2026-06-28
A visit to the dentist isn't (let's face it) something to fill one with enthusiasm.
It rarely brightens the day, and occasionally comes with admonishments about brushing your teeth better, or bad news about needing unforeseen remedial work that (unless you have already purchased an insurance plan) will entail additional expense.
So if you're lucky you get off with just a bill for the inspection, and if unlucky you get additional expensive appointments to use up your time and pecuniary resources (all of which involve levels of destruction from mild drilling to teeth pulling), with a possible helping of painful humiliation thrown in.
It is taken as axiomatic that they cannot make a poorly tooth healthy again, and some believe that root canal treatments are destructive of your body's electrical circuitry, possibly leading to cancer in organs on the affected meridian.
Nice work if you can get it ...
Your car gets a better deal at its annual service and MOT -- at least it can't feel the pain, the criticism, or the humiliation of having its bits replaced.
I don't entirely blame the dentists because it's how they have been trained to care. I do blame them for not thinking critically about why there isn't a better way. Was dental life really so bad before the dental regulators were invented? Dr Stephen Lin with his book "the Dental Diet" is the exception who did think about it, and I salute him.
But one book is merely a trickle, perhaps foreshadowing a greater flood incoming - read at your own risk ...
