Announcer:

Welcome to the Marketing Chairside Podcast by Pro Impressions Marketing, where the team covers a variety of dental marketing ideas to help you attract more new patients in the quantity and quality you need to grow your practice.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

If you are a young dentist and you are struggling with patients coming back after treatment with problems, they’ve got breakages, they’re saying, “Doctor, this is high, this is hurting me. It’s just not right.” And you know in your heart of hearts, “This is TMJ disorder and I don’t know what I’m doing”, I’ve got a dynamo team here today to help you with that and to tell you about an event that you’ve got to attend. Before I say anything else, I just have to welcome Dr. Curtis Westersund and Dr. Mac Lee or McHenry Lee. Mac, Curtis, thanks for being here today.

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

Hey, welcome to be here.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

It’s good to see you two. I’ve known these doctors for a while and there’s one doctor that was going to be here and unfortunately she had something come up, Dr. Pam Marzban. What I see you guys having in common is a wealth of experience, enthusiasm for team and process and you just have the tools that all these doctors need to solve these problems. I just wish there was like some event they could go to or some lecture where they could absorb all this information. Oh, wait a second, there is and it’s called the 32nd, or are we 33rd now? Gosh, darn it. The Bernard Jankelson Memorial lecture with the International College of Craniomandibular Orthopedics. It’s this fantastic outfit that you guys help head up along with a team of other brilliant doctors.

You’ve got this event coming up and I’m excited to talk about this on our dental marketing show because I know that TMD docs have a leg up on the competition. They have something that their competitors just don’t have and that so many people in their market need and that’s why I’m thrilled to introduce you guys. And you’re going to be talking at the ICCMO meeting this fall, October 5th through 7th. And your talk is going to be an introduction to TMD. If people are like, “Well, I don’t know if ICCMO is for me because I don’t do a lot of that.” This is for them, right?

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

Exactly.

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

Right, for everybody.

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

This is the help doctors-

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

Everybody needs to know this.

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

This is to help doctors-

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

When you don’t understand the bite…

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

-Understand a little bit better.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Curtis lets let you react first. It’s okay. Curtis.

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

It’s hard to stop Mac from talking, he’s so passionate. I just want to point that out. If I can get a word in an edgewise, that’s pretty good because he’s a Texan and he demands the stage. TMD is this misnomer. Everybody’s kind of like, what is this? And I don’t need it. I don’t have it. A doctor I talked to said he is a big, big five practices. And he says, “You know what? We’re lucky we don’t have TMD in our practice.” And I kind of had to smile and think, well no, actually, you just probably don’t know what’s going on. And what we’re here to do is to help docs understand what it is in your practice, how you can see it, and how you can provide treatment for people that’s going to make it easier for your dental practice, easier for you. It’s going to bring a whole nother set of people into want to see you. So it’s great for dental marketing. Go ahead, Mac.

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

I’ve been around a long time and I’ve had a wonderful career and I’m retired from clinical dentistry and now I’m into teaching and my goal is for all dentists to have the opportunity to learn what I’ve learned over my long and quite successful career. And the main focus on being a dentist that’s above most dentists is understanding how all of this fits. TMD, whatever you want to call it, we deal with it every single day. Every filling you put in and you’re dealing with it. Every time that patient opens their mouth, you’re dealing with it. We are inviting every dentist to come to learn to look at the mouth as a total concept and how the mouth fits with everything else. And all the problems that you may be having and you don’t have any clue what’s going on is because you don’t understand as I didn’t when I was young, on how all of this fits.

We’re going to start with a very unique story, and that is with Dr. Pam Marzban. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be in her practice and watch her practice, and I’ve been fortunate to be in Dr. Westersund’s office to watch him practice with his patients. And it was a wonderful experience and an eye-opening experience and one of the reasons I got so interested in what I’m doing now. Dr. Marzban is an expert in cranial facial development in young children. The only way to prevent TMD in an adult, when I say TMD, I’m talking about pain, I’m talking about mouth destruction, I’m talking about teeth just not fitting you correctly. The only way to prevent that is if you do it while in development in the child stage.

She’s going to compare doing it correctly and what happens when a child, let’s say a distant twin, that they don’t know that they exist, that their development is not coordinated, and then they turn into adults they have the pain, they have the broken teeth, they have the infractions, they have the joint issues. And then that’s what I’m going to explain. And Dr. Curtis Westersund is going to demonstrate how you recognize it, diagnose it, document it, and treat it in an overall manner. So it’s going to be a very eye-opening experience for somebody who’s not had a lot of training in TMD. Dr. Westersund.

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

Well, Mac, I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that in the 44 years I’ve been a dentist I’ve never had one patient that did not come in with their teeth attached to their face, which was attached to their head, which is attached to their neck, which is attached to the rest of their body. Everybody is one person from teeth to toes. And it turns out that teeth are kind of intricately positioned or can be intricately positioned to help support the whole body. And we’re going to cover how to diagnose that, how to see that, and then how to provide a treatment protocol for each and every patient because everybody’s unique.

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

Bring your team members. I can promise you, my team knew as much about TMD as I did. And all of the good doctors that I know like Dr. Marzban who brings her team, like Dr. Westersund who brings his team, they too understand TMD in a unbelievable manner that helps the doctor and helps the patients. Please bring your team along with yourself. We’re going to have a great time. Jonathan, you wanted something to say?

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

I was just curious, what do you guys think would be some of the problems? I mentioned them a little bit at the start of the show. That some of the doctors out there might be encountering and that’s going to be the signal that you know what they need to find the link in the show description or the QR code that we’re going to put up. They need to click that. They need to go to the registration link and make this happen. What are those problems that they’re encountering there that are sure fire signs that they’re going to be a great fit for the ICCMO community?

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

First thing that pops in my mind is veneers. And there is an art and a science to dentistry, but the art cannot violate the science. If they’re making veneers and don’t understand the arc of closure and they make that veneer where the lower teeth and the patient comes out in a different arc of closure than closure, they are going to break those veneers. When the bite doesn’t fit right and you don’t recognize it, then that’s when you ask for trouble for things that break and not work. Or the patient be pushed back too far and not be comfortable because you’ve compressed the conduct, compressed the joint. Curtis your idea?

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Yeah, so you might have said, the first thing that pops off in your mind is when Curtis… Curtis, what pops off in your mind?

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

Just like all my patients are connected teeth to toes, every single patient I’ve ever had is a breather. They breathe night and day and we don’t accept non breathers because non breathers are dead and dead people don’t have credit, they won’t pay their bills. So [inaudible 00:09:20] besides that what we have is we have patients that are coming in and they’re breaking those things, those veneers off, they’re destroying their dentistry, they’re getting migraines and tension headaches, neck pains.

They’re getting all these things basically because their biomechanics is kind of all messed up. And a lot of it has to start with airway. We’re going to discuss that and we’re going to discuss how we can improve this structural biomechanics in the patient so that these problems aren’t showing up because we don’t want them to show up in our patients. Mac, I can ask you a question. I bet when someone comes in with that popped off veneer, that person goes and says, “Your veneer broke off.” It’s not their veneer, it’s your veneer because it failed. You don’t need that failure to happen inside of your practice. And that’s kind of what looking at TMD is all about, making sure we don’t have these failures.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And having patients that are thrilled that you’re making their quality of life better. That’s one of the things I love about working with TMD dentists and especially members of ICCMO is that they are truly changing people’s lives and not just how they feel about their teeth, but how they feel, period. They’re resting better. They’re not walking through life with chronic pain in their head and neck and all over the rest of the place. What are some practical details? Because Curtis, it’s my understanding that you’re going to provide some of the how-tos and demonstrations of examination and treatment. Can you talk about some of the equipment that you’re going to showcase and the techniques?

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

The biggest thing that ICCMO dentists use is called the ULF-TENS, it’s the ultra-low frequency TENS. And it’s we’re going to be showing how that can be helpful. I’m going to show how you can digitally examine the teeth and how they bite and function. But also very importantly, I’m going to talk about how we can record these problems with patients with something as simple as an iPhone and we can actually take photographs, certain photographs of our patients that help us diagnose TMD and make that a little bit more easy for people to actually understand so they can start doing it in their own practice.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

That is really interesting because everyone’s got an iPhone and just like you said, everyone’s got these patients in their office. So Mac, can you help us understand some of the signs and symptoms and just telltale signs, especially that doctors probably see every day but don’t really recognize as a TMD patient?

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

Yeah, let me to give you a little foundation on that. I’m highly CR trained, Dr. Panke, Dr. Coyce, Dr. Dawson, all personal friends. And I was excellent in understanding occlusion. What I didn’t understand was the deficient maxilla, and that’s due to growth, which Pam Marzban is going to cover. The proper growth and the improper growth if the tongue doesn’t do its job, the maxilla doesn’t get molded and therefore it changes the bite forever. In a deficient maxilla where the maxilla should be like this, it’s in like this. And so when the mandible close down, it has to retrude. Curtis Westersund’s going to show you an objective way to measure this retrusion. And when this retrudes, the joint retrudes and that compresses the joint and that’s what pops off the disc and you get the popping and clicking. “Dr. Lee, what about this clicking into my joint?” “Is it hurting you?” “Oh no, it doesn’t hurt me.” “Well, you’ll be just fine.” They’re not fine. There’s something wrong with that joint, that is not a healthy joint. It may be common, it may be non-painful, but it’s not correct.

I’m going to show you why it’s not correct. Dr. Westersund’s going to show you how to make it correct. There are little things that dentists see every single day at fractions recession. What are they due to? They’re due to a trapped mandible. It’s common sense. A lot of this is common sense. And I’ll tell you what, Jonathan, as you will know, because you and I have talked a lot about this, is that the patients understand what we’re talking about a lot easier than the dentist do because dentists have this prior learning that they’re stuck to and can’t chuck and they can’t throw away. And so we would like for you to come and hear, especially this old guy, tell you about his experiences and how his eyes were opened at 55, 60 years, yeah, 60 years of age. And I just want to be able to share my same experiences with dentists who want to learn.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And that’s definitely one of the commonalities I’ve seen in dentists who are members of ICCMO. Curtis, could you tell us a little bit about what drew you to TMD treatment and how you got started in that? I’m just wondering if some of our viewers and listeners might see themselves in that story.

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

Yeah, certainly. So thumbnail version. When I was about 10, I had all my second bicuspids pulled out, so I’m a four on the floor bicuspid case. And that was because I grew up on a farm, had a lot of allergies and my teeth were all crooked and they wanted to fix them all up. And that’s what they did way back then when we just used stone tools on walls. This then was something that I lived with and I had a lot of issues with it. And I got rebuilt back into “CR” by a prosthodontist in Calgary back in 1980, 1980. And I had 20 some years of migraines, pains, problems because of that. I went down and I got some training about what is called sort of neuromuscular and how things function the way that things can function better. And I started treating myself and lo and behold, yeah, I got better.

I used to have migraine headaches. I had my migraine headaches every day almost, or a headache every day almost. And I used to take so many Advil, I sound like a castanet when I walked down the hallway in my office because I’d taken so many pills. And so the problem being is that I couldn’t continue to do this. And when I figured out what I could do that would make me better, that was the last day that I had a migraine headache and it was this beautiful thing. That was in 2002, so it’s been 21 years without a migraine headache. Okay, I’ve had a headache due to in biting in local poison that Mac Lee may have given me at his deer camp, but that’s beside the point. What I had done is I had cured my problems with regards to migraines and at the same time fixed up a whole bunch of other problems I wasn’t even aware that I had.

And so when you start on that journey and 22 years ago, a lot of the things weren’t sort of sorted out. But now when you start on that journey, these problems have been pretty much sorted out and we have an understanding about how things are going to work and how things can get better and how things can’t get better. And so we’re able to take this learning that Mac and I have and that Pam has and we’re able to share that so that a doc coming in, I don’t care if you’re a new doc, old doc, if you’re an ancient doc like Mac and I, it doesn’t really matter because if you’re an active dentist, you can make a difference on everybody you treat. And that can make a huge change in how your dental career progresses.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

It’s interesting that this talk is kind of about a pair of twins and one, the development goes well, the other it doesn’t go well. Mac, I’m curious if you can put on your swami hat and see the future that wasn’t. If you hadn’t gone down this path, if you hadn’t had that desire to learn and you hadn’t sought out those answers that now are a lot more readily available it sounds like for a young dentist out now struggling with the same things, if you hadn’t gone down that path, what do you think your life and practice would be like today?

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be retired because I probably wouldn’t have the funds to retire. So we’re getting off on a different subject here, but it’s a very important subject. I am one of the few neuromuscular dentist, functional dentist, orthopedic dentist, whatever you want to put names that mostly did stage one with my pain patients. Stage one is getting them out of pain, that’s it. And you get them out of pain with orthotics, which Curtis has worn for 22 years and you’re doing fine with an orthotic. That’s right, he’s wearing one now. So that was my number one goal is to be able to get people out of pain, not charge them a lot of money and not talk them into, sell them to go to stage two, which is a full mouth recreating the bite that the orthotic creates. That being said, because I was so well known for getting rid of headaches and so well known for being a dentist that knew what was going on, that people with broken down mouths came to me from all over South Texas.

And so that allowed me, and Curtis has already mentioned it, to predictably know I can do a full mouth case without it breaking down. And the full mouth case would be comfortable because the full mouth cases I did in the past, I did in CR, I over locked them. I locked them in and they were not happy campers. And so I quit doing them until I learned what we’re going to be talking about at ICCMO in Calgary. So like Curtis and like Pam and like all of my neuromuscular friends that do these big cases, you can look in somebody’s mouth, you can talk to them, and you can interview and you say, oh yeah, I know what to do, sure. And the protocol is so incredibly thought out that it just gives you more comfort than anything I’ve ever had in a dentist room.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

I’ve known multiple dentists that haven’t gone down this route. And I mean the financials, the freedom, the confidence that you guys have achieved from going down this route. I want this for every dentist listening here to you, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It is in Calgary this year. And so if you don’t have your passport or whatever, don’t wait, get on the stick, do it now. We’re going to put up a little QR code on the bottom of the screen. We’ll have links in the descriptions for this episode. You need to take yourself to this meeting. You need to take your team to this meeting because you can’t do it by yourself. This is a team effort. I don’t know, Curtis, I really don’t know. In this lecture, are you going to have assistance that will kind of demonstrate that or is that not really something that you’re able to put together in that environment?

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

Well, my team will be there. We will be doing live demonstrations. So we’re really going to be allowing people to visualize the protocols and what we’re looking at with regards to understanding TMD and understanding how we can possibly treat it. So yeah, it’s going to be wild. Can I also add, Mac Lee is from southwest Texas. Mac Lee takes complicated and makes it Texan simple. And I have learned more from Mac Lee about how to communicate with my patients than I don’t know where my practice would be if it hadn’t been from my interactions with Mac Lee and his ability to make the most complicated thing simple.

And if you’re going to come for anything, come for the fact that Mac Lee’s going to explain what standing on your tippy-toes is, what a CSI is, oh, I’m not even going to get into it. There’s so many that are just a joy to hear Mac Lee go, “This is how we use this metaphor to explain this.” And they’re going, “Wow, that’s cool.” And what Pam’s going to be talking about, what I’m going to be showing, we’re going to have fun. The whole thing about CE is having fun Jonathan. It’s getting out there and making sure that everybody has fun up in Canada.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

It’s a lecture, but I guarantee you you’re in for a bit of a panel discussion and this is one of many lectures by the way. And talking about fun, we actually have a funny hypnotist that’s going to be there. Yeah, you’ve got to check it out. So Dr. Marzban’s going to be talking about cranial facial development. Can you give us just some snippets, the key takeaways of what doctors are going to learn in that lecture, that part of the lecture?

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

Yeah. I was fortunate to be in Pam’s office several years ago, and she was just on top of her game on treating TMD pain patients. And then as she started talking to her TMD patients, they had children and the children, the mothers were concerned about their cranial facial development. So Pam started investigating it and she said, oh my gosh, I got to start taking care of all these kids. So the only time to prevent TMD, serious TMD is during the cranial facial development stage. And so she’s going to be covering that in detail on how you can help these children not become TMD patients.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

Now, Mac in the alternate universe, these twins that are developing, if it goes wrong, that’s going to be your portion of the lecture talking about what the reality is of TMD and what needs to be righted in order to resolve the symptoms. Can you give us some of those key takeaways that doctors can expect to hear?

Dr. McHenry “Mac” Lee:

Okay, so what I can do is I can look in the mouth and look at all the signs and symptoms that I see and I can say, that that is a deficient maxilla. They’ve got anterior tooth wear, they’ve got posterior tooth wear, they got fractions, they got recession, they’ve got clicking joints, they’ve got joint pain, they have deviation of the mandible and all these things that at one time I thought was normal and natural, but it’s not. It is a TMD problem that we know how to help with.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

And Dr. Westersund, on the execution and diagnosis standpoint, what are the clinical nuggets of goodness that you are going to impart to the doctors?

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

When we have patients coming in, everyday patients coming in with jaw problems, clicking, popping, all these issues, we need to be able to look at that patient, diagnose it, and then talk to that patient, inform them of what we’re seeing, and then create a treatment plan that’s going to help them and then execute that treatment plan so that patient gets better.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

I know that there are some that would say your gut or there’s here that the patient says that it’s wrong, but how are they going to know the truth? Are you going to be able to teach them that?

Dr. Curtis Westersund:

We’re going to look at things objectively, so we’re going to be measuring, we’re going to be looking at different types of measurements that you may not even thought about doing. And that’s going to be not only in the diagnosis, but it’s also going to be in the treatment. So we’re going to combine that to make those patients structurally more balanced and physically better.

Jonathan Fashbaugh:

We’re going to have links in the description where you can learn about Dr. Pam Marzban, Dr. Curtis Westersund, and Dr Mac Lee. And we want you to come see all of us and many more doctors for multiple days of just absorbing all these pieces of wisdom, practical tips that you can take away and Monday morning start implementing and just ability to get access to more resources and training. And you can get all of that and start your own journey for TMD treatment in your offices that’s predictable and effective, and that’s going to change your life as well as your patients. Go to iccmo.org there’s a register button there. We’re going to have a link as I said before in the description, and we hope to see you there in Calgary.

And again, we often talk about marketing tips on Marketing Chairside, but we love marketing dental practices that deliver and that have rave reviews left and right because lives have been changed. This is your marketing tip of the week, is to check out iccmo.org, I-C-C-M-O.org and start changing your practice into a practice that’s easier to market. I’m Jonathan Fashbaugh, thanks Mac Lee, Dr. Curtis Westersund send for joining us. I think we’re going to have some wacky outtakes of our conversations as we play out here. So here’s me being goofy and here’s Curtis making weird faces. And here’s Mac Lee being a Texan. It’s about time for Jonathan’s playtime. Let’s go into the world of virtual reality.