Episode 133: Solving the Practitioner Health Problem

“We dedicate so much of our mind and body to our practices and patients, but a lot of times it comes as a direct detriment to our own overall mental and physical well-being.” ~Dr. Sam Shamardi

In this episode of Investment Grade Practices, host Dr. Victoria Peterson is joined by Dr. Sam Shamardi, a renowned periodontist and leader in dental education. Together, they tackle a subject that often goes overlooked when building successful dental practices: practitioner wellness. Dr. Shamardi shares his expertise on mental health, burnout, and a critical issue facing dental professionals: noise-induced hearing loss.

As they explore the systemic effects of prolonged exposure to noise in the dental environment, including its links to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and even Alzheimer’s, listeners will discover the profound impact these issues have on both the professional and personal lives of dentists. Dr. Shamardi’s insights offer a fresh perspective on the unseen toll dentistry can take and how understanding these factors can lead to a healthier, more sustainable career.

As you listen to this episode, we want you to think about the following questions:

• How does the high-stress environment of dentistry affect the mental and physical well-being of practitioners, and how can it be mitigated?
• Am I aware of the risks associated with noise-induced hearing loss in the dental practice, and what steps can I take to prevent it?
• Could my own health issues be related to the stresses of my job? What changes can I make to improve my well-being?

You can visit Dr. Shamardi’s Website by clicking here!

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Announcer: The Productive Dentist Academy Podcast Network.

[00:00:03] Dr. Sam Shamardi: It’s something that unfortunately there’s always been a little bit of a stereotype with dentists and mental health issues and topics like suicide and when you look at the stats that are out there, as I explained to people, this is not a myth, this is actually a reality.

[00:00:20] Announcer: Welcome to Investment Grade Practices Podcast where we believe private practice dentists deserve to get the lifestyle today while building an asset for tomorrow. Join your host Victoria Peterson to design the practice of your dreams and secure your financial independence. Let’s get started.

[00:00:40] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Welcome everyone to a very, very special edition of Investment Grade Practice. I am here with Dr. Sam Samardi nd you know, there are times when you meet people and you instantly click there. There is a knowingness that needs no explanation nd Sam, that’s what it’s been like getting to know you. Welcome to Investment Great Practices.

[00:01:02] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Thank you. so much. A pleasure to be here with you.

[00:01:05] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Now, for everyone, uh, here, Dr. Sommarti is a highly respected periodontist, and he is a leader in dental education. You are so brilliant. You went to Tufts University, you, um, University of Pennsylvania, Dental Medicine, you teach it all. Harvard, your credentials are off the hook and for those of you who don’t know, I actually started my career in general dentistry in a, in a high-perio ratio practice, ultimately worked for periodontists. I have such respect for this as a profession within dentistry, but you go beyond that. Like you’re very oral systemically involved, you’re very whole body comprehensive care and you’ve taken that over the last few years into really touching on topics of mental health, burnout, and correlating that to things like hear loss prevention and other things. So one of the key concepts of building an Investment Grade Practice that we don’t talk about nearly enough on this podcast is practitioner wellness and investing in yourself. So, Sam, I know you could give us a whole lot of education about staging and grading perio. Would you mind if we went into that topic about enhancing overall wellness in the profession?

[00:02:23] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Sure. Yeah. I mean, whatever we can, we can go into for quite a bit on that by itself, but I think you, you hit the point where, you know, the emphasis is definitely on our, on our patients as, as dental professionals and, uh, we, we really dedicate so much of our mind and our body, uh, physically and mentally to, you know, our practices and our patients but a lot of times that’s coming as a direct, you know, detriment to ourselves and our own personal wellbeing, our own overall mental and physical wellbeing and it’s something that we unfortunately. don’t emphasize enough for various different reasons. It’s something that unfortunately, there’s always been a little bit of a stereotype with dentists and mental health issues and topics like suicide. And when you look at the stats that are out there, as I explained to people, this is not a myth. This is actually a reality. Uh, we, we are definitely by a very significant margin, uh, unfortunately leading in. All of those causes like suicide, like anxiety disorder and you know, a lot of this is because of the environment that we’re in. We’re in a very high-stress environment. We’re in a very high noise environment, which I will probably touch on and ultimately there’s a lot of outside influences between financial pressures because of the realities of costs today, not just cost of living, but you know, the outrageous amounts of tuition and loans that are involved and we’re in a field that ultimately people don’t come looking forward to see us. You know, this is not going to school on the school bus, ready to see your friends. This is something that people associate with fear, with discomfort, which is probably a polite way of saying it and, you know, ultimately these things wear on us because we have to absorb that negative energy while maintaining a positive attitude and really trying to not only reassure our patients, but give them confidence in us and make them understand and believe that things are going to be okay and that’s before we even actually do the treatment itself, just so many layers that add up with one another, that really at the end, you know, we’re the ones that have to absorb that. And you absorb enough of that, and you do it for a long enough period of time, and it starts to make a whole lot more sense why these things start wearing on us and causing all of that type of mental stress and breakdown.

[00:04:45] Dr. Victoria Peterson: I love that. Um, and I speak a lot at conventions on spirituality, mental health, decompression, meditation, all of that. When I first started, you know, seven, eight, nine years ago, it was far out there. Now every conference is opening with yoga. So we’re mainstreaming some of these things and I really want to jump into the heart of something specific that you do, that you said, we’ll probably get to that and that is hearing loss prevention and so talk to us about the connection between these high-pitched environment that we’re in, in our noise pollution, hearing loss, mental health, overall wellbeing, you helped me connect the dots on that so well.

[00:05:26] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Sure. Yeah and again, it’s, it’s something that, uh, people don’t really put two and two together with. We associate aging, for example, with our, you know, hair turning gray and we just believe that, you know, our ears start to, I know our hearing starts to break down with time simply because of age, but that’s, that’s a very misunderstood phenomenon. Hearing loss is something that’s completely preventative. It can be, you know, stopped and you know, in the dental field, every single type of equipment we use in our operatory, uh, directly is above the healthy limit and, and contributes towards hearing loss and the thing that people don’t realize is that as dental professionals, the definition of noise-induced hearing loss, which we suffer from is being exposed to loud levels of noise for a prolonged period of time and a dental professional’s average career is 35 years and again, our environment is nothing but noise rich and noise-exposed. We’re right at the bullseye of dealing with that problem. So when we look at the statistics that are there and the equipment and the amount of time that we’re exposed to it, my comment, uh, clinicians and dental professionals, as always, it’s not a question of if you’re going to end up dealing with this problem, it’s an issue of, you know, how and to what degree your hearing is going to be affected and, uh, it’s, it’s a real. serious problem that, you know, ultimately the irony is it’s one of our five senses. You know, if you think about what we have in the dental operatory and what’s mandated to us with gloves and masks, you can make an argument of trying to, you know, protect our sense of smell and sound and sight by wearing eye protection but when you think about it, what’s there to protect our sense of sound? And the fact is there’s nothing and this is something that’s very unfortunate and as a result, dental professionals have all sorts of issues. And this is not only a career-ender, but at the end of the day, this is a quality of life problem for, you know, your later years and the final layer to add insult to injury is that people don’t realize that. the massive systemic health issues that this is directly associated with.

[00:07:32] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Name some of those for us. What are some of the direct correlations between hearing loss and systemic health?

[00:07:37] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Yeah. So there’s, there’s all sorts, unfortunately, things like cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular death is directly related to hearing loss issues. When you’re in an environment that is causing a lot of loud noise. That chronic effect not only is decreasing your productivity, but it’s also dealing with your endocrine system because your body when it reacts to loud levels of noise has a variation of fight or flight response and different types of, you know, cortisol and hormones that are released and you start having a chronic amount of that happening, which again is what happens in our career due to the duration. Well, over time, now you start having things like hypertension, which in the chronic form lead to, again, the cardiovascular issues. You have things like, uh, diabetes. You know, for, for women that are childbearing, it actually is directly linked to preterm low birth weight, uh, babies. Uh, so really when you look at the systemic side, there’s nothing it’s not directly related to and of course, now finally people are putting two and two together that from a systemic side, when you lose your sense of sound, you’re now cut off from the world. So there’s a tremendous, uh, increased risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia. So again, not only is it affecting us. from our career standpoint on the clinical side, but one of our five senses, and then we throw in all of these systemic health risks is related to, and it’s, uh, it’s a very scary reality that, uh, we’re, we’re definitely overlooking.

[00:09:06] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Oh man, I’m going to put this in layman’s terms because I’m looking back on my own career and, you know, you just go, “It’s the holidays, I’m putting on a few extra pounds or whatever,” but understanding like this high pitch there, it’s a dissonant sound, right? And so our nervous system is channeled for calm or safety or, or defense, right? And so if every time I turn that on, I’m getting a hit of cortisol, my insulin resistance comes up, my hormones are off, my adrenal glands are off, my thyroid, my pituitary, all of that. Like as a postmenopausal woman, I’ve had to study hormones a lot, right? So to think that over my career, particularly as a young mom, I had two preterm babies and it was because of preterm labor. So part of this just could have been, I was 10 years into dentistry before I became pregnant, right? My central nervous system has always been like a hairpin trigger and lots of rapid seizures. I’ve now been not clinical for about 20 years has taken this long to, to calm down my central nervous system. So yes, huge aha that you just gave me and then if you’re noticing weight gain around the middle, that’s your cortisol levels, right? And then your, and then your adrenals are sapped. So you’re drinking more coffee. So you’re in this cycle and it may have done nothing to do with how often you’re on the treadmill or how many salads you eat, the triggering force of noise pollution in our environment could trigger a lot of those symptoms.

[00:10:43] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Absolutely, and again, that’s just noise and nothing else and you know, you hit it with the cortisol. When you look at cortisol levels of dental professionals compared to, you know, a normal, uh, healthy individual, the way our cortisol curves go are actually the exact opposite of what a healthy person’s cortisol curve is supposed to be. So ironically, speaking as a dentist, this is you’re looking in a mirror image. We’re supposed to be spiking, uh, you know, and then through the day having that level deuce but we’re exactly the opposite as dental professionals because of this constant level of, you know, stress and pitch and again, noise is one of those contributory factors.

[00:11:24] Dr. Victoria Peterson: So if you’re waking up tired in the morning when you should have a cortisol spike, like sun’s rising and you’re coming up, but you don’t get that. So you’re artificially having to enhance that, but then the patients come or your teams come and then it kicks in. Emotionally, how do people express themselves when they’re jacked up on cortisol?

[00:11:42] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Yeah, it changes your, your natural response and, and like you said, you know, we have to make up for that in the morning somehow. So now we’re, like you said, if it’s, you know, coffee and whatever other methods we have, we’re, we’re trying to compensate, which has its own effects through the course of the day. So it’s one thing to have a natural energy level versus having to go to different means to try and, you know, make up for it and, and again, the problem with all of this is, uh, the additive It’s not a big deal if you have to do something for a short period of time, but when it’s consistent and when it’s prolonged, that’s where you start to see the problem. And unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of working one day a week in that environment and then having six days off to be nice and relaxed and compensate for that. We’re, we’re actually, a lot of our colleagues are the opposite ratio. They’re working six days at that pace and that one day that they have quote unquote off is never going to be enough to help them, uh, recover.

[00:12:43] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Does this impact concentration or ADHD or things like that?

[00:12:47] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Yeah. Again, all, all of these things are, you know, the more they look into it, the more they realize that they’re directly related. It’s similar to what we’re finally starting to hear more of about the perio systemic connection where for years people laughed it off and thought, you know, this is a joke. It makes no sense and now suddenly they’re realizing, holy cow, there’s actually not just indirect, but there’s direct links to, again, Alzheimer’s, cancer, you know, diabetes, these are all things that you have a significantly increased risk of simply because of your periodontal health and, you know, the condition that you have and, and again, that’s in relation to things like stress as well. So the more people start to appreciate the fact that everything is connected and that these things aren’t separate things and coincidences, the, the better they’re going to start, you know, paying more attention and realizing this.

[00:13:40] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Yeah, um, I know I’m going to have you back on the show time and time again, because as a board-certified period on is we dive so deep into oral systemic and prevention and on all of those things and you and I were talking earlier. It’s a lot. So, um, sexier to talk about all on fours and, and how to repair a train wreck of a dentition but for me, it’s really sexy to talk about how to prevent it and um, I appreciate that your comprehensive nature about life has compelled you not only for your own health, but for the health of others to investigate hearing and I remember when your hearing aids were out first came out like a decade ago, and I was like, that is the coolest thing. Why is this not being adopted and so happy that you popped up on my radar again, and we’re having this time together because as you explained it, it was like, this hits. on so many triggers, this simple solution could downregulate my nervous system, get me off the edge with anxiety and panic attacks. Hey, do they work if you put them in and your staff has a lot of drama? Will it filter that out too?

[00:14:49] Dr. Sam Shamardi: You know what, I have a lot of people that buy it because they want to use it at home for their special needs.

[00:14:55] Dr. Victoria Peterson: So tell us about the technology in the, in the here. I don’t want, they’re not hearing aids. What is the ear protection that you’ve created?

[00:15:01] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Yeah, yeah. So it’s a technology known as active hearing protection. So there’s actually an electronic circuit. There’s, you know, a tiny microphone amplifier. So the real incredible nature of the technology is that you can be wearing an earplug that completely seals your ear off but rather than cutting yourself off from your environment and not be able to hear, you’re actually able to hear all normal sounds in a hundred percent HD, yet simultaneously, any of the noises that are in that frequency or decibel area that are causing damage, those are able to be identified instantaneously, isolated and lowered. So it’s like if your TV is on too loud, you’re just taking the volume button and you’re just turning it down so that you can still hear it, but it’s not going to actually cause that damage to your ear and it’s not going to cause that sympathetic reaction of you jumping and being startled and again, you start adding up through the course of your day. Whether you’re using ultrasonic instruments, you’re cutting through crowns, you know, your high-speed handpiece, your high-speed suction catching on the cheek, whatever you can imagine in the dental operatory or in your lab, um, everything is, is adding up and, you know, we normalize things and think, you know, our ears adjust and get used to it, but the reality is they’re just getting damaged and what’s, uh, what’s breaking down is our system internally.

[00:16:24] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Oh boy. Oh boy. Well, as someone who has lived through having a functional neurological disease that people have failed to be able to accurately assess over the years, you’re reminding me it’s time to get my ears checked. It’s been a while and uh, my iPhone has been telling me this for a while. It’s like, “You’ve been at maximum volume with your headphones for far too long, take a break.” This has been fascinating. I know the oral system. Connections, but this oral-auditory connection. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Thank you again. You’re, you’re so comprehensive in your work, not only as a clinical educator, but on the financial health and wellbeing, uh, survival guides for dentists, your book on that, your innovation and creating these products that help us live a healthier life during our careers. We can’t thank you enough for being innovative in the industry and I hope all of you are willing to invest just a little bit in yourself to protect your nervous system, starting with your ears. Dr. Sam, how can people find out more about what you’re doing?

[00:17:30] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Uh, best way nowadays is It seems to be social media. So, uh, at, at Instagram, they can, uh, follow, uh, uh, at Dr. Sam Shimardi, my website was, is the same drsamshimardi.com and I think through those probably the best way out there, people are communicating nowadays.

[00:17:48] Dr. Victoria Peterson: And what is the name of your hearing product?

[00:17:50] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Well, there’s been a couple through the years. The original one was called the DI 15. The last one was known as Ear Aid and again, currently in the process of creating a new and improved version that is ready to go, but requires a few more steps from the manufacturing side and hoping to announce that sooner than later and get that out to everybody as a new and advanced option.

[00:18:14] Dr. Victoria Peterson: I love it. I love it. Well, when that happens, let me know. We’ll bring you back and have much fanfare about it’s coming out.

[00:18:21] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Appreciate it.

[00:18:22] Dr. Victoria Peterson: Thank you so much for your time today. This has been very informative.

[00:18:25] Dr. Sam Shamardi: Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. I look forward to coming back.

[00:18:28] Announcer: Thank you for tuning into this episode of Investment Grade Practices Podcast. If you find value in this episode, help us spread the word by passing it along to a dental friend, subscribe, and give us a like on iTunes or Spotify. Learn more about building your investmentgradepractice@productivedentist.com today, the Productive Dentist Academy podcast network.