Sound Dental Care, Part 1

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Welcome to the Answers for Elders Radio show. Meet the trusted experts who will give you straight answers and it will help guide you on the path of later life care. Now here’s your host, founder, caregiver and CEO, Susanne Newman. – And welcome everyone to Answers for Elders Radio Network. And we are very excited today to have a lovely lady by the name of Sarah Luetke. And Sarah, you are the founder and amazing creator of Sound Dental Care, and we are so excited here because would you believe in the hundreds of podcasts that we have out there, I don’t think we have ever done I could be wrong because my memories not a hundred percent, but I don’t think we’ve ever done anything on geriatric dental health and on senior dental health. And it’s always been a concern of mine, Um, how many of us that are over the age of sixty five that are on fixed incomes. We may have a situation in our lives that we’ve been putting something off because it’s just the cost is overwhelming. Um. And it also seems like to me anyway, that the dental world never changes it’s always the same. And Sarah today, I am so excited to have you on because, um, you’re about in this hour for those of us that are listening, UM, you’re going to share with this all kinds of new things that you may never not know about, including not having to drill, which is really exciting. And the other thing that I’m really excited to learn, Sarah, is all about sound dental solutions, what you do and how you work. So Sarah, thank you, and welcome to the program. Thank you so very much, Susan for having me. Well, I’m very glad because, um, you are kind of a trailblazer and I love the fact that you’ve come forward and to talk a little bit about what you do. But before we get into that, I would love to have you kind of give us the three hundred and sixty degree, you know, fifty thousand foot high overview of seniors and their dental practices, what goes on out there, great questions. So I have worked in dentistry for over twenty years now and I worked in Bainbridge, very affluent community as a dental hygenist for a group practice of dentists that we had five high genists two dentists and just amazing practice, and patients came in that had ability to pay for dental care that could keep up on their dental health. It was an affluent community. And I’ve also had the opportunity to work in farm communities in Montana and Wisconsin and Minnesota throughout my career, where maybe people don’t have the finances to do everything to restore their teeth in their mouth. And so um, what I’ve seen in all these different areas that I’ve worked throughout my career, and especially since I got the opportunity to be in the same dental practice for fifteen years on Bainbridge, I saw we offered our patients amazing dental care services. And in America, we are aging people with teeth. Prior generations, we did not have the ability to do all of the anesthetics and the fillings and implants and all of this dentistry that kept people having teeth their whole lifetime. So as people aged in previous generations, they would lose teeth, pull teeth, maybe have dentures. Um dentures everyone says aren’t great, which they aren’t. However, a denture can come in and out your teeth if you’re having tooth pain and you can’t afford traditional dynastry, or you can’t get into the dental office even if you have the money. Um, it’s a big problem when two concerns aren’t addressed. And so the practice I was in on Bainbridge patients I personally cared for for that many years in a preventative hygiene way, along with the dentist doing the restorative work that needed. All of a sudden, I wouldn’t see the husband or wife of a couple, and then it would be for a few years, and then the spouse would come in and say, I feel so terrible. My spouse hasn’t been in because they’re in a nursing home now. And my first case that I will not forget ever was a patient that came in and it’s before I started sound I don’t care on my own, and the husband came in and said to me and the dentist, my wife sat a nursing home down the road and she probably has about ten or fifteen teeth that have broken off in the last two years because I haven’t gotten her in here. And they had money, They had money, and they always came in and so the dentist and I looked at each other and he said, Sarah, you’re kind of starting up sound dental care. You need to go and take care of her. And unless your heart, I took care of her until the end of the life and it was five years. So it’s pretty amazing. Yeah. Well, you know, and I know for so many people in my realm, it’s like it’s expensive. It’s outrageously expensive to go forward. Especially as you get older, is when your teeth start to deteriorate, right and um, and you know how many of us have, you know, have habits that we may not necessarily flosh regularly. That there’s all kinds of dental um. You know, good practices, best practice this in maintaining your teeth and um. You know, for me, I’ve always been an avid flosser, and you know, I look at my my mouth and I go, you know, I’m really lucky compared to my friends because I have taken care of my teeth. Now, I’ve also done some things like I’ve whitened, had him whitened a couple of times, and things like that. So it’s not like I’m not doing some things. But there’s still that the normal process of aging that happens. And I think a lot of us are fearful to go to the dentist, you know that are over the age of sixty five, because they’re afraid of what their dentist is going to find. And so we tend to put it off, or we tend to think, oh, even if they diagnose something, I wouldn’t be able to pay for it anyway. And I’m sure I would guess, Um, Sarah, are there a lot of people out there that just they get a diagnosis from a dentist and then you never see him again. You give them this big, you know, whopping ten tho dollar bill it’s going to take to fig t your mouth, and then they turn around and they can’t afford until they leave. I would say yes, And Um, hi genis and dentists work together traditionally, however, hygenist, our perspective is always prevention. We’re all about preventing disease and um restoring the mouth to health. Dennis also are about that in a different way. We are the gung people and the all hygiene and talking about habits at home, where the dentists tend to be the part of the practice that restores things when there’s problems, and UM supports the rest of the team. So as a high genis, my goal has always been and I would say this is true for almost all high jennis is. We’re about advocating for health and we don’t want problems to happen. And so I’ve always chosen to educate my patients and not shame my patients. If someone’s not flossing, I’m going to let them know the harm and not doing these things, and I’m not going to shape them. I’m going to try to find ways to encourage them. And as you said, um, as we age, we are more likely to get decay and peridaldies, and there’s um. As we age, we’re on more medications due to co morbidities and different diagnoses, and so medications lead to dry mouth. Dry mouth leads to decay. So as a hygenist, when the patient comes into have their teeth clean, I’m going to try to give them every tool they can to help with their dry mouth. So they’re home and sucking on sugar candies and coming in with the mouth full. And that’s another thing that seems to tend to do is eat more sweets. So obviously that goes. So so as you know, I’m thinking this through and when you’re talking about dry mouth and you know, so obviously hydration is huge. There’s all kinds of things that seniors may not necessarily do as much as they should. Um, the foods they’re eating, they’re probably not eating things that are that are crunchy or you know, or things that can help breakdown things, rather than they’re eating soft foods like soft ice cream and things like that, which obviously can’t be as good. I would imagine two. Because you’re not using your gums. And I’ve noticed too with a lot of people that there’s gun disease that happens if you’re not losting or not brushing appropriately. Is there not? This is true and um, as we age, the health conditions come. So you have strokes, you have different things that sem us in our oral hygienes. So even if you were someone that’s lost at one point in your life, but now you have paralysis on one side or good point, maybe there’s some depression that has come up as you’ve aged and you’ve just lost your bill to do yourself care as you once did. There’s many many co factors that go into why oral health is failing as we age. However, keeping people in a routine habit of seeing their hygienist, having a dental care visit, regardless of their age and where they are in life, whether their home or at a nursing home, it is so important. Um. I actually finished my schooling last year to become a licensed denturist as well, which is making prosthetic teeth for patients that have no teeth. And I had to do a research paper and one thing I found which I was just flabbergasted that for Alzheimer’s patients, who I’m very compassionate about, Neil here later from me on my Alzheimer’s um, they’re like amongst my favorites too. So yes. But the action of chewing and masticating food actually helps the brain and function. I believe that. Yeah, when one loses that ability to chew, whether you go on a period diet because of a stroke or something of that matter, or because you’re missing a lot of teeth because you can’t afford for them to be restored, UM, that that affects our brain house right. You know, Sarah, this is really good information. And you know, as we’ve talked about this, whole issue. It’s like, I’m really interested in our next segment for us to talk about the dental industry as a whole um, what’s going on right now, how our seniors quote unquote being served, and you know, how can we make it better? And how do you make it better? Because I think there’s a lot of things that you’ve shared with me before we came on the air that I’m very, very excited to share with our listeners. So everyone guess what. Sarah and I will be right back right after this. – We at Answers for Elders thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guides that will help you also navigate decision making. Find us at  AnswersforElders.com.