AME: From Curing Lights to Killer Reads (a Recommendation Engine)

[00:00:00] Okay, let's talk about one of the most underrated tools in your practice, the dental mirror. It's in your hand all day, every day. But have you ever thought about how much it actually impacts your work? If your mirrors aren't giving you a crystal clear view, you're working harder than you need to. That's where Zerk comes in with their Crystal HD Dental Mirrors. I love these mirrors. I keep two in every single setup just in case I drop one. These aren't your average mirrors. They're so much brighter than the standard ones. That means better visibility, reduced eye strain, and more confidence during every procedure.

[00:00:28] And they're durable and lightweight, designed to reduce hand fatigue and improve ergonomics so you can work comfortably even during those long demanding days. Plus, your patients will love them too. Available in a variety of vibrant colors, these mirrors are made with durable resin to prevent galvanic shock and eliminate the unpleasant clanking against teeth, ensuring a more comfortable experience for everyone. Upgrade one of the most important tools in your kit with Crystal HD Dental Mirrors from Zerk. The moment you bring one into the oral cavity, you'll be amazed at the clarity and brightness. It's like seeing your procedures in a whole new day.

[00:00:59] Maintaining optimal ergonomics is essential for a long and healthy dental career. That's where BQE comes in. BQE stands for Back Quality Ergonomics. I swear by a BQE model called the Ergodynamic, but they have a variety of styles that can fit you and your whole team. Keep listening to Very Dental to hear a conversation I recently had with Stephen Hoxma of BQE about their commitment to creating the best seating for dental teams. If you're looking to improve your workspace and well-being, check them out at bqe-usa.com.

[00:01:30] This is a production of the Very Dental Podcast Network. Alan Mead is a dentist with too much time on his hands and too much recording equipment in his basement. Armed with an obsession to bring entertaining and informative content to the dental world in a way that's never been done before, I give you the Alan Mead Experience.

[00:01:58] Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Alan Mead Experience. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Mead. I'm a dentist, a podcaster, and a vacationer coming down from spring break. I have to tell you, not thrilled about this. So my family and I did one of our road trips. This year we spent, we were a little closer to home than we have in the past. We were in Ohio and we were in New York.

[00:02:27] We mostly saw museums. It was spectacular. We had a great time. My son, my oldest son is, to say the least, he's obsessed with a lot of different things.

[00:02:46] Autistic kids, autistic people basically have, in a lot of cases they have what you might call, obsessions is sort of, it sort of brings a negative connotation, but it's things they're real fans of. They're aficionados or, as the Japanese might say, otaku. And they have, they're just things that they're into.

[00:03:10] And one of the kind of stereotypical behaviors that autistic people sort of have is that they don't pick up on social cues. And Sean is sort of like this. He wants to talk about what he wants to talk about. He doesn't really read cues very well that maybe a person is not that interested in ceiling fans or perhaps doesn't think trains are the greatest thing ever.

[00:03:36] And so in some ways he's, that's a bit of a classic autism thing that he exhibits. In any case, one of the things that he really loves, he loves to see, loves to talk about it. He loves to watch it on YouTube and all this stuff are what you would call a kinetic ball sculpture. I may or may not have talked about this before, but there's a guy by the name of George Rhodes who actually I think died during COVID. I think he died in 2021 or 2022. And he was an older guy.

[00:04:02] He's been making these kinetic ball sculptures for years. I remember in 2006, my wife and I went on a cruise. This was before we even had children. And we saw one of these kinetic ball sculptures actually on a cruise ship, the Explorer of the Seas from Royal Caribbean. And they, I was kind of fascinated with the ball machine then, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of cool. So in any case, he loves these things and he knows where a bunch of them are.

[00:04:32] He's got a list of them that he would like to go see. And the list continues to grow. Turns out the state of New York has a lot of them. I think from reading one of the plaques that we saw this last week, he may have lived in, in Western New York, by the way, Western New York, upstate New York, Finger Lake areas, Finger Lakes area, man, that place is gorgeous. It's beautiful.

[00:04:54] Just big rolling valleys. Unbelievable. Like it was just, it was gorgeous. It reminded me very much of West Virginia, which is where my mom grew up and my grandparents lived for years and years. And so it's just really cool. It's sort of East coast mountainous sort of stuff. So they're not like Rocky mountain, big tall, but it's, it was gorgeous. Beautiful, beautiful country. So we, uh, we saw a ball machine at a museum in Ithaca, New York.

[00:05:19] And then we went to Syracuse the next day and saw a ball machine in a museum in Syracuse, New York. And that same day we drove up to Watertown, New York. And there's a mall there that had a ball run all, all made by this guy, George Rhodes. Interesting stuff. So, uh, yes, we kind of let Sean sort of lead the way on our spring break.

[00:05:41] We, we, we, we followed the whims of a 17 year old autistic kid and it was, we had a good time. It was a blast. We were also in Ohio. We went to Kalahari resort water park. They love that. It was, it was, it was very good. Lots of museums, lots of, lots of going out to eat, lots of family time. It was fantastic. And, um, you know, my kids probably deserve a trip down to Florida for warm. We just haven't done that maybe next year. Cause Sean will be a senior in high school. Then we probably need to do that sometime, but we've done really well with spring break. We enjoyed it. In any case, we got home yesterday.

[00:06:11] Which was, uh, Saturday before this is coming out. It is Sunday. We're sort of getting our bearings back shopping for food. Cause our refrigerator was basically empty by plan. But you know, it is one of those things where, oh yeah, we have to feed ourselves again. That's right. We just don't go out for everything. Uh, we just lots of stuff like that had to get the dog back. We got to get the, the finches back. We got it. We got to get, you know, feed the horses again. We've been off for a week. So we're trying to get back on and it's fine.

[00:06:39] But we had a good spring break. It would have been nice to go for another week. Although I am, I'm kind of ready to get back into the grind. And that's something to be grateful for. Like if I, if I were like, oh, I can never go back. I, I'm, I'm okay. Going back. I'm okay. Going back to work. I'm okay. Going back to the routine and the routine is a grind. It has been. So it was nice to be off for a while, but, but it is our routine and we'll get, we'll get back into it and do. Okay.

[00:07:05] So what I was thinking, I didn't have, uh, anything like nothing dental really hit me over the last week that I wanted to talk about for the, for the podcast. But I will say this, I, I've been planning sort of a recommendation engine, uh, version, which I've done in the past on, on this podcast.

[00:07:25] It's what Jason and I used to call it, go hack yourself. And it was every week we'd come up with something that we had been, you know, consuming on, online or on TV or music or a dental instrument or just something that we'd been trying new. It didn't have to be brand new or anything like that, but it was just something we'd been using and enjoying or whatever. And so that's kind of what I'm going to do. I'm going to do an, uh, I'm going to do a recommendation engine because some stuff is actually some unbelievable.

[00:07:52] I, I don't usually watch much TV or movies, although I will say this. I just got back from, uh, the Minecraft movie. I, uh, my, my younger son, he's 15 and he's, he grew up playing Minecraft, loves the game.

[00:08:10] He really wanted to go see it. So I took he and his older brother, who's not really a Minecraft guy to go see it. Uh, I didn't get it. There was in the same way my son, you know, isn't a comic book guy. So if I took him to like Marvel movies, he wouldn't get it. I didn't get it. It was fine. Um, I wouldn't probably go out of my way to watch it again. He loved every minute of it. He couldn't stop. It was great on the way home from, from the movie. He couldn't stop talking about all this. So, so, I mean, he, it clearly, it pushed the right butt.

[00:08:38] And for him, I was like, eh, that's okay. That's not one of my recommendations. My guess is if you have little kids, you've probably already seen it anyhow. So, so again, my apologies if you did, but, uh, anyhow. So I, I have some recommendations of just stuff I've been consuming and using and, and I get two of them are dental and two of them are not.

[00:08:57] So I'm going to start with, uh, the first one is, is, uh, a product that I've been using for, I don't know, two or three months. I, I started using it right before the Chicago midwinter meeting and it was, it's called the loop. It's a curing light from Garrison dental solutions. It's, it's, uh, so all the guys who, who are, who are, you know, for their sectional matrices and, and, and rings and all that.

[00:09:21] And actually they, they are the distributor for LM instruments in the United States. So they have, they have a lot of good products, but they've come out with a curing light. I did an episode with, with Garrison some months back about it before it was released.

[00:09:33] So I couldn't really talk much about it because I hadn't really used it. I got one and I've been using it for probably about a month or so. I'm going to tell you, it's really funny. I, I'm a, uh, I'm really slow to adopt stuff. Even when I think it's going to be great and it ends up being awesome. I, I've told you guys this forever. Like I, I have people on that have great products, great ideas, and I'm, I'm the last guy to, to start using them because I don't know if it's just, I'm afraid of change or what, but I just,

[00:10:03] just like, eh. So I had the, I had the loop for a while and I, I took it out and I charged it up and it was, it was a little bit different. And, and it was like, and so I'm, I, I was slow, slow to use it. We used it several times. Then we went back to our old, uh, we have an, uh, uh, a 3M deep cure, which is like an absolute club of a, of a composite light. The thing is about 40 pounds. It's this big metal thing. It's, I've had it for some, for a while.

[00:10:33] I probably, if I look hard, I've probably had it for even longer than I think. In any case, the loop is, um, is a compact, small, um, small curing light. It's, it's actually feels really nice in the hand. Um, it's got a, it's got a really small head. Like you can get it way back in the posterior with like little effort. You can, you can turn the head 360 degrees. And so it's, it's just a really easy to manipulate instrument.

[00:11:00] But I mean, I don't, uh, people don't get super excited about curing lights, generally speaking, but what's cool about this. And I will link the, I'll link the episode in the show notes because it's, it's worth knowing that they've put a lot more thought into a curing light, curing light than you ever have. Like, I think a lot of times dentists think, well, as long as it cures the material. And here's the thing. You don't really know if, if your material is getting cured for a lot of different reasons. For one thing, you probably don't measure your light output as often as you should.

[00:11:30] Um, and the reality is like, I think that's real. I think some people are really good about it. We were pretty good about it too. But in, in, you know, a lot of the manufacturers were smart to actually put a meter right in the, right in the, uh, the base of it. You know what I'm saying? Like make it as easy as possible to do the testing. And I think that's been smart, but the loop is like about four levels above that.

[00:11:53] The loop does every time you set it in the, in the, I'm not even sure exactly what it does. I am literally looking at the, I'm sitting in my, my, my basement, Harry Potter under the stairs studio. And I realized that I had brought the instructions here to, uh, to look at. And I, of course I didn't look at them. I'm, I'm as bad as any dentist you'll ever find anywhere. Um, that am not great about reading instructions.

[00:12:18] This is one you should probably read the instructions on. Cause, cause this light does a lot of stuff that you have no idea that it can do. Um, for one thing, every, you set it in the, the cradle to charge. It holds a charge for a long time. You set it at the cradle charge. It does a self calibrating thing. So it's, it's a daily cleaning thing. So you can, you can make sure that the lens is clean and clear. It measures that it's basically, it does that every day.

[00:12:48] And it's putting at different, at different, uh, levels. It's kind of amazing. Like this, this light, the other thing that you don't really realize that, that we talked about with the folks at Garrison is that you're curing light ages over time. Like in other words, out of the box, you're curing light delivers X amount of, of like light or, or power or, or whatever you want to measure it. It, it has a certain output when it's new. And, and honestly, as it gets older, the output goes downhill. It just ages.

[00:13:18] And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you can't, you can't really even avoid that, but you don't tend to think about it that way. You just think about it as a curing light just delivers light. And that's what it does. Well, they get, as they get older, they don't deliver as much. And if you're not really on top of that, you could be potentially under curing your composites.

[00:13:35] But the other thing that's really cool about the loop is they understand that it does that. And so it actually calibrates in, in increases the output when, in other words, if it's not delivering enough power, it, it makes up for that. It measures how much output is being put at a certain rate and, and increases it. So it, it knows more about what output it, it's putting out than you ever will.

[00:14:00] The other thing, the reason they named it the loop is it's called this closed loop technology. And this is, this is unnerving and every dentist should listen to this closely. It's really unnerving. So a lot of times, if you aren't looking directly at where the light is and you shouldn't be because you're, you shouldn't be looking at the light. It's not good for your eyes. So, you know, you do your best to put the, most of the time it's the assistant that's putting the light on the composite.

[00:14:25] And you assume that the, the, the assistant is right on top of it. If you look at it, a lot of times your assistant is not directly on top of it. It could be a tooth or two off, or could just be off to the angle or whatever. This loop will not deliver light on this, in this setting, you can turn the setting off because it sometimes gets a little annoying, but it will teach you to make sure that you are right on top of the light because it will not deliver light to the composite unless you're right on top of it.

[00:14:51] And it measures this by, it basically is, it's, it's looking for reflection from a, from a compositor or a surface to know that it's close enough to be doing a good job. It's, it's wild. It's wild. And, and honestly, it is an education. I feel like I'm probably curing my stuff much better now than I ever was. Of course, that's probably a harder thing in the posterior than the interior, but still, nonetheless, you're not really supposed to look directly at the light. It's nice to know when you're right on top of it. It's a feature I've never seen before.

[00:15:18] And actually it's a feature that I have to say at first was super annoying. You know why it was annoying? Cause we weren't getting the light in the right place. That's why. So I'm just like, ah, I see it's annoying, but now it's, so we've actually frankly learned, uh, to, to cure our composites a little bit better because this is sort of keeping us honest. And I will say this, I like the feel of it in my hand. And in a lot of cases, one of the reasons that your assistant isn't doing as good a job as you might like is because you have a better angle on what,

[00:15:48] what you're curing than your assistant does. Sorry guys, but it's true. In other words, you know, your assistants can be awesome, but they, they are not their angle on what's going on in the mouth. Particularly. I'm trying to picture like if you're right-handed and you're trying to cure the, the, you know, mesial buckle or buckle of number 18, uh, your, your assistant can't see that well. They really can't. It's really hard. I guess if you have a really well-placed rubber dam, maybe, but the stories, they, they do their best.

[00:16:16] Here's the thing. You can see exactly where it needs to go. So I'm, one of the things that the loop has convinced me of is that I need to be curing my composites more and my, my assistant needs to be curing it less. I know that sounds sort of dumb and you're like, oh great. Another responsibility that I, but it's not a matter of, oh gee, I have to do too much work. What's important is making sure the composite is cured well. So this, this loop has, has helped us know when we're curing well, making sure that the light is delivering enough power to our restoration.

[00:16:46] And also, like I said, it's so lightweight and small and it's nice in the hand. I cure more composites now. I don't do all of them, but I do a lot. I enjoy that. I don't mind it. And it's so small. You can set it on your tray or whatever. It's very cool. It does. It's got this wild, like led. It's got a menu and everything right on the face of it. I have to tell you, I don't understand the menu very well because again, I'm not, I'm not a great instruction reader. I'll probably do some reading of the instructions. Now that I said, uh, it does have, it comes with sleeves. I have to say the sleeves are really nice. The plastic

[00:17:16] sleeves. I, we didn't generally use sleeves, but schmutz gets all over the lens of these things. You don't even realize it until, so if you can, I use it, we use it with a sleeve now, which is for better. It's a better barrier that for, um, infection control anyhow, then wiping it down. And it's also got a small, you know, like a, um, orange filter for the assistant. So the assistant can look to see where it is. And she definitely prefers it with that. Um, if I'm using it, it doesn't make that much difference. Cause I'm kind of able to see right where I'm going with it.

[00:17:46] It's, it's not an inexpensive instrument. I don't know exactly how much it costs. I will see if I can get any kind of a, uh, a code or whatever. I think I do have a code. Here's the deal. I don't know what it is on here, but go to the show notes and I'll see if I can't find a code for the, we might have a code that I don't know exactly what the code is. We might have a code for it's a 10% off an order or something. I think I'll go, I'll go find it. Um, but I, if you need a new curing light and you're not one of those guys, it's like,

[00:18:15] I'm just going to go to eBay and buy the cheapest one. Here's the, don't do that because those do not, they don't last. They don't deliver consistent power. And they just, this light, I would highly recommend. I really like it for the size and for all the features. It's very cool. Took a little getting used to, I won't lie to you, but I really like it. So that's, that is my first recommendation in this recommendation engine.

[00:18:36] Second recommendation, a book that just came out a couple of weeks ago. Uh, author's name is John Sanford and I've probably recommended his books before. I, uh, I am a John Sanford fan from way back. I think I heard about John Sanford in dental school. So I, as you guys know, or may not know, or know now I graduated from the university of Minnesota in 1997. I didn't grow up in Minnesota. I, I literally, I, I'm, I've lived in Michigan my whole life.

[00:19:04] Except for when I was in college in Ohio and dental school in Minnesota. But, uh, I mean, I got to be a Minnesota. I was a fan of the twin cities. I, I, I liked living there. I liked, I liked a lot of the things that were there. And one of the cool things is that this guy, John Sanford, uh, is an author from Minnesota and his, he has several characters. The, the, the character that I first got to know was his name is Lucas Davenport. He's a, he's a homicide detective for, you know, the Minneapolis police. And then he's, he's since changed and he, he's,

[00:19:34] incredibly wealthy because he built a computer company, blah, blah, blah. It's an interesting character that, and literally he's got, you know, spans over 20 some books or whatever. Uh, I mean, the books were, were coming out when I was in dental school, which would have been in the mid nineties. And he's still going strong with this character. It's very cool. He's added another character by the name of Virgil flowers, who I think is a really interesting character. He is, he's more focused out state Minnesota. He's not quite as much in the twin cities, but this is a very Minnesota centric author and stuff. It's very cool. Uh, this,

[00:20:04] the latest book is, uh, Lucas and Virgil are both in it and they're working together to, to figure out a serial killer. And, and it's, it's, I mean, it's entertaining as all get out. I gotta say this. I listened to him on audible. I listened to this book as I was driving cross country and, you know, uh, Western New York and Ohio and all this stuff. And, and it was, it's great. It's audio books have always been great company for me before I listened to podcasts. I was an audio book, super freak. Like I would literally check them out from the local library and they would come and

[00:20:34] in, in, uh, tapes. They would come in cassette tapes and I would listen to them on cassette. I mean, like I was an audio book guy from geez, you know, probably even in high school, but definitely in college and dental school and all this stuff. Whenever I had to drive anywhere or honestly, even if I was going anywhere, I had a Walkman, I'd, I'd listen to audio books. I was big on that. So I've listened to all of his books over the years. This one was really good. Um, the thing that gets me though, is that the, okay, so used to be that you'd have a Lucas Davenport book come

[00:21:04] out and then a Virgil flowers book come out kind of back and forth. And now actually, uh, Lucas Davenport's daughter, Leti Davenport now has her own series. She's got several books in the series and she comes in sometimes. It's great because he's sort of built this universe of around these characters. I love that stuff. Um, he's had for years, he had the same, um, narrators of his audio books. And I got used to that. John Sanford, you know, Lucas Davenport had one narrator and then

[00:21:34] Virgil flowers had another narrator and, and, uh, don't mess with that because it was, uh, it worked really well. It's got different narrators and it's taken me a little getting used to, I can't say that I like the narrator as much as I like the old ones. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I hope that they just chose a different narrator and that one of them didn't die or something like that, but I got so used to the narrators over the years. It's taken me a little getting used to he's fine. He's quite good. But of course you sort of miss the old ones that you're used to, but, but the book moved along really well. It was good. You know, it's a, it's police

[00:22:04] drama. It's, you know, it's homicides. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty great. It's a pretty great book. I would recommend you listening to it. It's called lethal prey by John Sanford, lethal brain. It was just released in like late March. So it's only been out a couple of weeks. Great book. Um, I mean, honestly, any of his books are fantastic. I have to say that the books featuring his, his daughter are also excellent. They're, they're all good. I like all of them. He's probably one of my favorite authors. He's, he's one of the authors that when his books come out,

[00:22:33] I'm going to download them immediately and listen to them. It's just, just, just as simple as that. I I've been listening to him for a long time and I can, what's really cool is particularly in, in times like this, we're listening to podcasts that cover current events. I don't really even want to know. Listening to current events is not good for my mental health point. So it's kind of nice to have an audio book that I've been listening to. And so I, I killed that one. Um, I got a couple others in the, in the, in the queue.

[00:23:00] So, uh, I, maybe I'll talk about those later, but in any case, that's, uh, that was something that I really enjoyed. Now something else that is non-dental, uh, a Netflix movie called the electric state. So it is a movie. It's a film. It's not a, um, it's not a series, which Netflix is kind of famous for, for coming up with these series, but it's not a series. It's a, it's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie. Uh, that's got a bunch of people in it that you have heard before. You've seen before some of the,

[00:23:30] it's a sci-fi. It's a sci-fi buddy flick or sci-fi kind of, um, I'm basically I'll just set up. It's a technology kind of thing where, where, oh, there's, it's a little bit of, of people sort of living in a virtual, they live in virtual robot suits in some cases. And, and, and there's like a, actually in the, it's funny.

[00:23:56] Cause they have a couple flashback scenes to like the nineties with Bill Clinton. And they're talking about, basically they, they develop robots in the nineties that are, that are, so we do everything with robots. Robots help us in all these ways. And then robots basically have a war against people. And, and there's the robot wars. I don't know if it's because people were necessarily like treating them poorly or whatever, but, um, and so basically robots become this horrible thing that we don't, we don't want robots with their own intelligence to do things. We do. We're.

[00:24:26] Essentially they're essentially they're sentient robots. Uh, and they get put in like inside this giant walled in area in like the, the, the Southwest. And that's where the robots that survived in the robot war. That's where they're kept. That's where they are. And of course you've got some characters that are, you know, uh, a girl looking for her brother, her brother, long story short, her brother is this brilliant guy. It's, and he, he sort of gets, she loses track of where he is during the robot wars. They don't,

[00:24:55] they don't know where he goes. And then later after the robot wars, more technology comes in where basically you can, you can inhabit a robot with like this virtual headset thing. So it's, and so instead of robots, you've got police and, and robot hunters and all this stuff that have robot bodies, but they're sentient. They're, they're controlled by the person. So there's different setup there.

[00:25:18] Um, and so the, the girl loses her brother and goes looking for him. She hears, she figures out that he's still alive. She goes looking for him. And part of it means you have to invade the robot, the area that's supposedly uninvatable by robots. And she gets in with help of Chris Pratt's character. And bottom line, it's sci-fi. There's a lot to it. It's not hard to watch though. Once you watch it, they set it up nicely. You understand what's going on.

[00:25:48] There's tearful, there's some tearful things. The other thing is really cool. There are tons of people in this movie that you've seen in like a ton of actors, quite a few of them end up being robots. So in other words, you never see the human part of it, but it's just their voices or whatever. But like Woody Harrelson is terrific in it as, as a, as a robot. And I did, I loved it. I love the movie. I'll probably watch it again. I thought it was really good. It was a, I don't know if they can do a sequel on it,

[00:26:14] but actually in there from a book. And actually I had downloaded the graphic novel and was reading some of the graphic novel as it was coming out. So I was quite good. I'm not a guy who can sit and watch a movie for very long. And it took me several days. I can go to a movie theater and watch a movie because I know that's what I'm there to do. And I don't get on my phone and goof around, but I'm going to tell you,

[00:26:34] I have a hard time like at my house watching, watching a full movie. I just don't have the attention span for it. I mostly did. I got through it in a couple of days. I watched it between patients for one day. And then in the evening, it was, it was good. It was really good. Bunch of great characters. You're going to like the story moves along quickly and it's a really, it's a great story. It's not super predictable, which a lot of times these things get rid of it. It's not super predictable. I highly recommend the electric state on Netflix. So if you've got Netflix, you can watch this movie. I think you're going to like it.

[00:27:04] And you know what, if you liked it or if you watch it, you like it, didn't like it, go on, come on to the Facebook group and let's talk about it because I thought it was pretty good. And I, I, I'll probably have to watch it again just to, to get all the details. But, uh, the electric state, the last thing I want to talk about is a dental thing.

[00:27:21] And so I got to tell you that, that I have tried and use just about every, uh, isolation product out there. And, and I'm, I'm funny because like I said, I don't, I tend to not, I tend to not want to adopt things. It's like, I, I'm sort of a status quo guy. And I'm like, it's gotta be pretty good to get me to, to get out of the status quo. So, whoa, I, I had isolates in every operatory for a while, but I got to tell you, they drove me crazy.

[00:27:49] Cause they're loud. I don't know why it was funny. I love noise. Don't get me wrong. I love noise. I'm a white noise guy when I sleep and all this stuff. And honestly, the noise that it makes is kind of like, it's loud. It's white noise. I should love it. But for whatever reason, I don't love how loud they are in the operatory. And so I, I didn't give them as much of a chance, even though I had, I had isolates in the operatory. I didn't use them very often. Sometimes patients don't like being cranked open that, that wide either.

[00:28:19] So much of the, the, the reason not to use isolation comes from the story I'm telling myself instead of the story that a patient is telling me. Understand. I, I understand that. I realized that anyone who is a real serious rubber dam user knows that when you stop using it, it isn't because it's generally speaking, not because patients are really hate that. There's some patients that don't like it. There's some patients that don't deal with it very well. A lot of patients are like, wow, I wish you'd use that all the time. That made it really easy. So, I mean, like on some level,

[00:28:45] the story that I tell myself is probably the, the problem I have more than the story that patients tell me. I'll put that right out there. Now I started using the Mr. Thirsty One Step again. Mr. Thirsty One Step is, is Zerk's product for basically it is, it's, it includes a mouth prop suction and like a tongue and cheek retraction all in one piece.

[00:29:08] The reason I like the Mr. Thirsty One Step is, I don't need a light. I, the Isolite has a light built into it that I felt like was kind of a toy compared to what I'm already using, which is either a microscope or a surgical headlamp, like a serious surgical headlamp. So I never have needed a light. Why have one that it's just one more thing that can break on the dumb thing. And also the original Isolite had, they, they went to great lengths to be able to put the light in there, but they didn't. Now they, then they had the Isodry, which is the Isolite without the light. It's just that, you know, bottom line is that some of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

[00:29:37] the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the

[00:30:07] the point where I'm going to start using, uh, I'm going to start doing biofilm, uh, removal, like the guided biofilm therapy. And over the years, I love what a sand blaster can do. I love what particle abrasion can do. I love what even, you know, the, the stuff that's not abrasion as much as just, just removes biofilm that like the blaster from, I love that. It's a horrible mess though. It's a horrible mess. Again, I don't know that patients care that much. I mean, you say,

[00:30:35] we're going to make you really Sandy and that should be enough. But to me, it feels like a real invasion that it's so messy and so Sandy. And so, um, so I have tried lots of different air abrasion and particle abrasion and, and, you know, powder media type things. I've tried them a bunch and the mess always seems to get to me. I need to get past. I need to work with it. However, so I, but I started using the Mr. Thirsty one step when I was literally going to do this on my own kid. Uh, like I was,

[00:31:02] I was over there. It was crazy. I was, I was over there a couple of weeks before spring break. I think I told this in, in, and I found a goofy, uh, I found a goofy, um, Oh, what am I trying to say? I found something in the back of Jacob's throat, which I got to say, he's still going to see an ENT. He's doing fine. It's crazy. But, uh, I had him, I was using the Mr. Thirsty to clean his teeth. You know, I was going to be doing, I was going to be doing this particle bridge and thing.

[00:31:28] And I have to say, once you explain it and put it in there, boy, it makes things fast. Holy cow. These things make things fast. You know, you don't have to deal with, you can spray all the water in the world if you wanted to, to rinse or whatever. He doesn't have to, it sucks it up so fast. It's, it's, it's amazing how dry it keeps everything. Um, Mr. Thirsty one step is awesome because there's no parts that you have to clean. You literally pull it off the top of the suction tube and throw it all away. That's, I don't think any other ones do that. I think the other ones try

[00:31:55] hard to make it so you, you have everything sterile. You don't need to do anything with it. It is literally the most aseptic version of this that you could possibly have because you throw the whole thing away. It's brilliant. Comes in multiple sizes, works really well. It's not hard. It is loud. It's loud like all of them are because you've got a suction tube running in their head, you know, basically. So you kind of have to warn them for that. Honestly, if you were going to use this, like on the regular, it might be great to have some kind of headphones or something like that, that the patient could then, then the patient wouldn't care so much about that. I have to think

[00:32:25] about that a little bit, but I'm going to tell you, Mr. Thirsty one step is awesome because you don't have to have any kind of special anything. You don't have to, there's no equipment to buy. If you want to try one, you can contact Zerk. I'll get you, I'll get the link in the show notes. You can contact Zerk and ask for a sample. They'll send it to you because you don't need anything except what you already have in your operatory. And that's fricking brilliant. I'm sorry, but anything they can do to make it as easy as that to try, that's so good. And yes, Zerk is a sponsor of this podcast, but you know, there's a reason they're a sponsor of this podcast

[00:32:54] because they have awesome products. They have fantastic products and they've fought things through much better than I ever did. So I'm just going to say, if you haven't tried one, just go to the link where you can ask for a sample and they'll send you one and you'll know what I'm talking about. It's pretty cool. It's a really neat piece of kit that I haven't been using, but I'm going to start using more. I mean, I like a rubber dam. I like all this stuff, but there's times and places for kind of all these different isolation things, same thing with the Opturgate. I always tell myself that I don't want you,

[00:33:22] but Opturgate works awesome too. It's a different kind of isolation. It's just a lip protractor, but nonetheless, all these things have a really great place depending on what you're doing. And you just have to kind of get past the, get past your own brain. That's the best way to do it. All right, folks, those are my recommendations. The Loop Curing Light, the John Sanford book, Lethal Prey, The Electric State Movie, The Electric State, and Mr. Thirsty One Step. That's what I'm recommending today. And I hope you guys got a

[00:33:51] kick out of this. My spring break is over. I got to get back to work where, you know, podcast is still in full swing. I wish you guys would tell friends about the podcast. Think of someone that you might, that might not be a podcast listener. Say, hey, give this a try. You might enjoy this. Maybe even recommend this episode because it's got cool little recommendations that any dentist and even non-dentist could like. Lots of cool stuff going on. Go to the Very Dental Facebook group. You can give me one of five passwords to get in. You just go to Facebook,

[00:34:20] look for Very Dental. You're going to give me Timmerman, Hornbrook, Papa Randy, Lipscomb, or McQuethy. Any of those five. Amazing that I can continue to remember those when I need to. I am 53 years old. I can't remember much, but somehow I remember those things. Give me one of those names and I'll let you in. It's a great Facebook group. It is not a garbage fire like most dental Facebook groups are. And I got to tell you, I dip into other dental Facebook groups now and again. They're garbage, man. They're terrible. They're horrible. I can't stand any of them.

[00:34:49] I'm sorry, but I just, maybe I'm just less social than I used to, but I just, there's, there's always fighting. There's always complaining. It's awful. I try hard to stay away from that stuff. I don't always stay away, but I do. The Very Dental Facebook group is a very, very calm, cool, collected place. If anything gets out of hand, I just toss people out. Frankly, I've never had to because it's listeners of this podcast. So we already know that they're selecting for, you know, closer to normal good people. Yes. I'm patting myself on the back because my audience is

[00:35:16] full of good people. And that means you, because you've listened this far into the episode. That means you're a good person. In case you were wondering, in case you're having a bad day, you are a good person because you listened to the Very Dental podcast, the whole dang network. I hope you get value out of it. Tell a friend about it. Go write us a review on, on Apple podcasts. We haven't done it. And it's like, I don't know if it makes any difference or not, but, but I always read them.

[00:35:41] It makes me happy when you do, or send me a private message on Facebook or something like that. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you again for listening as always. I appreciate it. And we'll catch you next episode.