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Archive for the ‘Mouth-Body Connection’ Category

How Long Are You Planning To Live?

03 Oct

In 1334 BC the average life expectancy was 25 yrs. It stayed the same for 3000 years and then in 1400 AC a person might live to 30. By 1800 AC the probability increased to a whopping 37 years. Fast forward 100 years to 1900 AC and now you might live to be 47 years. Things really improved in the next 100 years so in 2000AC where the average life expectancy was 77 years. Now we have a problem in that when Social Security was started a large portion of the population never lived to the age where they could collect benefits. There was plenty of money to go around. People are living longer today.

It’s 2012 and people reaching 70 years are the new 50. 100 could be the new 70. Of course genes, lifestyle, ability to chew and eat, plays a factor in longevity. How long are you planning to live?

It is one thing to increase a person’s lifespan but what is their quality of life going to be? People are seeking age reversing medical and dental care in record numbers.

How will you spend the remaining years of your life? It could be struggling through each day or enjoying a wonderful day with a good quality of health. It all starts with some preplanning. It starts with finding health care providers and not just disease care specialists. It is finding health coaches in the creative orientation and not just providers taking care of disease. It starts with setting goals and having someone care enough about you to help you be accountable to what you say that you wanted. Now these providers are hard to find since the majority in doctors are favoring the reactive disease care mode, but health care providers are out there. It depends if you want to be in control of your health or you want your disease to take control of you. Dean Ornish MD said, “Take time for your health today or you will be forced to take time for your disease later.”

To create health you can’t take it for granted. You have to be part of the process. It makes good sense for you to take care of yourself, since you may be around for a long time as the above statistics are showing us. If you are spinning around in the disease cycle and would like to get on a different path and would like more information on health coaches please give me a call at 402-572-8000, or check out my website at www.drtjbolt.com

 
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Posted in Mouth-Body Connection, Preventative Dental Care, Principles of the Path, Uncategorized

 

Recession Proofing Your Mouths With or Without Dental Insurance

15 Jul

In this time of economic down turn even though I don’t see much of this going on in Omaha compared to other city’s across the country, concern on making good spending decisions run higher than normal. In making these decisions sometimes health is put on the back burner. This many times causes more problems than it prevents because in dentistry the cue that something is wrong is pain. Pain is the last stage of the disease process. I also hear a great deal with new patients coming into the office that they waited because they did not have dental insurance. Let’s talk for a minute what dental insurance is and is not. Dental insurance is not like medical insurance in that there are no tables to determine when a person is most at risk to dental disease unlike with the rest of the body. Statistics can determine how many people are most susceptible at a certain age for heart attacks, strokes, diabetes etc and tables are determined so that Insurance companies can set tables to determine costs. Dental Insurance is a prepaid program with limitations to the amount the insurance company can pay out to each policy holder in any given year. To complicate the issue they have procedures that they pay very well for and those that they don’t. Many times there is no guarantee that they will pay at all. The important thing to note is that in 1971 General Motors had the first dental insurance plan, and at that time, they had a maximum pay out for one year at $1000. Today even though the premiums are a great deal higher, most plans average $1000. Now with the cost of inflation it should be at least a payout of $3,500 per year. Dental insurance bought a great deal of dental care in 1971 with very few limitations, but today as you can see, it’s a completely different story. People are being misled that if they have dental insurance that all is well. Those that I have seen who have not had an examination for some time, seem to have this expectation that since they have dental insurance now that they will get healthy. Depending on their state of health there is not enough benefit in their plan to get them beyond disease and back to health. Many times if a patient is waiting for a new maximum per year because they have exhausted the dollars for that particular year they could be getting further and further behind THE GOOD NEWS IS PREVENTION AND FOLLOWING A SYSTEM OF HEALTH INSTEAD OF PUTTING OUT FIRES IN DISEASE CARE. Dental disease is a disease of choice.

The protection that one has against expensive dental bills is PREVENTION. How does one prevent dental disease? There are three reasons why people lose their teeth. They are, tooth decay, gum disease, and bad bite. The first two reasons, tooth decay and gum disease in most cases are diseases of choice. They are caused by acids that coat the teeth, eating away at everything it sits on. Understanding what you can do to remove this acid is the key to prevention.

People are not born with this knowledge, and having a dental team that is skilled in coaching techniques, partnering with you to help you take control is the secret to recession proofing your mouth. To many people leave their health to fate or luck, and this is very sad. Just going to the dentist is not good enough. It is what you are doing out of the office that is what will keep you healthy. The key is finding the right team for not all dental offices is skilled at prevention. The practice team must be designed with the intention of helping people be healthy, for the alternative is an office team designed to fix disease. There are two fundamentally different positions philosophically The way to tell what office you are in is if the discussion with you is future focused on where you see yourself 10 years from now looking at causes of disease or is the office team just interested in fixing the problem with no discussion on how it happened and what to do to prevent it in the future.

Knowing how to prevent dental disease being coached to meet your goals is the key to recession proofing your mouth For more information you can visit my website at www.drtjbolt.com.

 
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Posted in Affordable Dental Care, Mouth-Body Connection, Preventative Dental Care, Uncategorized

 

After Menopause Women Should See Their Dentist More Often

17 Oct

I found this bit of information in the Parade Magazine insert from the Omaha World Herald Sunday Edition, Stay Healthy. It stated that a new study from Case Western Reserve University found that women in the age group of menopause are at greater risk for periodontal disease than those who are not. In this case it was recommended that there is a greater need for frequent professional cleanings (up to four a year)-to remove the hard plaque (tartar) that can trigger gum disease and weaken the jaw bones.

 
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Posted in Mouth-Body Connection

 

A Fresh New Look At Stress

31 May

Since stress plays such a leading role in the destruction of the dentition, I felt that some time spent in discussing the topic was in order.

Did you know that all stress is self induced? That’s right. No more excuses. It is not possible for any of us to have any stress that we ourselves do not cause. Unfortunately there are many people who still do not realize this. According to Kurt Wright the author of the fantastic book “Breaking the Rules”, there are many stress management courses that help us deal with stress after we have it, but the role here is to remove the causes of stress; that is the stress we would all be happy to do without. The technical word for this kind of stress is called “distress”. The more desirable form of stress; the kind we all want to know how to generate more of is called “ustress”. Ustress is the form that keeps us acting in ways which support action towards the accomplishment of our goals.

So how do we manage to cause our own stress? We do it by assigning positive and negative values to facts. It’s that simple. It has been proven that by looking at what we are doing right and building off that, creates far more energy than looking at what we are doing wrong.

Now that you know that you are the creator of your own stress, try looking at your strengths and continue developing plans around that rather than the opposite of looking at what you are doing wrong. You will feel better and at the same time create far more energy to achieve your goals.

 
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Posted in Mouth-Body Connection