, every hour of the day in the US alone someone passes away from oral cancer. When you visit the dentist for your regular cleaning and check-up, they are also going to screen you for oral cancer, which can easily be cured when diagnosed from an early stage.

If you visit your dentist regularly and maintain good oral health, you can eliminate the chance of gum disease claiming your teeth. Taking the time to care about your oral hygiene can avoid false teeth and keep your own teeth in place.

Many dental emergencies and toothaches could have easily been prevented by making a regular appointment with your dentist. The provider can look for any early warning signs of something going on with your gums or teeth. Early detection of broken fillings, cavities and gum disease are all things that can be treated. If you ignore these problems, gum surgery, root canals and tooth less might be in your future.

Gum disease is correlated to strokes, heart disease, pancreatic cancer and much more. If you visit your dentist for regular check-ups, they can help you to avoid gum disease setting in, which is going to promote overall better health.

Are you looking for a Dentist Winchester VA who can provide the best quality care? When you find the right dentist for your dental needs you must consider certain important factors to ensure that you are choosing the most qualified and experienced one. Some tips are provided below to help you find the perfect dentist.

Tips to Help You Find the Perfect Dentist Winchester VA

You can start your research on the Internet as this medium is offering lots of valuable information on the dentists in your area. These days, the Internet is filled with endless resources which include ratings and reviews. You need to check the background information as well as the years of experience of any dentist that you are considering. In addition, the recommendations from other dental professionals and official institutes can help you to make the right decision.

Another way to find the perfect dentist is to get referrals or suggestions from persons who you can trust. When you get this information, you can also perform further research to know more about them. In most cases, the honest information that you will get from persons who have experience with a dentist is generally the best kind.

Now that you are armed with information about where to find your local dentists, you should get to know them. The perfect Dentist Winchester VA must be able to provide basic preventative details about your teeth health. Besides that you should feel comfortable enough to ask them the important questions with regards to good oral care. It’s very important to get treatments from a dentist who you can trust. This is why you should set up appointments in order to meet with all the potential candidates. You and your chosen dentist must have a good relationship that can last for the long-term.

When you are meeting a new dentist for the first appointment, you need to examine how the person operates at the office. You must pay attention to the cleanliness of the office as well as the attitudes and attentiveness of the employees. When you do this, you will get a good insight into the work habits of the dentists. A high quality Winchester dentist will most definitely maintain an office that is hygienic and clean.

Even though are looking for the right dentist for your dental needs, you should remember that nobody is perfect. Choosing the right dentist will be based your personal circumstances and needs, so a person who is right for you might not be right for someone else. Just ensure that you are choosing a Dentist Winchester VA with the right qualifications to offer the best oral health care. You should also try to maintain an open relationship with the dentist that you choose and stay informed to know what is good for your health.

A lot of my clients are not even able to completely do a program like that anyway.  So, we just have multiple touches.  We’ll hit a patient several times trying to get them to refer a patient to us in just very soft touches. We tell them how much we appreciate them.  We actually have a script the assistant says.  We’ve got a script that the front office says, and we have cards to give them.

We actually have an offer if you want, free exam, free x-ray card that we give folks to give out.  We say, if someone is like you in our practice, then, we definitely want them here, too.  Now, be careful.  Anything you do like this and I believe somewhere in Canada that is not culture, but this is a very specific template that we follow.  It just seems to work out overtime, and overtime it has gotten better and better.  Like I said, our direct referral numbers have never been better, and that has caused me to spend less and less on external marketing.

If you’re getting the same amount or better production out of fewer patients and you’re not having to spend extra marketing money, then, that’s just extra money in your pocket, right?  That’s just money you did not have to spend.

Dr. Lavine:

Yup.  Now, what about your staff?  Obviously, this system probably works very well.  If your staff promoted?  What are you doing to promote your staff?  Do you have some type of bonus system, or what are you doing to be effective?

Dr. Griffin:

You know, we’ve had a lot of promotion systems over the years.  I’ve tried them all and failed at most of them and settled in on a few.  A few years ago, we did a complete team bonus, and that was great at first.  I mean we got huge bumps. We were getting $50,000 a month, and then, when we bumped up to $80,000 or $90,000, everybody was so happy.  As we crossed over $100,000 and got up to the hundreds per month, the people in that bonus got to be making a lot of money.  It wasn’t that I hated to pay them, but the truth of the matter was it was not equitable because when I would hire new people, there was no extra money to pay them anywhere where the original people were making.  It just wasn’t fair.

So, then, we went to a different bonus system, and people rebelled on that.  Now, unfortunately, Lorne, to tell you the truth, I have a different bonus system for every single person in the practice.  We try to attach a statistic to each person that keeps them engaged in the practice.  It keeps them focused on their particular area.  I wish there was just a magic formula for that.  Unfortunately, the truth is actually have to manage each person individually to get the best out of them. That’s probably not what everybody wanted to hear, but that’s just the way it is these days.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  Yeah, I agree. That’s the reality of the situation.  I just want to make sure we get to a couple more questions before we have to wrap things up here.  For someone that wants to know a little bit more about lean management, is there a specific one book that they should check out that helped you in your practice?

Dr. Griffin:

I don’t think there’s one book, but just go to Amazon and type in “lean management”.  There’s a couple that were written that are really good on lean management applications to health care, and it really is not dentistry.  It is application into how the hospitals or big medical groups use lean management.  So, I was reading that, and I was like, “Well, certainly, if you can figure out how to make a car manufacturer work in the industry.  It’s a lot easier to figure out how it’s applied to a hospital or a medical group and apply that directly do dentistry.”

So, absolutely go to that.  Just go on Amazon and type it in.  Buy a couple of those if you want to, and there’s another concept about value string mapping.  You should get a good book on that, and you know what’s better?  You can go to Wikipedia, my gracious, and you could probably read all you want to on Wikipedia about this.  Go to Wikipedia and read about value string mapping and lean management.  That’ll take you a while.

I actually blew up my account.  Do you have an Evernote account Lorne?

Dr. Lavine:

Of course.

Dr. Griffin:

Yeah.  So, gee, I was on a frenzy left and right.  I was just taking stuff off the internet left and right, throwing it on Evernote and about maxed out my iPhone doing that.  So, yeah, I think you can find on the internet however much you want to mess with.  Then, if you want to go further, yeah, get those books off Amazon.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  Can we keep you on for a couple more minutes?  There’s a couple more questions I want to try to get to.

Dr. Griffin:

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Lavine:

Than you.  We appreciate it.  What if I told you I really had a small practice, two chairs, one hygienist.  I’ve got one assistant, one front office person that basically does everything.  One of those rooms is for the hygienist, and the other is for the doctor.  Can they overbook?  Can they do what you recommend, doing that third column, or is that not going to work for a practice that small?

Dr. Griffin:

That is not going to work for a practice that small with two chairs and one hygienist.  Please don’t try this at home.  Don’t do it. You need at least three chairs to make it work, and three is pushing it.  Four for sure would work good, but no.  I wouldn’t do it with two.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  So, you’re only working three days a week.  You have no associates. You’re not available for four days.  What happens if someone needs to be seen?

Dr. Griffin:

You know, that goes back to the defect slide.  It’s against my nature to think about bragging, but I just think you need to take your trade seriously enough that you can go in and do that there doesn’t have to be mishaps on the weekend.  Things should be coming off, and teeth shouldn’t be breaking off.  Of course, people are going to get a toothache on the weekend.

Occasionally, we have a protocol for this.  Do we have a standard operating procedure protocol?  Absolutely.  We have a chain of command that a call goes to an answering service.  The answering service goes to a full time manager here at the practice.  They, then, sort through the call, and once or twice a month, I get a call, and I need to come up to the office.  I will either call in a prescription or come into the office, and then, that’s the way it works.

I have a lot of clients who have a problem.  They have stuff that goes wrong on the weekends, and I just tell them, “Try to think ahead.  I mean, if you’ve got a necrotic tooth, if the last day that you work on a week is a Thursday, let’s try not to put a filling on a necrotic tooth on a Thursday afternoon.”  How about that?  That’s not thinking.  I mean, you’ve got to use your head.  Think again, guys.  If you’ve a tooth that if you prep that thing, that’s going to have a resident adhesive cement to hold on there.  If you prep it before you go into town, the temporary’s obviously going to fall off.  Use your head when you’re [01:32:14].

This is simple stuff, but I mean, you just need to be thinking ahead.  Don’t do crazy stuff the last day you’re in the office in the week.  I’m all about same day dentistry, but there’s smart ways to go about it that you’re not going to have all these problems blow up on you during the weekend.

Dr. Lavine:

Yeah.  Okay.  So, last question.  I’m going to wrap it up as well.  What would you recommend if someone has a high volume practice, and there are a lot of cancellations? Is there one or two things that you would say to the person right off the bat like, “Here’s the case. You really need to focus on this concept to take care of this issue”?

Dr. Griffin:

Okay.  Two things.  Doctor’s side cancellations, I solved that problem.  How did I solve that Lorne?  Before a patient gets an appointment, they have [01:32:57].  Either they have a deposit, they need to pay for their treatment.  They have a deposit pay. They need to pay for their treatment, or they have a first payment of some kind of pay.  They have financial arrangements.  They already have their money or credit.  Whatever it is, they have something in the game, absolutely.

So, that solves the problem.  That’s why we don’t have doctor’s side cancellations anymore.  So, if it’s on the book, they’re coming.  Why?  Because they already paid something.  On the hygiene side, we didn’t feel that we could do that because of my terrible experience when I was trying to devote a practice, we tried something like that and lost a lot, a ton of patients.  So, no, I’m not doing that.  I’m not doing that again.  That’s how we came up with the book and the extra column more than the amount of hygienists that you have and have a system.

If you have four columns booked, three hygienists, if that person shows up, either have your assistants take the x-ray to start the flow up and then have somebody in there, or like I said, once every two months, I will actually have to do the hard tissue probing and scaling myself.  Big whoop. I’m not too good to do that every now and then.  So, that’s the solution we came up with, and we just rarely have a day when we don’t have much to do.

Dr. Lavine:

Chris, I want to thank you so much for tonight’s presentation.  We had a great turnout.  I’m hoping that you’re not going to be talking about doing something in a few months because this was just great material.  We had some people that were commenting that they looked at other types of systems to be more efficient where they’re looking at $50,000 bills in order to implement those systems.  The fact that you came on to the webinar and gave all this great information for an unbelievably low price of $397 that you have found effective.

So, speaking to individuals like you and learning from your expertise and going to the BB13 event and bring their staff and really get up to speed on this, really, I think that’s so generous.  I just want to thank you again for taking time out of what is very obviously a very busy schedule to be with us.

Dr. Griffin:

Well, Lorne. I did. I have to be honest with you. I did give up half a practice with my kids 13 and younger.  I coach a little league 13 and under baseball and I did have to give up half a practice. It hurts because I love coaching that team, but it was such an honor just to be with you tonight.  I can’t thank you enough for inviting me, man, and anything I can do for you in the future, I’m there for you.

Dr. Lavine:

Well, I hope the team doesn’t lose because of their lack of coach, but I thank you again. I encourage people on the call, please feel free to go to chrisgriffindds.com.  You can sign up for this excellent package, 60 day money back guarantee.  We know people who work with Chris that have raved about him, and that’s why we brought him on.  I don’t know anybody who would ever think of returning the product, but you certainly have that there.

For those of you who do want information about the recording, that will be sent out sometime tomorrow.  We’ll also resend the link that Chris had on his presentation, the Digital Dentist link, so you can go and get those screen shots as well.

Most of you know that we do these webinars on a regular basis.  We’re going to be switching gears tomorrow evening and talk about class II composite restorations.  We’ve already got 600 people signed up for that.  I think it’s going to be a great presentation as well.

I want to thank all of you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us this evening.  Thank you, Chris, again, and we look forward to seeing everyone on future webinars.  Good night, everyone.

Dr. Griffin:

Good night.