EP 62: Dentistry Looks Successful, But Here’s the Truth

Burnout And Suicide In Dentistry

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Do you happen to know the stat for like suicides around dental and professionals?

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Oh, dental and professionals. Well, it is kind of a say 80% of dentists have gone through some sort of burnout or uh chronic back pain. I don't know how many of them have gotten uh the uh neck fuse, uh back pain, and an opioid. So that's like 80%.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

Crazy.

A Personal Loss Sparks Awareness

SPEAKER_00 0:23

80% of them. And then that's why it is on the top end of suicide, right? And so I got so curious as to why, because you know what interesting happened after my husband passed. It was such a ripple, a shock in a dental community. Yeah, but then something interesting happened. Then dentists started reaching out to me and then sharing their stories, sharing their close call.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

And now, still to this day, I probably get a text message or a call that we've lost another dentist to suicide. Wow. So it's it's it's there. And I I think I'm starting to get to the whys. And because I'm getting so many dentists on as a guest.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

I'm kind of figuring out, you know, their environment. So this is where I'm being called to speak and bring awareness as to why in that profession, because there's other very stressful professions. So why dentistry?

SPEAKER_03 1:23

And um, so why do you think what's your current hypothesis?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Okay, well, I do feel they go into dental school, yeah, and it's it's it's hard. Yeah, it's gonna be extremely hard, it's heavy weight, and they're like, okay, they finally graduate, and they're like, Whew, relieved. Yeah, perfect, I'll hit the ground. Oh, the world's my oyster, yeah. Yes, and I'll start making the income. But no, you start off and you have half a million dollars in debt.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

And then not only that, I I know for a fact, because we had a lot of um associates that were right out of school. Yeah. Scott had to loan them loans because insurance-wise, you don't get paid right away as a dentist. It takes, it takes months. Yeah. And to build the clientele down, you have to build trust with your patient. So you got to build, you know, production. And it becomes such a production thing, yeah. And not so much treating the patient as a whole. So then there's just that constant pressure and precision. They they are all very much as a dentist perfectionists. And it's never enough. And so you work in millimeters. So there's a constant pressure and imperfectionism, and they think uh it's never good enough.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah.

Living In Fight Or Flight

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Right. And also environmental. So I do speak about environmental. You work close uh quarters with patients with a lot of fear and anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

And I know that science, it's physiology, that you take that on.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

As a healer, you take that on on a regular basis, and that causes inflammation because it causes stress in your body.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Especially probably the better person you are, I would assume, because it's like you take that empathy off even more.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Oh, people will fly to come see Scott because he was like he could remove that pain. It can really hold space for them. But over time, if you're always in that state, the whole office is in that fight and flight. Like my husband had, I don't see that regularly. I still work as a dental hygienist. He had three columns of patients. So he would see about you know 40, 50 patients a day, plus three hygiene. So it's like, go, go, go, go, go, go. You barely have time to eat. Think so you're in constant state of fight and flight. Well, what happens when you're in constant state of fight and flight? Your blood vessels constrict, yeah, the oxygen flow to your body, to your cells decreases, but only that in your gut, what happens is that you're not taking your body kind of stops digesting and all that and taking on nutrients.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

So if you're in a constant state, you work five, six days a week.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

And their patient is in fight and flight. So you're constantly in that energetic state, yeah, in sympathetic. Well, over time, inflammation.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Dentist is number one suicide profession or uh profession, right?

Mercury Amalgam And Toxic Exposure

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yes, it is. It is, and and I think the inflammation, and not only that, I know this is kind of taboo, call it what it is. In dental school, they they work manually with amalgam.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

And amalgam has mercury in it, about what is it, 40%. It's made with mercury. And now when they're using drills to put amalgam fillings or remove them, they're breathing in those gases of mercury.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

You know, they used to use mercury for syphilis. And in fact, I think that's the root way uh Blackbeard the Pirate ended up dying or going crazy. Well, think of the Mad Hatters.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

There's the Mad Hatters, too, whether they worked with mercury for the felt hats. Yep. Also, you know, interesting fact, I used to work, you know, on airplanes. So I was curious because I remember Flyden saying in the back of the galleys, they had aluminum, right? All the galleys. And some of them say they get numbing of the hands of working with them constantly. And I was like, oh, I wonder if that had mercury in that. And no, there's no mercury in any type of aircraft build. And in fact, engineers are afraid of even a slight drop of mercury to drop on an aircraft because it's gonna corrode. So can you imagine we have that in our mouth now?

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Isn't that something?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah. It's it's so, but it's okay to have it in our mouth.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

Yeah.