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Office Visit: Catching the Green Wave Chelsea Patten, Staff Writer, Dentaltown Magazine

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Dr. Fred Pockrass, a practicing dentist in Berkeley, California, believes everyone can make small changes to be more environmentally friendly. Pockrass and his wife, Ina, started a practice in 2003 with the goal to make as little environmental impact as possible. Together they created the very first green dental office in the U.S. With their concern for the environment and their proactive attitudes, they've since created a line of green dental products called Transcendentist and founded the Eco-Dentistry Association (EDA). Pockrass's inspiration and initiative has dentists all over the country catching the green wave. Somewhere between running his practice, monitoring his line of green products and participating in the Eco-Dentistry Association, Dr. Pockrass and Dentaltown Magazine got the opportunity to chat.


Name: Fred Pockrass, DDS
Graduate from: McGill University
Practice Name: Transcendentist, Berkeley, CA
Practice Started: 2003
Web site: www.transcendentist.com
               www.ecodentistry.org

Office Highlights
Bonding Agents
• Microprime G from Danville Materials
• Prelude SE/Bond/Link from Danville Materials

Burrs
• Carbides 556 & 330 from SSWhite
• Two Striper diamonds for the following:
   • Chamfer diamond for crown, inlay and onlay
     preps 767.9C
   • Fine football finishing bur 285 MF1
   • Fine finishing flame 132.008 F and Raptor
     type of shaping bur MFS2-285
   • Mosquito bur for microdentistry 203.5F

Cements
• Accolade bonding resin veneers from
  Danville Materials
• Panavia from Kuraray
• Rely-X from 3M
• Variolink ll from Ivoclar

Environment
• Amalgam separator from SolmeteX

Implants
• Nobel

Impression Materials
• 3M Imprint
• Silginat from Kettenbach

Infection Control
• Optim 33TB from SciCan
• Reusable sterilization pouches and patient barriers
  by Transcendentist/Discus Dental

Lasers
• Diagnodent from Kavo
• OPUS soft tissue diode 5 watt
• ZAP diode 5 watt

 Patient Comfort
• Arnica 30c homeopathic sublingual from BOIRON
• Comfort care syringe
• Hot towel warmer from CABI
• Joysence aromatherapy products by Transcendentist/
  Discus Dental
• Meditation Hemi-sync CDs from the Monroe Institute
• Noise cancelling headphones from BOSE
• Septocaine 1:200 from Septodont
• Single Tooth Anesthesia STA from Midwest
• Topical Numbing PFG from Steven's pharmacy

Patient Financing
• Springstone Financing

Restorative
• Matrixx Anterior hybrid from Discus Dental
• Tetric Ceram & Tetric flow from Ivoclar

Services
• DemandForce
• Henry Schein Dental
• PactOne
• Patterson Dental

Technology
• Air Abrasion –Prepstart H20 from Danville Materials
• Canon G6 with macro lens & flash from PhotoMed
• Dentrix G4 from Dentrix
• "Everlight" LED operatory light by DentalEZ
• ImageCam intraoral camera from Dentrix
• ImageRay digital X-rays from Dentrix
• Isodry from Isolite
• Orascoptics 2.6x and SheerVision 2.6x
  magnification loupes
• Panadent Facebow and articulator

Whitening
• DASH, in office and Day White 9.5% from
  Discus Dental
Click Here To View Dr. Fred's Top Eight

Dr. Pockrass, where did you attend college and what did you study?
Pockrass: I went to McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I did an undergraduate program in physiology and was able to earn early acceptance into dental school, from which I graduated in 1981.

I understand you spent some time in India where you opened up a Western-style dental clinic. Can you tell me more about your experience?
Pockrass: I was the personal dentist to an Indian meditation master and provided dentistry to the spiritual community there. I would send my restorations back to a lab in Canada and bring back supplies when I returned to Canada for continuing education each year. It was great being able to provide quality dental care in a non-traditional clinic. We were high up in the Himalayas where the electricity could go out at any time. I certainly learned the art of improvisation.

Explain the style and tone of your current practice.
Pockrass: Our practice is welcoming, relaxing and clientcentered. We like to say we're the Nordstrom of dental practices. The waiting area was designed to feel like a cross between a spa and your best friend's living room.

What is your practice philosophy?
Pockrass: Wellness, beauty and transformation. Wellness; because we want to help our clients understand the connection between a healthy mouth and a healthy person. Beauty, because we want to create the most beautiful, natural restorations that we can – to look good, chew good and feel good. And transformation, because we want to transform the experience of going to the dentist. We promote relaxation and we are also a green dental office.

What makes your practice different than the "typical" dental office?
Pockrass: When a patient comes in, we give them permission to relax. They can turn off their cell phones – no one is going to bother them. We tell patients that for the next hour they are in the chair, they are allowed to relax. We have a full-time massage therapist on staff. Every patient who comes into the practice gets a foot massage.

Also, we created the model for green dentistry. We're the very first green dental office in the country. We looked at how to make the practice easier on the earth, as far as the processes and materials, office administration and our physical office. We're virtually paperless. We've always used digital imaging and we communicate with our patients digitally as well.

What inspired you to start a practice with a "whole-person-centered" mentality?
Pockrass: We are integrated. We take what traditional and modern dentistry has to offer and we add our own touches.

Who is your primary clientele? And how do you get the word out about services?
Pockrass: Our patient base is relatively broad. More than 50 percent are in the 30- to 60-year-old range, but we're seeing more kids these days. I love when I am able to give a child a positive dental experience. Our patients are representative of the 25 to 33 percent of Americans who choose services based on an environmental and well-being litmus test. We average about 30 new patients a month.

We don't do any traditional advertising. We are primarily a word-of-mouth practice.

Describe a typical day in your office.
Pockrass: We always start the day with a team meeting. We discuss each patient, procedures, production goals and any special needs that we should be prepared for. We try to incorporate some inspiration too.

We're not early-morning folks. Our team arrives at 8:30 a.m. We see our first patient at 9 a.m. I try to see my longer and more complex appointments in the morning when I'm freshest. We usually finish our day around 5 p.m.

How have you incorporated "eco-dentistry"?
Pockrass: It's so easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of our environmental problem that many of us get paralyzed and do nothing. I was committed to do something. We looked at everything we could do to lighten our footprint on the planet. We were particularly vexed by all the disposables used in infection control. When we couldn't find any reusable sterilization items, my wife and I created a line of reusable textiles for the dental office called Transcendentist.

We also participate in the "Smart Light" program, something within Alameda County and Berkeley. We changed out all of our florescent bulbs. They're energy efficient and have great cost savings.

We started our green practice in 2003. We're really excited that our dental colleagues and the dental industry are getting on board. It's a green wave!

Not only are you eco-conscious, you are also a very community-oriented practice. What are some of the ways you get involved in your community?
Pockrass: We participate in local business meetings, especially in sustainable business meetings. In the East Bay we have the Sustainable Business Alliance.

Rather than giving our referral sources and specialists a bottle of wine at Christmas, every holiday season our office adopts a needy family. We're able to get bags of groceries, toys and clothing for the family. We've done this for the last couple of years. Then we let our clients and specialists know what we've done in our community.

We participate in the online community as well. We use Demandforce. It's a fantastic tool for our practice and the surrounding community. It enables us to post client reviews on the Web. It gives us excellent rankings in Google Local and it helps new patients searching for a dentist to find us online.

What sort of challenges do you face in working each day?
Pockrass: I am sure the same as every dentist – balancing the needs of my patients, my team and my own wellbeing. I'm committed to my own personal daily meditation and yoga practice. I believe it is something that really helps keep me in balance.

What do you find in terms of technology has the biggest "wow" factor for your patients?
Pockrass: They're really "wowed" by the intraoral camera. Once I can show a patient the black line of decay around an old filling, they always want me to take care of it. Patients love the LED operatory light. My dental assistant will change the wavelength for curing the restorations, and we'll use it to color match materials. Also, the Prep Star air abrasion, which allows us to do drill-less fillings. Patients love that.

Describe your most successful or rewarding experience.
Pockrass: It would have to be seeing how a patient's life has been transformed after doing a full-mouth rehabilitation. There is one man whose mouth I transformed, who for years never ever smiled. His teeth were so bad that he couldn't chew on anything harder than macaroni and cheese. After his case was completed he literally couldn't stop smiling. He has since become a dear friend. It warms my heart.

How about a disappointing experience?
Pockrass: It's an inevitable part of life. Like every dentist, there have been restorations that I've done that I thought were beautiful, but the patient didn't like them. In those rare cases there is nothing else to do than try to make it right for the patient and move on.

What is your favorite procedure?
Pockrass: I love prepping inlays and onlays. I really like doing freehand anterior and posterior composite restorations – it's my chance to personally express my artistry.

Looking ahead, what would you like to see dentistry do in terms of the way it operates as a profession in the next five to 10 years?
Pockrass: The most exciting direction for dentistry is the growing adoption of green dentistry and the rise of the Eco-Dentistry Association. For years, we were the lone wolves. I love that there are green dentistry practices sprouting up all over the country. The EDA has members in nearly every state and 12 countries around the world. The ranks are growing every week. My goal for the future is that we won't talk about being green because practicing in an environmentally sound way will just be the way it's done. Green dentistry is common sense, it's high-tech and I think it's the future of dentistry.

On a different note, what do you like to do when you are not working?
Pockrass: I love practicing yoga and meditation. I play both electric and acoustic guitar. I love spending time with my family (wife, Ina, and two children Becca, 22, and Elliot, 21) and in nature. My wife and I are outdoors people. Whenever we can go hiking or kayaking and breathe clean air, we do. It allows us to take that moment of pause; to tune into the nature outside of ourselves and tune into the nature inside of ourselves.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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