The inflammation caused by gum disease has now been shown to delay conception by 2 months in Caucasian couples, and up to a year in Blacks. View story here.
Last week there were victories in Mt. Clemons, Michigan and Naples Village, NY, and today we’re happy to report another victory, this time in Alaska. The anti-fluoridation momentum continues to build with last nights 5-1 vote by the City Council in Fairbanks to end nearly 50 years of water fluoridation for a population of over 35,000.
On Monday night the Fairbanks City Council held a public hearing and meeting on a fluoridation ordinance introduced by Mayor Jerry Cleworth on May 23. Cleworth introduced the ordinance after the Fairbanks Fluoride Task Force recommended an end to the cities’ fluoridation program. The task force’s recommendation was also supported over the weekend by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, the local paper.
For years, local residents have been working to end fluoridation in the city. Several attempts have been made since 2008 to introduce ordinances before the City Council to end fluoridation, all without success. However, after a group of concerned residents, including Doug Yates, Ed Davis, and Coert Olmsted, organized Fluoride Free Fairbanks in 2010, and a strong public education campaign was implemented, a resolution was passed by the City Council forming a task force to research the safety of efficacy of their fluoridation program. It was this task force that made the aforementioned recommendation to the City Council.
This is a great example of what a group of dedicated citizens can accomplish when they work together to educate the community, the local media, and their decision-makers about the danger and ineffectiveness of fluoridation.
Congratulation Fairbanks on your wonderful victory!
For those of you who are coming, I would appreciate you reading the notes from the first meeting, to bring yourselves up to speed (below) and ordering the book, “The Referral of a Lifetime” and completing the assigmnents given by the author. It’s a 3 hour read. We will be discussing it at the next meeting.
Notes from Meeting One:
No two businesses are the same, and respond differently to socio-economic factors. There is one fact that is practically universal today, and that is these are tough times, what worked before may no longer be true. With all the choices out there for building your business, which do you choose? Which can you afford? How do you stay ahead of your competition? How do you keep your employees working? How do you pay your bills? How do you steer your ship and avoid the perils that have befallen many in your industry?
I am not here today to give answers. But we are here to brainstorm some ideas that I have, and hopefully when I am done with this short talk, there will be a lot to talk about. I have invited several colleagues who have expertise in a myriad of arenas, and welcome their input as well.
Just so we can all have a concept of how this group was brought together, I invited a score of my patients who are self-employed, or in sales, and a lot of friends from outside the practice whom I have known for a score of years and whose business ethics and acumen I consider exemplary. As this talk evolves, the genesis for attempting what I hope will be the first meeting of a large group of South Jersey business people to bring together the concept of The Mastermind.
The Mastermind
Chapter 10 of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is entitled “The Power of the Mastermind”. The “Master Mind” may be defined as: “Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of
p. 251
harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.”
No individual may have great power without availing himself of the “Master Mind.” In a preceding chapter, instructions were given for the creation of PLANS for the purpose of translating DESIRE into its monetary equivalent. If you carry out these instructions with PERSISTENCE and intelligence, and use discrimination in the selection of your “Master Mind” group, your objective will have been half-way reached, even before you begin to recognize it.
So you may better understand the “intangible” potentialities of power available to you, through a properly chosen “Master Mind” group, we will here explain the two characteristics of the Master Mind principle, one of which is economic in nature, and the other psychic. The economic feature is obvious. Economic advantages may be created by any person who surrounds himself with the advice, counsel, and personal cooperation of a group of men who are willing to lend him wholehearted aid, in a spirit of PERFECT HARMONY. This form of cooperative alliance has been the basis of nearly every great fortune. Your understanding of this great truth may definitely determine your financial status.
The psychic phase of the Master Mind principle is much more abstract, much more difficult to comprehend, because it has reference to the spiritual forces with which the human race, as a whole, is not well acquainted. You may catch a significant suggestion from this statement: “No two minds ever come together without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind.”
Group Demographics
As this coming-together progresses into further meetings, its size will increase as we all bring together other friends and colleagues who are a “fit” for future mutual success.
By a show of hands:
1. How many here have websites?
2. Who has discontinued Yellow Pages advertising?
3. Who has one or two types of advertising that are so successful, they don’t need to even think about other options to increase their businesses?
4. For those of you with websites, please put one hand up.
a. Who uses Google Analytics or similar strategies to understand how visitors are getting to their websites? Raise your other hand. Put one hand down.
b. Who has used Search Engine Optimization to increase their prominence? Raise your other hand. Put one hand down.
c. Who knows how many hits their website gets on a monthly basis? Raise your other hand. Put one hand down.
d. Who would like to be able to capture the names and email addresses of visitors to their website, to be able to stay in front of would be customers? ? Raise your other hand. Put one hand down. – I will be demonstrating how this works for our business after the talk is over. If you have to leave, and this is a topic that interests you, be sure to tell one of my office’s concierges who are here tonight – Introductions -
5. Who here does business solely on the recommendations of other customers? Raise your other hand. Put one hand down.
a. Who would like to be able to increase the numbers of internal referrals they get? Raise your other hand. Put one hand down.
6. Who here have used various forms of social internet marketing with success?
a. Angie’s List
b. Yelp
c. Google or Yahoo Local
d. Linked in?
e. Facebook Ads
f. Groupon and Living Social
g. On line Reviews
h. Others?
The Inspiration for this Meeting
One of my mentors told me about a book, The Referral of a Lifetime – The Networking System That Produces Bottom-Line Results….Every Day by Tim Templeton. I read it and highlighted it in a few hours, and challenge those who are truly interested in making their businesses accelerate to read it before the next meeting, and to complete the goals assigned in the appendix of the book, so that we can share this together with newcomers who you invite, next time, which will be Tuesday July 12th, here at my office. The basis of the book is that we can all become the inspiration for word-of-mouth-referrals, not just for ourselves, but for the mutual benefit of everyone in the group.
On July 12th, we can together share our ideas of how to make that happen.
Relational and Reputational Marketing
Several years ago, I wrote a manual for dentists which I sold at $200/copy. I have made my profits on that, and am working on the sequel. If you are interested in having me email you a copy of the manual, for free, simply send me an email. What it talks about is the importance of on-line reviews, and how to get them.
It also talks about how to use your relationships with your clients and your reputation for honesty and integrity within the community and market it effectively without it being self-serving.
With reference to The Rapture, which was supposed to occur last Saturday, one of my close friends, Mike Maroon who practices in Ct. wrote yesterday “With the recent non-rapture occurring, I really hope people realize that Judgment Day is EVERY day. It’s how you treat other people, how you choose to live your life and care for your fellow man, the love you give your family, the joy you bring to people’s lives. If more people worried about LIVING instead of DYING, the world would be a better place.”
Indeed, my take on this is that it could be that The Rapture may indeed have happened, and the four perfect beings on this planet got on God’s bus, and left, and the rest of us are still here to deal with one another. None of us is perfect, but my goal in establishing this group is to have a bunch of people who can wake up in the morning, and look at themselves in the mirror.
It is to have a group of people with exemplary reputations, and business ethics that they can be proud of, and want to Fly with Eagles who are likeminded. To start our own Angie’s List of ethical business people who our clients can trust for their needs.
INTRODUCTION OF GUESTS WHO FIT THAT SKILL-SET
INTRODUCTION OF PEOPLE THAT CAN HELP WITH MARKETING
We should all thank John Lore, an extraordinary local publisher whose business acumen and ethics is above question. His publications are out in our patient lounge, and he has funded the food for the evening.
My old friend Kenny Dunek, who recently began publishing Jersey Man Magazine, and as soon as I learned about it, I jumped on board as an advertiser and supporter because I believed in him, and felt that it was about time there was a publication for men.
Tobi Schwartz from Girlfrienz Magazine. In my industry women make a majority of the health-care decisions, and her magazine gave me the opportunity to editorialize rather than simply place an ad.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Also here this evening is Ashley Grasso, from Living Social. I’m sure everyone here has heard of Groupon. Living Social is a mechanism by which you can offer coupons to local residents and bring in new business, and it’s tailored to South Jersey, where Groupon is not.
This is, in my experience, and experiment. You get a lot of discount shoppers, however, I was inspired by my good friend Bill Dorfman. You have to have your team on board to handle a major influx, and understand how to convert a shopper into a patient, or client without it looking like a bait and switch, or underhanded. It’s been very interesting, and we got something like 100 new referrals that we are seeing at a rate of about 7-10 a week, many of whom were unconnected with an existing dentist, but most of whom were happy with their dentists. Dr. Dorfman’s expertise in bonding with people he meets made this extremely successful for him. This is not for the timid, shy, or those without high levels of self-confidence. It’s something we can save to talk about for a separate meeting, once my analysis of the viability for my profession has been assessed. Of course, if you’re not looking for repeat business, or have something you can give away, not lose money on, and have the opportunity to convert a client, and have room in your schedule to handle it, or better still, delegate to someone else, it’s a no-brainer.
LINKED IN
There are several people in the room who understand LinkedIn far better than I do, and I am anxious to learn more about it. Why don’t we take a 10 minute break to network a bit, and then I will invite Bryan Vergasson, who I coached in little league 20 years ago, and Steve Traum, one of the regulars in my golf group at Little Mill to lead a discussion about how they use LinkedIn to build their business. If there is anyone else who wants to join in heading up this discussion tonight, please let me know during the break. If you have any specific questions, ask me now, or during the break.
Finally, my concierges will be circulating amongst you with request forms for things you need from me.
A Positive Association found between Autism Prevalence and Childhood
Vaccination uptake across the U.S. Population. Delong G.
J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2011 Jan;74(14):903-16.
Read the .pdf
The reason for the rapid rise of autism in the United States that began
in the 1990s is a mystery. Although individuals probably have a genetic
predisposition to develop autism, researchers suspect that one or more
environmental triggers are also needed. One of those triggers might be
the battery of vaccinations that young children receive.
Using regression analysis and controlling for family income and ethnicity, the
relationship between the proportion children who received the recommended vaccines by age 2 years and the prevalence of autism (AUT) or speech or language impairment (SLI) in each U.S. state from 2001 and 2007 was determined.
A positive and statistically significant relationship was found: The higher the proportion of children receiving
recommended vaccinations, the higher was the prevalence of AUT or SLI. A 1% increase in vaccination was associated with an additional 680 children having AUT or SLI. Neither parental behavior nor access to care affected the results, since vaccination proportions were not significantly related (statistically) to any other disability or to the number of pediatricians in a U.S. state. The results suggest that although mercury has been removed from many vaccines, other culprits may link vaccines to autism. Further study into the relationship between vaccines and autism is warranted.
For more information about the Links Between Vaccination and Autism visit these pages.
My colleague Bill Osmunsen was interviewed by Dr. Mercola in a revalatory (for most) discourse about how poisonous Fluoridated Toothpaste is. Watch this 12 min video when you have a chance. The first 2 minutes will have you hooked. We have been trying to educate our patients about this for years. Be sure to visit the fluoridation page of our website as well as reading all the information on these Fluoride Toxicity pages of my blog.
Media Release: Brisbane, Australia 4 th April 2011
Merilyn Haines, the director of the newly formed group FAN-Australia (Fluoride Action Network Australia), has found some startling statistics buried deep in official research material by ARCPOH (The Australian Research Centre Population Oral Health at the Adelaide Dental School) that could scuttle the water fluoridation program once and for all.
Haines has found in the ARCPOH statistics that the permanent teeth of children in largely unfluoridated (<5% before 2009) Queensland were erupting on average two years earlier than the children in the rest of Australia, which is largely fluoridated (see the figure below). A two-year delay would negate all the small reductions in tooth decay claimed by dental researchers since 1990. In other words fluoridation doesn't work. Any difference in tooth decay claimed to be due to fluoride is simply an artefact of the delayed eruption caused by fluoride.
cid:image003.jpg@01CBF298.9D636A00
Source – Published and unpublished data from 2003- 2004 Australian Child Dental Health Surveys
( unpublished data obtained by Freedom of Information application)
According to Professor Paul Connett, director of the Fluoride Action Network, who is currently on a fluoride-tour of New Zealand, “Critics of fluoridation, like Dr. Hardy Limeback in Toronto , have long pointed out that any reduced tooth decay touted by promoters could easily be accounted for by the delayed eruption of the teeth . Even when this argument received strong experimental support from Komarek et al. in 2005, this has still has been ignored by those promoting fluoridation. But they cannot ignore it any longer: the figures of the dental department research team most associated with the promotion of fluoridation in Australia (and beyond) demonstrate that this delay is real.”
Less teeth erupted for any given age would mean less surfaces available for tooth decay to have taken place. A delayed eruption of one – two years would account for the small reductions claimed in ALL the US and Australian studies published since 1990 (Brunelle and Carlos, 1990; Slade et al., 1996; Spencer et al., 1996; Armfield et al., 2009; Armfield, 2010). These studies have found reductions ranging from 0.12 of one permanent tooth surfaces saved in Western Australia (Spencer et al., 1996) to 0.6 permanent tooth surface saved in the largest survey ever conducted in the US (Brunelle and Carlos, 1990). This is not very much when you consider that there are five surfaces to the chewing teeth and four to the cutting teeth, and by the time all the child’s teeth have erupted there are a total of 128 tooth surfaces. One tooth surface saved amounts to less than 1% of all the surfaces in a child’s mouth. Now even this small benefit has evaporated.
More on the history.
In 1999, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia’s peak Medical Research body, stated that, “ evidence exists that tooth eruption is delayed in fluoridated areas. It has been suggested that a proper comparison of caries rates should involve children one year older in fluoridated areas than in non- fluoridated areas.”
In 2000, the York Review pointed out that none of the studies that they had reviewed had controlled for "the number of erupted teeth per child” (McDonagh et al., 2000, p.24).
In 2005, Komarek et al. did control for eruption of teeth and reported no difference in decay between children living in Belgium receiving fluoride supplements (and those who weren’t) that was relatable to fluoride exposure (as measured by the severity of dental fluorosis).
In 2009, Peiris et al. reported that children in largely fluoridated Australia had a delay in "dental age" of 0.82 years compared to children in largely unfluoridated UK. However, the authors did not discuss the possible reasons for this delay and the number of children involved in the study (about 80 in each country) was not very large.
2011. Now the bombshell – the delay has been found and it is in the official statistics. ARCPOH has failed to respond to several inquiries on this matter. According to Haines, “Surely, this must end water fluoridation. If it doesn't work what's the point of putting this toxic substance into the drinking water and what reason can they possibly have for forcing it on people who don’t want it?”
However, this isn't just about teeth. The finding could be even more significant than that. If fluoride causes a delayed eruption of the teeth then the most likely mechanism for doing so is fluoride's ability to lower thyroid function (see chapter 8 in the 2006 National Research Council review, “Fluoride in Drinking Water.” According to Connett, “Lowered thyroid function in infants would mean slower growth of their tissues and could explain the 24 studies that have found an association between lowered IQ in children and exposure to moderate levels of fluoride in China, India, Iran and Mexico .”
It also raises the possibility that millions of people in fluoridated countries suffering from hypothyroidism have had this condition caused, or exacerbated, by exposure to fluoridated water. Haines’ asks “If ingesting fluoride delays tooth eruption for 1 to 2 years what other effects is it having on our bodies?”
Meanwhile, if swallowing fluoride does not reduce tooth decay, why would any reasonable person, decision maker or regulatory official continue to sanction adding fluoride to the public water supply?
Australian media contacts mobiles - 0418 777 112 and 0403029077
Media Release sent by Queenslanders For Safe Water on behalf of Fluoride Action Network Australia Inc
Visit the Fluoride pages of our website by clicking here
Every patient in our practice is offered a private portrait shoot in our professional photo studio on the third floor of our office building. Who wouldn’t be thrilled with these results? 
When I stripped off 3 of her veneers, you can see the shade difference of the underlying teeth, 
and also the fact that these teeth were not prepared, at all. Without preparations, you cannot develop enough opacity to block out the darkness. Without preparation, you end up with very thick, opaque looking, unnatural-looking teeth.
This picture shows the completed view of the preparations, and how much darker these tetracycline-stained teeth get, 
as you go deeper into them. Note that the shade tab in the picture is designed as a communication tool for the laboratory technician, so that he can mimic those shades at the lab, and be sure the final result comes as close as possible to the desired shade results. Without this step, no matter how white you want the teeth to be, it will be darkened by the shade of the “stump.”
The completed veneers show how well the underlying shade has been masqued. The overall shade is not one color, but varied, like a natural tooth, with a very nice soft feminie shape. The edges are what separate the men from the boys, as my website www.theedgesmiles.com attests to. These edges are very attractive.
U.S. government calls for the phase-out of amalgam!
In an extraordinary development that will change the global debate about amalgam, the United States government has announced that it supports a “phase down, with the goal of eventual phase out by all Parties, of mercury amalgam.” This statement – a radical reversal of its former position that “any change toward the use of dental amalgam is likely to result in positive public health outcomes” – is part of the U.S. government’s submission for the upcoming third round of negotiations for the world mercury treaty.*
While couched in diplomatic hedging – remember it is still early in the negotiations – this new U.S. position makes three significant breakthroughs for the mercury-free dentistry movement:
The U.S. calls for the phase-out of amalgam ultimately and recommends actions to “phase down” its use immediately. Incredibly, the government adopted three actions that the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry and Consumers for Dental Choice proposed at the negotiating session in Chiba, Japan. Our key ally, The Mercury Policy Project, laid the groundwork for this success at a World Health Organization meeting in 2009!
The U.S. speaks up for protecting children and the unborn from amalgam, recommending that the nations “educat[e] patients and parents in order to protect children and fetuses.”
The U.S. stands up for the human right of every patient and parent to make educated decisions about amalgam.
What does this mean? Our position – advocating the phase-out of amalgam – is now the mainstream because the U.S. government supports it. Who is the outlier now? It’s the pro-mercury faction, represented by the World Dental Federation and the American Dental Association. With the U.S. continuing its leadership role in this treaty, we will broadcast the U.S. position to other governments around the world, encouraging them to support amalgam “phase downs” leading to phase-outs not only globally, but within each of their countries.
We applaud the U.S. government. But tough work lies ahead. For example, we must demonstrate to the world that the available alternatives – such as composites and the adhesive materials used in atraumatic restorative treatment (“ART”) – can cost less than amalgam and will increase access to dental care particularly in developing countries.
For now though, let’s mark this watershed in the mercury-free dentistry movement: the debate has shifted from “whether to end amalgam” to “how to end amalgam.”
– Charlie
Charles G. Brown
National Counsel, Consumers for Dental Choice
President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry
5 April 2011
* The full text of the U.S. submission is available at http://www.unep.org/hazardoussubstances/Portals/9/Mercury/Documents/INC3/United%20States.pdf Here is the excerpt on amalgam:
“We are aware that several delegations at INC-2 suggested mercury amalgam should not be included in Annex C, noting a number of difficulties and complexities related to this issue. The United States supports further consideration of dental amalgam by the INC such that the agreement is able to achieve the phase down, with the goal of eventual phase out by all Parties, of mercury amalgam upon the development and availability of affordable, viable alternatives. To the extent that Annex C is not structured to accomplish such a goal, the United States believes that a number of obligations could be considered within an appropriate operative paragraph of the agreement itself. Such a paragraph could commit Parties to phase down the use of mercury amalgam or address mercury releases through conducting and promoting further research on alternatives, mandating the use of separators in dental offices, promoting and incentivizing prevention strategies, educating patients and parents in order to protect children and fetuses, and training of dental professionals on the environmental impacts of mercury in dental amalgams, and to report on their progress in doing so to inform the Conference of the Parties on the progress being made to phase down amalgam use.”
Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company:
1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put ‘ Second form of ID required.’
2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the ‘For’ line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won’t have access to it.
3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do no t have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your Social Security Number printed on your checks. You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have it printed, anyone can get it.
4. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place.
I also carry a photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We’ve all heard horror stories about fraud that have been committed on the unsuspecting where a name, address, Social Security number, credit card number has been stolen. Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have first hand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here’s some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:
5. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.
6. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).
But here’s what is perhaps most important of all:
7. Call the three national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name.
The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.
By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.
Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, if it has been stolen:
1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
3.) Trans Union : 1-800-680 7289
4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line):
1-800-269-0271
We pass along jokes on the Internet; we pass along just about everything.
If you are willing to pass this information along, it could really help someone that you care about.
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration convened a Town Meeting in a Dallas suburb on March 10. Several dentists, a dental hygienist, and a number of victims of mercury toxicity turned out. Although the Town Meeting was open to any subject, amalgam dominated. There was huge press coverage – the major Dallas TV stations and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram – was exclusively about mercury fillings!*
Presiding was the very man in charge of reconsidering FDA’s abysmal amalgam rule: Center for Devices Director Jeff Shuren. Dr. Shuren told the Texas press:
“Now, the [FDA scientific] panel did …point out that there may be certain populations who are more sensitive to dental amalgam, like young children and pregnant women.”
and
“We may decide to change our current regulation and that could include changing the status of dental amalgam, which means it comes off the market or has other controls on it or we may decide to leave things as they are.”
My reply to Mr. Shuren:
Dear Mr. Shuren:
I read the story below with great interest. Beyond the question of WHEN is this going to finally happen, I’d like to understand your take on the fact that there are other succeptible populations. What about those who have a tremendous number of large mercury fillings in their mouths? What about those who are APOE4 dominant and who can’t transport the mercury out of their bodies? What about the fact that women don’t find out they’re pregnant the day of conception, and have a 2-3 month window sometimes to have mercury fillings placed while they don’t know they’re pregnant? Shouldn’t the regulation therefor be women between their first menses and their final one? Does that sound sexually discriminatory to you? Why children under a certain age? In most states, other than Arkansas and West Virginia teeth (filled or not) usually last a lifetime. How do you use age as a determinant for who is most sensitive? Most of the patients whose problems I’ve reversed have been adults.
What sinisiter forces could there possibly be influencing FDA decisions to place the most toxic substance on the planet in the mouths of US citizens?
Read more about my testimony (twice) before the FDA on my website.
Steve Markus
The Centre for Dentistry at Haddon
209 White Horse Pike
Haddon Heights, NJ 08035
www.SmileSouthJersey.com856 SMILE S J