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Howard Farran:
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It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Dr. Teddy Rothstein, DDS, Ph.D. He is a double doctor and he posted a thread called OJW Weight Control yesterday on Dental Town and my God, is it exploding. It is so fun. Having practiced every phase of orthodontics and orthopedics for 37 years, he moved from Brooklyn, New York to Portland, Oregon in August 16th. Where on December 16, 2017, he petitioned the Oregon Board of Dentistry to sanction OJW for dental professionals. He awaits their decision.
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He invented the appliance and developed the protocol for providing OJW Weight Control. He provided OJW in Brooklyn, New York. Has treated 200 patients, most of them who come from everywhere from United States simply because he is the only provider. His dedication to OJW is ojwforweightcontrol.com is his website. On YouTube, just go to Ted Rothstein, T-E-D, Ted like a Ted Talk and Rothstein, R-O-T-H-S-T-E-I-N. Remember it's I before E unless your German, Ted Rothstein DDS. To view some of the videos he's posted on OJW.
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Before we get into this, I just want to say that on the one hand, on the Dental Town, people are saying this is extremely controversial but people go to great lengths to lose weight. They have gastric bypass surgery, they have rubber band surgery. I forgot all the names of it. The governor by where I used to live in New Jersey, Newark the governor of New Jersey had surgery. I think it's amazing that people think this is so wild and crazy and out there but I would think having your stomach stapled or gastric bypass surgery would be a thousand more times extreme and not even reversible. Tell everybody water www.ojwforweightcontrol.com? Tell them what you've done?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Do you want me to do it in two minutes or how many minutes do I have to Howard?
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Howard Farran:
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You graduated from Temple in 1965, I was born in '62 so I was three years when you graduated. You studied anthropology, you graduated in ortho school on '73. You can talk all you want, I would not cut you off or anything. Teddy, tell them what your passion is? What are you doing?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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When I moved out here I decided to devote drop orthodontics. I treated 6,000 patients and pick up here with OJW. I had to get the board of dentistry here to pass on it, make it weight control. That's the essence of it, weight control. I happen to have invented a device and a protocol that operates or that helps people who have compulsive emotional eating. This device, in its absolute minimal idea, is ... Let me show it to you as I'm talking. Perhaps you can see it. You're also going to see another picture, Maxim mandibular that's how surgeons do it. This is the way I do it. Can you see it? Can you see-?
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Howard Farran:
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Yeah so if you're listening on Itunes, you're on audio only. What he is, he's an orthodontist. He puts brackets on the canine and the bicuspids. He's got three canine, bicuspid upper and lower on the right and left. Then, he wires them together so that you can't open up and eat. OJW stands for Orthodontic Jaw Wiring for weight control, which he invented and developed in 1998. When I saw that, I thought, I've never thought of that before. Then I thought, can you really wire someone's jaw shut? I said, what do they say when someone said can I really staple someone's stomach or cut out some of their interest ...? What is some more extreme things people do for weight control?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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I'll tell you. A physician in LA, he invented something called The Tongue Patch. This is extreme, even to me this is, this is barbaric even to me. It's a little piece of biocompatible material like the size of a poster stamp that he saws on your tongue.
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Howard Farran:
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He saws a tongue patch so that you can't taste and lick ice cream and stuff?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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It works by pain. It's too painful to swallow, it's too painful to it. That's the way the basics of it are. Mine is simply wires that prevent you from going any further open than your normal physiologic rest position. The wires do not hold your jaw up, your muscles are holding your jaw up. All the wires do is they're neutral, completely neutral. There's no traction on your teeth, there's no vertical pool. You can wear the device forever and ever because you're in your natural rest position. I call it ROJW, Rothstein's OJW position of mandibular weightlessness. At that point, in rest position, your mandible doesn't weigh anything. Therefore, there's no vertical traction so it's safe.
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It limits you to having a liquid diet, that's the essence of it. You're on a liquid diet if you can manage your liquid diet yourself, great. If you can't, you can then bring on a RDN, a DN, the Dental Nutritionist, a Registered Dental Nutritionist. If they can be of help to you, great. If you have an overlay, the next overlay is the next psychiatric problem. It's really a psychiatric, where you need counseling, you need a therapist to help you work out the origin of your need to have food when you're not hungry. It's like what causes the compulsion?
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The object of the jaw wiring is simply to give somebody a start where they failed at every other method. This gives them a place to go to. A safe harbor with a mortality rate. With bariatric surgery, you have a 2% chance of dying, 2/1000 to die out of bariatric surgery. With medicines, you know as they call out this list when they advertise medicine. They give you, "By the way, it might cause you to have suicidal thoughts." The list is really funny. People who would choose me are those people who think bariatric surgery would kill him. They also think medications are too unknown, too risky.
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They choose this method only and once they choose it, once they want it, they just can't have it. They have to be there, they're vetted. They must come to me with a doctor's release so to speak. The release is simple, the release says, only you may go on a long-term low-calorie liquid diet. That's all it has to say. They don't know anything, physicians don't know anything about jaw wiring. It's like sleep apnea, dentist can treat sleep apnea, orthodontists can treat sleep apnea but they just don't do it out of the blue. We cannot diagnose obesity, we cannot diagnose sleep apnea. We take a prescription.
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Once we have the prescription, once the patient provides us with the prescription, then we're good to go to fit an appliance. Fit them with an OJW appliance to limit their amounts so that they cannot go any further than the physiologic rest position. Then soon as you're in it, soon you're in jaw wiring, you are now on a liquid diet. In fact, not only are you on a liquid diet but I always tell them, I say, "If you're a woman, your liquid calorie diet should be limited to somewhere between 800 and 950 calories. If you're a man, your liquid diet should be limited to somewhere between maybe 1200 and 1300 calories. If you do that, you'll probably lose, even if you exercise a little bit, you'll probably lose a pound and half, maybe two pounds a week at most. It's not drastic, it's meant to lose weight properly. If you lose weight too fast, you know what's going to happen, it's going to come back."
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The criticism that people have is, "Okay, well what happens when you take the appliance off?" What happens is it depends. It really depends on who that person is, what their problem is, how compulsive they were, how dedicated and passionate they are to achieve the goal weight and to maintain it. That's the goal. We know that people fail, they fail all the time. Weight control is such a moving target. You don't quite know what a patient would do. This is what I know. When I did my survey, I did a clinical survey, [inaudible 00:10:36] survey, a questionnaire. The basic result were people said, we approve our dental professionals providing this service. Thank you for making us aware that when you're in jaw wiring, you ran a certain risk of aspiration of vomitus and possible demise. To which I respond, tell patients, "Look, oral surgeons do this wiring with their wickedness, lock device and nothing never happens that we know about. If any serious harm has come to anybody because they were jaw wired by surgery, well we don't know about it."
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I can assure you that the people who I queried in my questionnaire, they said they accepted it as a fairly safe device. I asked them the questionnaire, what do you think about the possibility of vomitus and aspiration and serious consequences? To which I posted on your site, Howard. I posted what the results of the answer to that question. They said, "Yes, you told us. You gave us the instruments, you told us in the informed consent. Look, I would rather do that than run the risk of death by surgery."
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I'm always being assured by people's comments. If you go to the website and you will see in praise of OJW that people had nice things to say. It has no bad press. It has no bad press whatsoever. Sure, people fail. I made a video Howard, I made a video a long one. In the video, three days later, my star from Atlanta with a mother who is a psychologist, my star, 23 years-old decided she wanted me to take it off. What are we going to do with this, what a situation? We did what it is, we acknowledged that people fail at this. Some are successful and some just fail, they don't make it the first day. This one didn't make it past the first three days and they failed.
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Take a look of Donna, the picture of the girl in the video wiring herself. There's a happy camper. She could do it, it was a no-brainer. The wiring was no problem, she was happy and comfortable. It's this patients who have always inspired me by saying things that were encouraging. I've always examined the question, "Ted, are you doing something good? Are you bringing something to the dental world that would be useful to not only the dentist but really useful to help people who are obese and have these eating compulsion to which my device is directed to?" The answer is always is, "I see no reason not to keep on promoting and teaching it." I have a LinkedIn site, my ability to reach to my profession, my LinkedIn network, I have about maybe 2800 people on my LinkedIn network. I have a group that follows and reads the many many articles that I put on LinkedIn. I like that, I have no problem by being totally transparent with what happens to me. People would write something bad, I will put it on. I want to be the first to know.
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If anybody has any real criticism that I haven't already addressed, I want to know about it. I tell you, Howard, if I thought that the thing wasn't a benefit to some people, I wouldn't want to do it. I would be heartbroken if I thought something was going to go amiss. Over the course of taking 200 patients, I've learned quite a bit. The informed consent is key document because it lays out the idea of what the patient has to do and what the doctor has to do. The doctor only has one goal. His goal and his purpose in this whole being part of the healthcare team, his goal is the provider of the device that he puts on people's teeth. He keeps their teeth and gums and especially their jaw joint safe.
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Hence, the protocol says wear the wire for five weeks, keep it five weeks on then take it off for five days. Let your jaw relax a little bit. If your jaw's fine, it passes the three finger vertical test, if it passes that test, then put the wires back on. If you can't get back to me, I've already shown you how to do it and you can do it, you can still watch Donna doing it on the video. In my survey, nobody ever failed at this because they couldn't do the wiring. The wiring is pretty easy like you and I can do our bow tie. It's easy once they learn it.
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What has kept me going is the nice remarks, the support and encouragement that those people who have succeeded have given me. It's that confidence that it's a good thing. I'm always aware of people who don't understand it. You have to understand that people do eat compulsively and do eat emotionally and they do it when they're not hungry. They don't want to do it and they're depressed. They are depressed because they're doing it, they don't want to be that way. The reasons that they eat compulsively are very enormously. When people discovered my service, I'm very careful about who I pick. I get their informed consent, which is a formidable document. I get their medical dental history in which I want to know who their physician is and it's okay to call. I want to know who your counselor if you're having mental problems. I want to know all those things about you.
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Choosing patients is very very important. If you're just willy-nilly choosing somebody without carefully vetting and thinking about who you want to treat, you have way more failures than you will have successes. Pick your patients like you would do normally, everybody does that, it's automatic. Orthodontically, I turned down patients. Anybody, any dentist knows to take them, bad candidates. I vet them who is a good candidate? If you're a good candidate, then I would do it for you.
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What's nice about this service that you provide is the people are grateful, they're truly, they're really very grateful. They tell you so they're grateful and if they don't lose the weight, they never hold you responsible. They know from the start that your job is to take care of their teeth and their gums and their jaw joint. They are the ones who are responsible. When they fail, they understand. They come away with a minimal understanding that something they tried the device, it didn't work for them. Maybe it puts them in a thinking like, "Why? What is it happening to me? Why did I fail with this device?" It helps them to move on to another device, another method, another thing. If ultimately, it all fails, then bariatric surgery, maybe weight loss medication are possible. I don't know what happens. Maybe they realize I do need a psychotherapeutic counselor to help me get over this compulsion.
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I'm happy to say that the ones who have been successful have been vocal and have assured me that I should not stop doing this. I'm doing the right thing by petitioning the state board of dentistry to allow dental professionals. That's going to happen on June 23rd. We can have another interview and I can let you know what the board says. I expect the board, whatever decision they make, they're going to send me a note and they're going to explain to me how they reached their decision. I can't see how they could possibly reach any other decision given the voluminous documentation I have sent them. What reason they could have for not giving the whole thing a go ahead. I'll stop a little bit.
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Howard Farran:
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No, you're amazing. Again, in 2013 just in America, they did 180,000 bariatric surgeries. Gastric bypass, gastric bands, sleeve gastrectomy, biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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You've got the whole list, yeah.
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Howard Farran:
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I look at that stuff and then it seems like a lot of those patients that get the gastric bypass surgery with all that risk and all the complications, they all relapse too. It seems like every one of my patients that was weighing 400-500 pounds and got the gastric bypass surgery, they drop 100 out of the gate and went down. It seems like they slowly, most of them, gained it all back. Look how aggressive the physicians are. The James Pond's MD immediate past president of the AS MGS, the American Society of Metabolic and Gastric Surgery, said that those numbers only estimate the 1% of the people who should have it. He thinks 179,000 surgeries is 1%. He's thinking basically 18 million people should be having those surgeries. I love your purple hat, OJW.
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You talk about the ten most important facts a provider of this service should know. Maybe the answers to the four most important questions that help you decide that OJW, orthodontic wiring was a service that had a place.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Especially that question 58. What you think the idea that yes, you could come to harm with aspiration vomitus? The answers are from what I posted and if you have them in front of you. You can see how the sample responded.
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Howard Farran:
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Do you want to talk about any of those questions?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Let me see if I have those. The one that was most predominant, the answer that was most predominant. You told me everything I need to know in the informed consent. You told me everything. Let's see, some of them said ... What else did some of them ...? I don't have that particular slide.
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Howard Farran:
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Is this what only orthodontists should do or do you think some general dentist should do? How many years have you been doing this?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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18 years.
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Howard Farran:
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You've done 200 patients in 18 years, correct?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Yeah, because do you know why? I'll tell you why. My philosophy was I'm a professional orthodontist and I do as a service to help people who are good candidates. I didn't do it for everybody. I wanted to keep the fee for it high because the higher you keep the fee, the more skim people have in the game, the more invested they're in succeeding. If you make it for everybody and make it low price, you might as well not do it. That's a bad-
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Howard Farran:
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What price do you charge?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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$2785.
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Howard Farran:
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$2785 so under $3000. $2785 and you're right, skim in the game is everything. I think it's most amazing on student loan to fold that the more student loans you have, the less you default. It's the people that only have $10,000 or $15,000 that are defaulting all day long. By the time you have $100,000 to $200,000 to $300,000 of student loans you never default.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Here people succeed because they're invested in doing well. They say to me, "You just showed me how to take the wires off?" I say, "If you after you have paid me $3,000 and you cut the wires off for some capricious reason and you don't put the wires back on, you now should direct your attention to asking yourself why and perhaps I should see a psychiatrist." Who would pay somebody that much money, have confidence in it and then sabotage and undermine the procedure? If you do that, you have to admit something is wrong and therefore what is it. It just takes you to another level of thinking about your weight control problem. Did I answer your question?
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Howard Farran:
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Yes.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Did I [inaudible 00:25:38] or did I answer your question? I'm not sure.
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Howard Farran:
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Tell me about the thread, the discussion on Dental Town the thread? The thread exploded. What are your thoughts on the thread? It's under orthodontics, you just do a search of it. It's called Orthodontic Jaw Wiring, OJW for weight control in the dental professional's office by Dr. Teddy Rothstein. What have you thought of the question the people were asking? The first response was, "Do people really get this done?" The next one had a lady who asked if I would do this for her and I said, no. I had that people used to get this done in like the 70s when I was intern. Somebody got one of the OMFS to look at that wire job. Much less invasive than a lab band, that's where I come in. Remember when Fen-phen came out? How many years ago was that about, 20 years ago?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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When the first concept of that came out? When what came out Howard?
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Howard Farran:
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Fen-phen, the pharmaceutical.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Yeah. When people were dying, heart problems, right? People were using these medications in weird ways. Up until recently, I never really thought that it required medications. I always thought the use of medications for weight control was always risky because you never know what you're getting. As they started to come out one by one, they began to realize there was a nasty side effect, unknown side effect. One had slippage, do you know what slippage is? Slippage, that was one. Let me just think of the others. If you have thoughts of suicides, that was another one. You read every one of them.
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Recently, almost every one of them has something about suicide ideation they call it. Anyway, medications I always thought was a good reason to be in the middle. It was good positioning jaw wiring in the position between bariatric surgery and medications. It made good sense to me that people would be sensible to choose this method. It's safe, it's just more predictable. I think it's safer and more predictable.
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Howard Farran:
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Do you remember back in the day when Smart Bite came out, the Smart Bite device? It was the first product intended to aid in weight management. Do you remember the Smart Bite?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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No, I remember-
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Howard Farran:
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It said, small custom molded removable medical device that is placed on the roof of the mouth only while eating. The Smart Bite medical device helps you eat more slowly. You'll take smaller bites and chew more thoroughly so you can taste your food. This gives your body time. That was the thing back in the day.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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I remember it. No, it's still in there, it's called DDS appliance. They gave it the name of DDS appliance, upscaled it to DDS. Essentially, what it turned out to be is a wholly biplate with a built-in bump on the palate that does make it more difficult to eat rapidly. The idea was if you ate slowly, you will feel yourself fuller earlier, 20 minutes earlier. Then, you would stop eating. It's still out there. That particular device has got a lot of bad press, people who just ... If you look at the critic of that, jaw wiring has no bad press. The only bad press it has it comes from the weight regain. That's for everybody so it's silly. It's not real. It's as good as it's not better, safer and effective as other devices are. It is an application that patients that they could logically choose and be successful.
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Of course, like I keep saying, a lot depends on what success is. Let me tell you about what I know is success as a theoretical position. Success is when you lose at least 10% of your weight and so for a year. That is what clinical nutritionists or weight control people think is a really good goal. Maybe 5%, I'm not sure. To lose 5% or 10% and keep it off. It's such an amorphous thing what is success and who is successful. What patients want and what they hope to achieve. I have to admit, it can make anybody confused and I only have a fairly good handle on the whole thing. Only because I've been so interested in all the variables that go into weight control. Above all, the consequences of obesity, which is what we're talking about can be pretty serious over the long term, over the long haul.
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I remember one statistics that was fascinating. I thought, for every additional pound that you have as an extra pound, the body has to build about 500 miles more of circulatory system. I found that absolutely fascinating. Imagine you are 100 pounds overweight and therefore it's 100 X 500 more miles of vascular system. It has to be an enormous burden on the heart to have to pump blood to so much to [inaudible 00:32:15]. Obviously, it is because when you're overweight for a long period of time, you have one of the many serious consequences of heart failure, right?
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Howard Farran:
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Have you shown this device into a dentist? What is your Ph.D. did you say?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Yeah, thank you for asking, physical anthropology. I know when I look at your face, I can see the skeletal on the inside. I can see your skeletal. I know about jaws and teeth and the growth there. Things about the development, physical anthropology. I studied and my dissertation was about class two division one kids and it was the largest and first digital study that was ever done. It had 600 patients in the sample and it proved, it demonstrated more or less that when you have class two division one, the problem is not with your lower jaw being small or back or retruded, no. The problem is that most of the time, the upper jaw has moved forward. Exactly as if you're taking your thumb and created it.
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That was the main thing. Otherwise, the jaw was always the same. That was the reason. Okay, fine.
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Howard Farran:
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When I listen to anthropologists today, they say all these malic with Homo Sapiens is just recent in the last a couple of years. They say, once you go back 5,000, 10,000 million years, they don't see any of these. They're saying it's because we went from eating tough tenacious roots and vegetables and chewing cartilage off animal bone to now feeding our basis apple sauce out of a jar.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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I totally believe that. I think that was a workable theory and that was the people who invented the beg orthodontic device. That was their theory. People believed it and people still do believe it. When you have a hard diet, what you're doing is not only wearing down your teeth vertically but you're wearing inter proximately. The teeth have a chance to move forward into proximal spaces. Those people, they didn't have impact wisdom teeth like we do. I agree with the theory that a soft diet has promoted more intact wisdom teeth, things like that.
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Howard Farran:
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Malocclusion in general.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Malocclusion in general. I'm not so sure about that certainly impacting. I don't think that has anything to do with the three classes of malocclusion that we work with. Lower jaw, too forward, lower jaw too back. That's what we deal with when we're dealing with anything else other than crooked teeth. Jaw too forward, it needs to brought back or compromise of some sort. Jaw too far back that needs to be forward or some compromise that doesn't involve surgery always. Surgery is our last resort but always you have to address what the patient wants. You have to do what their chief complain is.
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Howard Farran:
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Where did your interest in all of these come from? You're 77-years-old, you could have retired and got obsessed with lighthouses, fishing, traveling. What made you get so interested in weight control?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Great question. My father had compulsive eating so I could see him year after year trying to get it under control. It was constantly going to the refrigerator opening it up, take something out. That's probably what I think is the underlying reason that helped me move along. What actually happened was a girl 18 years ago, comes from California and she has braces on her teeth and she says, "They're about to come off." She says, "Would you wire my jaws?" I said, "What is that?" She says, "In California, they do it for weight control." I said, "Really? Just tell me a little about it." She did and I said, okay, all I had to do is leave 12 braces on and then figure out how to do the wiring.
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That's how I got started and I liked it, I liked doing it. She was a successful patient. Then over the years, I've provided the service and been rewarded both financially and by praise from the patients. As that has happened, I decided that I want to leave a legacy to dentistry. This is going to be my legacy to dentistry. If it get accepted, if Oregon says, "We're good with it Rothstein." Hey man, I would've left my legacy, that's it. Added a new service.
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Howard Farran:
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What was it like presenting this to the Oregon Board of Dental Examiners? Were they open-minded?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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It was a request. I attended the board meeting, I said, "Here's what I want you to do for me." In papers, I presented what I wanted and they voted on it. 9/10 said we will accept your question, we will take it under advisement. One didn't and he retired three months later. I have sent them a large volume of supporting documentation to show them how the dental professional can provide this service in the environment of a healthcare team. You've got to be the kind of dentist who likes the idea of doing something that is maybe beyond fillings and cleanings and stuff like this. Something another step out, another adventure, another challenge. That what it was for me, that is exactly what it was for me.
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I had this confidence that I could do it and it worked and it seemed okay. Over the 18 years, as I've provided this service, you get better at it and you understand the new answers of it. Who might succeed, who might not succeed, how to pick patients, how to help people, how to always be there for them, how to help them so that they know that you're always with them. I am on call for my jaw-wiring patients 24-7. I was always like that, even as an orthodontist. Everybody had my home telephone. You know how many people called me in the course of 35 years? Three. Giving your home telephone is a terrific idea. Just terrific, it's big practice build instead of having the ways you try and reach your doctor and then [inaudible 00:39:48]. Most of them provide for some kind of emergency but it didn't happen with me. Boom, there you got your braces on, boom, here's my home telephone. Call me anytime. Call me even in the middle of the night if you want me.
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Howard Farran:
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How did you end up moving from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, from New York to Oregon? How did that happen?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Yeah. My wife Franny has children, has her older daughter here a ride within 20 minutes. Everything is within 20 minutes in Portland. It only takes 20 minutes to go anywhere in Portland. Her daughter lives here and she decided that it could be good to near her. Again, we've lived in New York, in Brooklyn for a long period of time. We said, okay, enough is enough. I was very happy to close the practice and leave that area and move to this place in East Moline if you know anything about Portland, you know it's a very nice, lush community. Hold on a second, I should just ... You can see anything here, do you see anything what is like out there?
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Howard Farran:
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Yeah.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Very nice.
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Howard Farran:
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Those guys are such environmentalists, they think you're littering if you throw aluminum or glass in your trash can. What does the AAO thing say? You talked to the Oregon Board of Examiners as you've been doing this over two decades. Did you ever present this to the American Association of Orthodontists? How did your fellow orthodontist think about this?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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I did. It was not received warmly. The editor of the American Association, I spoke to him at the last AAO meeting in San Diego, funny. He said, "Speaking as the editor of the AAO Journal." The editor speaking from that capacity. He said, "It's more for general dentist than it is for orthodontists." I said, "That's bull shit, it's for anybody. It's anybody who has a feeling for helping people who are overweight and especially because of compulsive eating. We can help them, it will be [inaudible 00:42:26] to help them. It's a win-win situation." That's what I told people at Oregon, everybody wins.
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Howard Farran:
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Did the editor-
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Obesity caused the state $160 billion. I don't know, maybe it's $2 billion, whatever. It cost them a lot of money. If dentists can help people prevent obesity or minimize it or treat it, it's for the good of the people. It's really good for everybody. Good for dental professionals who decide they want to provide the service and good for the people who will benefit from it. Good for the state because the fallout for obesity is big time. The consequences of obesity is as a spreading health problem. It's very wide.
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Howard Farran:
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What did the AAO guys say though? Why did they not like it?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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What did they say? They never really gave a reason, they just didn't. They didn't want to commit themselves. I actually sent them a manuscript and I sent the ADA a manuscript. The manuscript is waiting for a receptive publisher. You know the NBIC, that group from under ...? It's a government. The one that does government publications, what is the name of that? NCBI, NBCI? I am trying to submit to them but I think I'm in luck. They asked me, the AAO asked me, now that I'm here on the West Coast, the West Coast people are way more progressive. Will accept a lot more things. I applied to present it in Reno at the 2018 convention. They're going to vet my paper, my abstract.
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I actually have a good feeling, I'm always hopeful. I'm always optimistic because my life has always been pretty charmed and I've been pretty lucky in my life and nice things have happened to me. I think that Reno, the Pacific Coast Orthodontic Society is holding their meeting in Reno and I have submitted a paper. The same kind of thing that you guys are looking at now, I've submitted to them.
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Howard Farran:
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Have you submitted it to the editor of Orthotown Magazine, Dan Grob?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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No, I never even knew of that venue. I don't know of that venue. You're telling me that there's a venue that I don't know of and have an opportunity to submit, I would.
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Howard Farran:
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Yeah. We have Dental Town Magazine and website but we also have Orthodtown Magazine and website. They were the only specialty who insisted on their own community where only they can be members, there could not be any non-orthodontist. We started '98 and they kept saying that all the way to 2006. No one else was saying it, the oral surgeons, orthodontists, pediatric dentist, no one else was saying it. We just finally gave it to them and they seemed to love it. It seems half the orthodontists in the United States, they're 5,000 or 10,000 regularly go to the sites. That's what they wanted and that's their culture.
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Anyway, the editor of the magazine is Dan Grob. I am in Phoenix, he's an orthodontist in the Valley here.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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How do you spell his last name, Dan G-R-O-B-E?
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Howard Farran:
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Just G-R-O-B.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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G-R-O-B?
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Howard Farran:
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Yeah. I think you should ask him. What I do with Dental Town, I don't know if anybody knows this but what we do is the reason our magazine is so well read is because we do test in content. A lot of magazines, one person would say, "I got a gut feeling that this is a good article." We don't play like that. What we like to do is we like to find authors who when they post, everyone engages. You posted this and it has exploded. It doesn't matter if I agree with this or disagree or like it or anything, what matters is that it's tested content. I would vote, I would tell Dan and our whole editorial team would agree. That since everybody is replying and commenting and viewing, we have ample evidence that our readers would be interested in this.
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At the same time, this thread is exploding, there's been hundreds of other threads and some of which get low or no activity. We call it tested content. I'm Emailing you.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Thank you, that's terrific. Ultimately, Howard, thank you very much. A lead that will help me get it published in the Orthotown], is that what you're talking about with Dan Grob?
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Howard Farran:
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Yeah, so I've just Emailed you, Dan Grob and I also sent it to the editor of Dental Town Magazine. I think if Dan doesn't want it for Ortho Town, Tom may want it for Dental Town. Again, it's amazing how many people ... It's polarizing, it seems that everybody agrees and disagrees. I actually agree with this because I don't believe that humans rarely do anything because one variable. They're not binomial, it's not up, down, left, right, forward, backward with the human. They're just influentially complex, they've got a trillion circuits in the brain.
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I'm sure obesity would be caused by several things and this seems to be one of the more conservative treatment I've seen. Now, I wouldn't want gastric bypass surgery. I think that's really intense. I think people that have it, that's a high-risk surgery. Any surgery is high risk. Hell, the highest risk of any surgery is the anesthesia anyway. Just being put to sleep regardless of what they do. I wouldn't want to have an IV and be put to sleep and then it's irreversible and all these things. I think what you're doing is very conservative and as far as humans, you never know what's going to motivate him or get him to do this.
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Some people, some really tragic will happen to their life and they will just go on and go all the way to the top. Just fill them to the top. Other people have the same tragedy and they fold their cards and go home. You've been doing this, how many years have you been doing this?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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About 18.
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Howard Farran:
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You've been doing this 18 and you're 77, I'm 54 and I've never done it. Who am I to argue with someone that's a tedious? You have to doctor's degree, I have one. If you would've had me at age 23, I could be your son. I think you're on to something and also what I think you're doing is you're taking everybody's brain out for a jog and it's making people think, it's making them think. The parameters, when people start saying, it's not in your scope, I'm sorry but you're a doctor with a human and those lines are very blurred. Like you say sleep apnea. Why do I need a prescription from them?
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Every time I get a physical, every year I go to my doctor to give me my physical. When he comes to the mouth, he has me open up and takes a popsicle stick. He tells me to lie there and he tells me to say and he is done. He throws away the popsicle. I say, "Okay, I've been a dentist 30 years, what the hell did you just do? I have no idea what you just did." He is a doctor. My biggest [pet peeve 00:50:36]j I think where dentist kill the most people, where they actually kill them is the fact that our boards haven't given us the right to give flu shots. 8,000 to 38,000 Americans die each year from the flu. They're usually grandma and grandpa. If you study, when was the last time they entered the healthcare system?
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The top three, it was always the dentist, the hygienist. The hygienist has four years of college and can't give a vaccine. If I go to Walgreens or CBS, a pharm tech with a nine-month program can give me flu shot. Same thing with the doctors of HPV causing oral cancer. Why are dentist not at the frontline of giving all this kids under age 10 vaccinated for HPV? That's cancer in our mouth, that's oral cancer or oral [inaudible 00:51:31] cancer. I think the oral-systemic link and in people's general dis dane or regulation, the government, most humans don't want to be told what to do. That's why you just-
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Yeah.
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Howard Farran:
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If you've got two doctorates, you're 77 years old, you've been doing this for 18 years, you've done it 200 times. To me, that's the evidence that makes sense. When Fen-phen came out, I saw so many patients that were so happy. They were taking that pill and they lost ... Some of my patients lost 400 pounds. I had a couple of 600s go to under 200. When they took that away, I'll never forget, I had about six patients when they took that pill away because someone died or whatever, we're not experts in that, they cried. They absolutely cried because they slowly three or four years later gained the weight back. It's so complex, the food.
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I think one of the biggest problem with obesity that no one talks about is, I have an MBA, you have a DDS and a doctorate in anthropology. I have a DDS and a masters in business administration. When you go back to 1950, food was about 30% of your disposable income and now it's 10%. When you lower the price of anything, you sell a lot more. The portions got bigger, the prices plummeted and now any poor person can walk into any fast food restaurants and order 1000 delicious calories in three minutes. The food is faster, it's cheaper, it's lower cost. I think if you want less of something, you should tax it.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Less nutritious.
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Howard Farran:
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You should tax it and if you want it to go away, tax and regulate it. When people start talking about, we need to have a sugar tax or we need to start taxing soft drinks then the typical American just hates all forms of government. They're the most anti-government people I've ever seen. They're not going to want to tax their Coca-Cola, Pepsi or just raw sugar. The least they could do is stop giving corn farmers agriculture subsidies when they're making high fructose corn syrup is subsidized by the federal government. Who then has to turn around and pay for obesity, diabetes, dental decay, Medicaid Medicare. Not to mention, why are you giving farmers subsidies when you have $19 trillion in debts? What everybody should be saying is we're going to raise taxes and cut spending. Since the democracy can't say that so you're going to say, we're going to give you a big tax cut and give you a bunch of more free stuff.
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It's complicated but let's just say you've done 200 cases in 18 years. How many of those people will do it again if they had to do it all over again? How many said, they would never do it again or they regretted doing it or they were upset that they did this?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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They never put in terms, never like that. I had a few people who said it was a waste, yes it's true. Probably it was waste. It didn't work out for them and just treatment that didn't work out. Look, I told you the lady in the major film that I made, she failed. I had pinned my hopes that she was going to be the glamor girl. It turns out three days after she left, she had to come back. She came from Georgia, they come from all over.
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Howard Farran:
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You said that you gave your patients your home phone number, only three called you? What if someone is listening right now and they actually want to call you and talk to you? Are they allowed to?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Of course.
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Howard Farran:
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What is your-
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Every post has my name and telephone number Howard, every one of them.
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Howard Farran:
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Okay. I have one last question. If I had my mouth OJW, orthodonticjawwiringforweightcontrol.com, what if I had to go to work? What if I worked at Starbucks, can I still go to work and do my work? Can I still talk and do my job?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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When you come to me, I ask you to please look at the list I have provided here. If you're in this list of things that make you a bad candidate, then you should think twice. For instance, maybe you're a singer, it doesn't make very much sense for you to do that because every time you'll have to keep sniping out the wires. Supposing you're a teacher. Even though the claim is that speech is perfectly clear, in a matter of fact, you can test it, Howard. Just bring your teeth one another and just talk with your teeth near one another and you will see how easy is to talk. If you look at me, I'm talking in the OJW position. It's the position that you're in and all of the listeners who are listening, it's the same position that they're in now. It's the rest position.
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You can speak from the rest position easy. The only time you need to ever go beyond the rest position is when you're eating or when you have to speak. The continued answer to that question is when the dental professionals select the patients, he makes sure that they are no impediments. For example, I had a patient who I did it for and even though I had asked her, even there's a question about the size of the pills they take. She claimed that she couldn't get a particular tablet in her mouth. She couldn't get it to the side. Maybe the wisdom teeth were blocking it.
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You have to carefully question people, interrogate them, get their informed consent, read their document, read their medical dental history. You have to be careful about who you select. If you're careful and charge a high fee, then you'll likely to have a patient who will succeed. At least as a minimum, never blame you because your job is only to take care of the teeth and the gums and the jaw joint. Don't let anything happen. If they need to lose weight, then they either with their own liquid diet or they do it with the help of a dietician or a registered nutritionists and or they get help of a counselor. To help them with the inner driving cause of the need to eat, the emotional need to eat.
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Howard Farran:
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All right. Well, that was the fastest hour ever. This is going to be the next video out because I want to post it on that thread. That thread, everybody is loving it, enjoying it, arguing with it, agreeing, disagreeing and it's going to be so amazing. This technology where we're 1500 miles apart and we're able to do this, capture the video. If you would've told me we'll be doing this when I was in college, I would've thought you're crazy and here we just did it.
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Thank you for the technology, I love the fact that we're both wearing bow ties. I was trying to match you. I wore a bow tie just to match you, Teddy.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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It makes me so happy to see you in a bow tie.
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Howard Farran:
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I did it just for you. I was going to do my hair like yours but I didn't, I ran out of time.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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One more thing. The last thing I want to say, one more thing. July 28th, my abstract on this subject was accepted in Rome. I'm going to Rome and I'm going to present the paper to the 14th International Conference of Clinical Nutritionists.
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Howard Farran:
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Nice. What do you love more, Rome or Venice?
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Dr. Rothstein:
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I've been in Venice, I love Venice except that it's stinking and wet. Sinking not stinking. I've never been to Rome.
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Howard Farran:
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You and my oldest boy Eric, out of all the countries my boys I've drag them to, Eric says that Venice was his favorite place. He's a boy, I think it was because he was about 14 or something like that and he just couldn't get over the lasagna. He wanted it every night, he wanted to go back to the same restaurant and eat the same lasagna. You can't get Italian food in the United States. Everybody that tells you that you can get the best Italian food in the United States, maybe there's a restaurant or two in little Italy in Manhattan. It's never like it is in Venice or Rome.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Yeah, it's true.
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Howard Farran:
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I want to thank you. Just let me thank you for helping me to put my subject on the map. It's very kind of you, just straight out. I'm very pleased and happy that you like it and you think it is worthy. That's always more of a food for thought.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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I instantly-
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Howard Farran:
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You're instrumental in me reaching my goal, which is that's going to be OJW, jaw wiring is going to be in the medical book of treatment and in the dental book of treatment. It's going to be coded in there. If that happens, then I will really have reached. If it happens in my lifetime, boy will I be happy. That's the overall mission and goal. One last thing which I did post on the site is this. It's actually how it works, the mechanism. It's the mechanism, the seven ways that it can work to help people. How it actually works, aside of the obvious. What's the obvious? It helps you diminish the calories. After that, there's still more psychology behind it. At least, that's how I viewed it.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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We did our hour, that's our brand. We're committing to work and we don't want them to be sitting in the parking lot waiting to go in. We're going to post this video in that website. Ryan, how long do you think to get up? Tomorrow this time it will be online. Teddy, thank you so much for coming on the show.
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Howard Farran:
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Goodbye Howard, thank you for everything.
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Dr. Rothstein:
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Hello, I'm Dr. Ted Rothstein, Brooklyn Heights orthodontist and the inventor Orthodontic Jaw Wiring for Weight control. Today, I'm going to demonstrate orthodontic jaw wiring in real time. When the OJW is done correctly, the jaws can move between two and four millimeters vertically and laterally. This is a straw between the teeth. Take your wire and wrap it around number one. Then bring it around and under number two, over number three and out to number six. Take the top half of the wire, wrap it around number four, over five and meet the strand at number six. Do a little twist with your finger, take the twisting instrument, grab the two ends, wrap them four or five times. Trim the tail and tuck the tail out of harms way. Remove the straw, orthodontic jaw wiring.
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My fellow professionals, thank you for your time.
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