Why New Chairs?

In our newsletter this month, we mentioned several things that we've done around the office to improve the quality of our patient's visits, and the first thing we listed was 'new chairs'. We've had a few people inquire as to why, on a list that includes several high-end new dental machines and other improvement, we chose to put new chairs first on the list.

The answer is simple: it's a matter of dental ergonomics.

The Dentist's Perspective

For Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt and their hygienists, the difference in chairs is important for a few reasons:

• The headrests and narrower shoulder areas allow for better maneuvering around you during a procedure, keeping things moving during a longer, more complex operation.
• Height adjustment on the chair allows the dentist to sit comfortably and work without having to strain upward or downward.

The Patient's Perspective

While you only spend a few — maybe twice that at the maximum — hours in the chair vs. the thousands of hours the dentist will spend maneuvering around the chair, we nonetheless bought these chairs with your comfort in mind:

• Adjustable head/neck rests ensure that you're never supporting the weight of your head or contorting yourself to let the dentist get to whatever he's working on.
• Lumbar and pelvic support mean that you won't get up with a stiff back no matter how long you've been sitting — and even if your muscles do start to feel a little tense, the built-in massager will take care of that in a hurry.
• Highly adjustable head and footrests allow us to adapt our chairs for almost anyone (though if Sultan Kosen comes back for another visit, we'll probably still need a special chair for him.)

Sure, to a degree, it's "just" new chairs — but when you're striving to make your patients comfortable and calm, every difference counts.

Going Green Is Better For Everyone NOW — and Later

The ecological movement is nothing new — people have been worried about the fate of our nation's wildlife since back when Roosevelt first moved the Division of Forestry from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Interior. But for much of the past several decades, the complaint has been that being ecologically conscious was expensive and not worth the effort.

Several recent developments in green technology have proven that 'wisdom' quite wrong, and they've given us at Dr. Eric Johnson's office the ability to make life better for our patients (and the world) at the same time.

Here are a couple of great examples:

Digital X-Rays

Digital X-rays have pretty much every advantage over traditional X-rays. They don't require developing, which means less nasty chemicals out there (and in our own cupboards). They require less radiation to get a clear picture, which is better for our patients and our techs. They allow for instant previews of the X-ray, which means less waiting around for the slides to develop. And they're cleaner and easier to read, meaning more accurate and quicker assessments of what's actually wrong with your teeth.

With digital X-rays, everyone wins; you, us, and the Earth. Read more about digital X-rays on our web site.

Green Cleaning

There are a few basic categories of cleaners out there, but one thing that they almost all share is that they're quite toxic and bad for the environment. The one that doesn't fit in, however, is the one that we use: the colloidal micelle-based cleaner. This stuff is awesomely powerful, because it's made of molecules that are smaller than the grease and other biological molecules that they clean up. The effect is like a microscopic sandblaster separating the molecules from whatever surface they're clinging to for easy wiping up. The real benefit, though, is how incredibly safe they are; so much so that you could drink the stuff without issues.

Colloidal micelles let us clean the office often without doing anything to your system except making it glad for the cleanliness. Again, it's a three-way win.

Happy Valentine's Day! Let's Talk About Your Kids' Candy

All those little candy hearts your child gets at school for Valentine's Day are mildly frightening for some parents — and some dentists! But with a little bit of attention, it's OK to allow your kid to enjoy his/her Valentine's Day candies without ruining their future oral health. Here are a few tips from Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt:

• Dole Out the Candy Sparingly: You should be in control of when your child has access to candy, and you should be careful of how much they eat at a time. Not only can 'boom and bust' candy eating result in a fussy kid, but you might also be setting them up for insulin resistance and its concurrent obesity and risk of diabetes.


• There's A Reason Behind 'Dessert': The classical wisdom of eating real food first and dessert afterwards has a lot of value. Eating sweets just after a meal does a couple of things. First, your saliva is still flowing easily and will have an easier time cleaning the teeth of extra sugars. Second, the sugar will mix with the meal in your child's gut and thus you won't get the same kind of blood-sugar spike and resultant 'high' you get if you give them candy in the middle of the afternoon.


• Watch the Ingredients: It's a strange time we live in, when 'sugar' is considered to be one of the least offensive ingredients on a candy's list, but it's true. If you have the ability to steer your child away from fructose (including agave, which is actually higher in fructose than HFCS), do so — but that said, if you're following the first two guidelines and you can't avoid it, a little corn syrup or Red #40 isn't going to have a noticeable effect on your average kid. The important part is your awareness and attention — that way if something does set your child off, you'll at least have a notion of what it may be.

Happy Valentine's Day — enjoy yourself!

Responsibility, Concern, and the Power of a Third Party

Adding a third party to any transaction can have any number of interesting effects on how things work out. In an ideal situation, a third party can act as a facilitator, making certain that details work out in everyone's favor — so much so that it becomes a no-brainer to have a third party on hand to make sure that everything happens smoothly.

At Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt's office, we believe that there are some ways in which having a third party responsible for things is enormously beneficial to our patients. We always acknowledge that we're responsible for everything that happens inside these walls, and we work hard to keep our clients foremost in our minds — but there are some things that are better placed in other people's hands.

For example, we don't do the maintenance and sterilization of our own equipment anymore. Not because we disliked the task, and not because we're lazy or even that we had any problems in the past — but simply because having equipment that is clean, fully-functioning, and ready to use is important enough that we feel like we should have someone assigned to the job full-time.

Equipment cleaning and sterilization isn't the only job we outsource to other companies, either — we have experts come in and refill our bathroom soap beakers, clean our front door mats, and so on as well. We choose to leave those details in the hands of people that are professionals in their respective fields, because it lets us focus on the things that matter most — serving you.

Just like taking responsibility for your child sometimes means hiring a baby sitter, or taking responsibility for your home sometimes means hiring a painter, taking responsibility for your patients sometimes means hiring experts to take care of the details that help make our office a healthier and friendlier environment.