Hello, I'm Dr. Margaret Ames and you're listening to Your Dental Health. The mission of the show is to get the word out about biomimetic dentistry, a major paradigm shift in dental care, and for you to experience more comfortable, less invasive, and beautiful dentistry. I can be reached in my Huntington office at 631-261-4525, that's 631-261-4525, or on my website at draames.com, that's D-R-A-M-E-S at D-R-A-M-E-S.com.
I'm a practicing dentist in the town of Huntington for over 20 years. And five years ago, I met an amazing person who had done years of research on a better way to do dentistry. So I asked him to join us today on the show.
His name is Dr. David Alleman, and he has put together a program for general dentists, for all dentists, prosthodontists, to learn to not have to do crowns and to really significantly lower by as much as 80% to 90% the number of root canals that are done. So I'm going to bring Dave on now. Hello, Dr. Alleman.
Welcome to the show. Thanks. Glad to be here. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to join us. Glad to.
Great. So I met Dr. Alleman about five years ago, and I attended a local lecture on biomimetic dentistry. It made so much sense to me that I had to find out more.
And that started my path. Although I've been a dentist for many more years than that, the last five years has been really exciting. We're doing 21st century dentistry. So, Dave, can you tell our listening audience how this dental technique started?
Yes, I was a practicing dentist for 17 years using traditional techniques with fillings and with crowns and with root canals. And it was frustrating to me because I saw a cycle of failure that would recur every 5 to 10 years. And so small fillings would get large, large fillings would turn into crowns, crowns would need endodontic treatment because the nerves would die.
And all of these retreatments were frustrating to patients for sure, but they were... Very frustrating to me as a dentist also because I was led to believe that my treatments would be more long-lasting. But as I started to look into adhesive dentistry, which was coming in the mid-90s through Dr. Ray Bertolotti, who was my mentor then, I was able to access literature on a new type of dentistry that arose out of...
Japan, and it was called adhesive dentistry. And this adhesive dentistry had the promise of being able to seal out leakage and bacterial infection, which was the reason why fillings and crowns were failing in these five to ten year cycles. And so this literature review that I did for about five years led me to adopt a series of protocols, a series of techniques.
that began to eliminate these failures. And after five years of success, then I started to teach them about 11 years ago to other dentists. And now we've taught about 300 dentists.
And Dr. Ames is one of the best of these 300 dentists around the country. Well, thanks, Dave. You did use the word endodontics just to define that for our listeners. That's root canal.
Yeah, endodontic treatment is root canal treatment. And so most patients understand that root canals aren't real pleasant things. It's when a nerve dies in the tooth and that death of the pulp, or the nerve as it's popularly called, is because of bacterial infection.
And so sealing out the bacteria is the key principle of biomimetic dentistry, or natural mimicking dentistry. So some people called in, or actually they emailed me into my website and asked me some questions. And one of them is like, I have these white fillings.
Is that biomimetic dentistry? White fillings seem to have an average longevity in our country pretty low. Can you comment on this?
Yes, yes. White fillings are not biomimetic dentistry unless they're done with biomimetic techniques. We call these protocols or they're steps.
And so, you know, you, Peggy, when you learn biomimetic dentistry, learn 12 to 15 steps that were taken in the evaluation and treatment of every tooth, whether it's a small or a large defect in the tooth. And those 12 to 15 steps have to be followed to keep the seal of the adhesive dentistry or the bond. And so that's our mantra in biomimetic dentistry is. get bonded and stay bonded.
And so white fillings done with non-biomimetic protocols have an average life of about five years, sometimes even shorter. That's pretty scary. Yeah, it's kind of, we call them white amalgams.
So they might look a little bit better, but they don't last any longer than traditional dentistry. Yeah. Yeah.
The shrinkage that occurs, I mean, that's big. I'd heard about that long before I met you. And- That seems to be one of the major reasons for their failure because polymers shrink as they're setting. Right.
That's right. And so that shrinkage is the main problem. And the shrinkage of the composites allow a gap to form that allow bacteria to get between the tooth and the filling. And so this gap, to stop this gap from forming, that's the protocols that I developed and my partner Simone Della Perry in Italy developed.
And then there's other dentists in Switzerland, Pascal Manier and Didier Dietschy are two of the main leaders who also develop similar techniques and use those techniques. And they're taught at two major dental schools in the world, University of Geneva and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. But unfortunately, the other 65 dental schools in the United States haven't embraced those yet.
So it's going to take a little bit of time. That's really interesting because I like to talk to my patients and explain things to them. And one patient was in last week, and he was fantastic.
He said to me, you know, that's like Dr. Semmelweis. He is the guardian or the savior of mothers. He advocated doctors washing their hands before they delivered babies, and he was laughed. It was laughed out of, you know. Doctors were very insulted that he implied that they were dirty, but the doctors refused to look at the fact that babies were surviving more when the midwives delivered them, because the midwives washed their hands.
So I think we're in that same kind of situation where you have developed this great technique using the research of a lot of people, and it's not getting out there fast enough for us, is it? No, no. And, you know, obviously...
Teeth aren't, you know, life and death of a child or a mother like Semmelweis was trying to achieve, but it's very similar. The psychology of most dentists is not a progressive psychology, and we're not trying to criticize anybody's technique. Every dentist is trying to do the best that he knows, but if he doesn't know the truth of the science behind the adhesive products that he's using, then he can't use them optimally. And, you know, there's enough. progressive dentists like yourself who have taken the time and invested money and effort to learn these techniques and have had the success that it encourages me that more and more dentists every year, and we know that, will embrace these techniques.
It's just a matter of time. This is the dentistry of the future. Yeah.
Well, for all those West Wing fans out there, there's a great quote, and I hope to put it on my website. It's never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Do you know why? It's the only thing that ever has. And we are that small and thoughtful and committed dentists trying to change the world.
And it's pretty exciting. If you've just tuned in, you're listening to Your Dental Health. I'm Dr. Margaret Ames, and I can be reached in my Huntington office at 631-261-4525. That's 631-261-4525. We're talking today with Dr. David Alleman.
He's agreed to join us to explain the protocol and the benefits of biomimetic dentistry. Now, when I've spoken to some patients about the technique that I'm performing on them, they ask if their analogy is right. And one of them said, you know, it sounds like a radial tire.
If you cut away a cross-section of a tire, you can see fibers placed in an organized fashion within the tire. below the tread. And this helps reduce the stresses in the life of the tire.
Now, would you compare that to the fibers that we place in dental restorations? Yes, yes. The fiber technology, the carbon fiber technology that we use, distributes and allows the stresses that are applied to a restoration to dissipate during the polymerization of the materials initially and then during the function of the tooth later on.
And so this fiber impregnation in the composite... It creates what's called in engineering an inner phase. Okay. And an inner phase is where two different materials... Yes, go ahead.
I'm sorry. I have to take a station break. If you just tuned in, you're listening to URI Dental Health with Dr. Margaret Ames. I can be reached in my office at 631-261-4525. Please join us after the break.
We will continue chatting with Dr. David Alleman. Thank you. Yeah, oh, how much longer? I thought I was in love a couple of times before With the girl next door