Trance –dental: The art of mindfulness

Dentistry is a sublimely meditative experience. A few years of practice and 80 percent of all procedures can be performed in auto mode.  A large part of the clinical work constitute constant repetitive tasks that leave the mind free to wander down interesting paths some trodden and some not so trodden. The deer like mind could chose to constantly flit from thought to thought. Frivolous inane musings such as: Time money, children. Staff, travel or random stray images could flood the mind space. The silent moment to be experienced could be frittered away in a futile thought. Mindfulness an essential tenet of the Buddhas’ eight fold path is the most infrequently used pathway of the mind. The art of watching the mind as it jumps from thought to thought. The experience of reining in the mind into the moment and exalting in the job at hand.

  Mindfulness would reveal a better way of doing things. Mindfulness would unveil an extra curve in the root canal. Mindfulness would create a sense of wonder at the sophistication of Prakritis (natures) wonderful creation that is the oral ecosystem.

As Buddha lay dying, his final teaching to Ananda his favoured disciple was, “Be lamps unto yourselves.” His teachings were profoundly self empowering.   The lessons learned from self experience were a by product of the practice of mindfulness.  Self experience is the dentists essential pathway to self improvement and excellence. The essential Dental Nirvana! 

Dental Implants : accidental boon.

Dentistry accidentally gave birth to Dental implants in 1952. Fathered by Sweden’s Professor Per-Ingvar Branemark, implants are one of the most significant discoveries of modern dentistry. He discovered, through a microscope that a titanium plate can attach itself to the underlying bone tissue, a phenomenon that was contrary to existing scientific evidence at that time. Just like the geneticist Mendel and evolutionary biologist Darwin, he persevered with this observation and demonstrated that it was possible to integrate titanium into bone tissue to recreate lost teeth. Dental implants are all about not only replacing lost teeth, but also about recreating lost confidence and esthetics.

At Pradhan Dental Centre our dental implants skills have been mastered over the last 25 years.  Dr Suchetan Pradhan has been at the forefront of revolutionizing the way this highly skilled treatment modality is offered.  Sensitivity to the patient’s needs and aspirations along with decades of experience with Dental implants is our speciality.

Careful, Acid erosion is stealing your precious Calcium.

If you like soaking in a sea of soda pops and lemonades think again! Exert caution because your precious calcium is fast disappearing. The estimated pH for any soft drink ranges from between 1.5 to 3.0, which is so not healthy for the toughened calcium that comprises the outer layer of your teeth. It’s not the sugar that will singe  the  enamel but the acid that will soften this protective coating . 

The advice that Pradhan Dental Centre has to offer you is to obviously minimize your soda intake; but if you insist on celebrating your fries with a dose of coke, we suggest you squish your mouth with some water after your meal to neutralize all the nasty acid.

A Recent Research: A Non-invasive technique to lift the drill

The advent of last fall brought new hopes to all those who dreaded the cavities. The hot buzz of the last fall was all about filling without drilling. This reaction is carried out by P11-4, an amino acid that is capable of reassembling itself into fibers under specific conditions. Sounds like alchemy right? Well, it’s not. What P11-4 does is, it transports itself into acid bombed areas of the tooth ie. the cavities and then forms a gel. This gel is then responsible for attracting more Calcium towards it and that’s how you do the filling without the drilling. We at Pradhan Dental Centre are very excited about it and look forward to knowing more about this technology. We wonder what you think about it, Do you feel that Professor Kirkham from the University of Leeds will bring a revolutionary breakthrough to the field of dentistry with this technique.

Winter Birds

Winter Birds

A minor dip in Mumbai’s mercury heralds the onset of the short, wedding and winter season. Just as exotic Siberian cranes, Flamingos and other birds are spotted in Vashi, Uran and Sewri  NRIs and foreign tourists flock The Taj, The Trident, The J.W Marriot, other happenings hotels and nightspots. Mumbaikars get sucked into a tizzy of weddings, parties and shopping to keep their guests excited, entertained and busy.

Stores, beauty parlours and all in the Esthetic business are kept constantly busy and have to tend to high value clients during this eventful season.

At Pradhan Dental Centre we have been swamped by theses winter birds with foreign twangs.  Between dental implants and smile designs, tooth whitening and tooth cleanings, the wedding tourists have made us toil away this holiday season.

 Pradhan Dental Centre has been around for 23 years and has observed an escalation in the numbers every year barring the unusual such as 2008. The numbers have increased as has the breadth of the market. Patients appear at our doorstep from all over the world from Hong Kong to Houston. Short on time but with a long list of Esthetic requests, need based dentistry rules the roost over functional dentistry. Beauty dentistry is the buzz this winter!

Just as sudden is their arrival, come 15^th Jan and a mass exodus of this amorphous group takes place. Satisfied and fortified by their India fix, the now beautifully smiling migrant birds take flight to their respective nests having satiated their needs desires and palates.

struggling dentist

Whoever said dentistry was easy! Year after year kids pay tens of lakhs of rupees in capitation for BDS and MDS degrees in dentistry but none of the schools prepare you for the struggle that follows, after the paper is pasted on the wall. A common misconception is that the struggle is overcome by a combination of hard work, superior clinical skills and of course, time. How amateur, misinformed and misguided can one be: the struggle never ends it just mutates to take on another more difficult and lonely but nevertheless stimulating form. To the dentist with a freshly minted degree and practice, the guy at the top is the icon, the guru the object of desire, but little does he know how hard it is being there. As a sultry dental Diva said “It’s lonely at the top”.

 The Divas and Icons of dentistry embark on a deeper and more difficult struggle to reinvent and reincarnate themselves into new avatars. This struggle, this internal Dental Jihad involves intellectual, ethical, technological and spiritual challenges. It sure is a lonely journey, a journey of brutal self discovery and path breaking or changing decisions.

A dentist struggles all the time. Trying to make sense, of the world, technology and the metaphysical, needs a giant leap in the evolution of the mind and soul! And that’s the real struggle, but on the other hand whoever said life’s easy….

the power of Goliath

As battles go the old testament version of David verses Goliath victoriously triumphs the cause of the underdog David ,the King of Judea . Similar battles are waged in the mouth especially in the root canals of infected teeth. The tiny , mutant, and  constantly morphing bacteria that reside at the tips of the roots of  decayed ,necrotic and damaged teeth take on the immune systems of apparently healthy and well nourished individuals. Overwhelming the entire defense force of the human body ,these microscopic Davids bring the entire cellular armies to its knees.Multiple sittings of root canal treatments were the only weapon available to the dentist to lift the siege of the root canal.  A heavy barrage of artillery in the form of the dental laser is now available as a weapon of mass destruction to shock, awe and annihilate   the pesky bugs. Multiple root canal sittings, the bane of all patients are now reduced to bare minimum and root canals can safely be completed with a level off sterility , confidence and predictability.The dental laser Goliath has the potential to rewrite  history , mythology and dentistry...
Power to Goliath.....