I was reading out of Robert Kiyosaki’s book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” this week and what he wrote brought something to mind applicable to health. When you need advice, it is important that you understand the cause of your problems and then the consequences behind the choices that you make. The decisions that you make will affect you ten years from now. I am amazed at the people that seek my help who have never considered this before. They are victims of the choice that their health care provider makes for them.

There are two types of paths that one can go down when it relates to their dental health. The first is repair only in nature. The other is complete dentistry. So many times I see the dentist shingling the house while the house is on fire, prescribing fine dentistry to people who can’t take care of it, or where the foundation is not solid. Examples of this are where people come in with rampant tooth decay, or wearing away their teeth because their bite is not balanced; grinding their teeth away while they sleep.

The key to long term health is participation. Without you knowing the cause of your problems, you can’t fully take an active part in breaking out of the disease cycle. Traditional dentistry keeps people in the disease cycle because it only deals with the problem not the cause. Remember that there are three reasons why people lose their teeth. They are decay, gum disease, and bad bite. Traditional dentistry (repair centered) usually deals with toothy decay, may also deal with gum disease, but most times does not deal with bad bite. Bad bite causes needless destruction of the dentition by wear, chipping, breaking, jaw joint problems and headaches mild to severe. Can you see why repair centered strategies can leave a person in a state of disrepair by the time they are in their 50s and 60s, going to the dentist every six months for most of their lives?

I will end with a story: A man went to his physician and was certified as ok and then in route from the office or the next day he was stricken with a heart attack. Now the man was certified as ok with a stethoscope or EKG, but something was going on inside that person for a long time because heart disease doesn’t appear over night. He may have had some inkling of a symptom now and then, but the lesson here is that symptoms appear a long time before the clinical disease is manifested. The reason people spin around in the disease cycle is because no one is looking at the clinical disease that many times is below the radar screen. So if you are having multiple problems year after year it doesn’t have to be that way. Pick your advisors wisely and find someone who is looking at causes of problems instead of just treating effects and you can then take control of your health instead of just leaving it up to fate or luck. For more information on the philosophy of complete health centered strategies and to learn how to take control of your health please call me at 572-8000 or visit my Web site at www.drtjbolt.com

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