As a teen I went to the dentist 2 or 3 times specifically because I thought my wisdom teeth were turning the rest of my teeth. I would get x-rayed and reassured everything's fine. Then the last time it was an "Oh you're absolutely right, time to go get braces, from this guy here ___."

I lost faith in our dental industry right then and there.

You're absolutely right OP. It's a reflection of our broken medical culture in general. Over-medicate symptoms and ignore the cause.

a reflection of our broken medical culture in general.

No amount of science can repair broken business practices. /mic drop

My dentist keeps trying to get my to "upgrade" to motorized, rotating toothbrushes, because they do a better job cleaning the teeth. At my last visit (two weeks ago) I was told by both the hygienist and the dentist that my teeth looked pretty good (and hygienist even asked me which type of toothbrush I was using).

My point is that within the last year, I was able to take my teeth (which didn't look as good as they should have) and brush them with my regular old toothbrush to make them look "pretty good" a year later.

what were you doing previously? not brushing at all?

As someone who has had way to much dental work I can totally see what you're saying. However dentist offices are small businesses. You can almost insure that not all of them are looking out for your best interest but to only increase their profits.

Exactly. Money is tight in dentistry, so they need to upsell. Some do this through fear or "what if" scenarios. Think of them sort of like Geeksquad.

The small business dentists are the only ones I trust any more. It is the corporate chain dentists whom are being pressured by their superiors to upsell with creative diagnosis. Finding an honest dentist is easier when you search in private practice.

[insert name of city] Modern Dentistry is fraudulent in this manner. They will straight up invent a problem in your mouth and tell you it is an emergency that requires $2000 of work to rectify. If you go to another dentist for a second opinion, they laugh, clean your teeth for $59, and send you home, because Modern Dentistry is full of shit.

Extremely common scams in dentistry:

http://www.cheatsheet.com/health-fitness/signs-your-dentist-is-ripping-you-off.html/?a=viewall

This is the parent company of the "Modern Dentistry" chain. Avoid any of its progeny if you want to avoid paying thousands of dollars for senseless torture in a dental chair. http://pacificdentalservices.com/locations

There needs to be a similar list for crooked Chiropractors. They give legit chiro a bad name. My wife will do stuff and throw her back/hips out of whack, and goes to a good chiro she trusts. In and out, effective.

Yet I hear stories of people who go to a chiro and he "discovers" that they have this "dangerous" skeletal condition and need a series of adjustments to correct the dangerous problem. Typically this is weekly visits over a year and costs $5k or $3k or $10k or some enormous amount of money.

But - But - if they don't do the series of adjustments they might DIE! GASP!

I know a guy who's son went in for an adjustment, they found this "deadly" condition - and then said it was hereditary and got the dad roped into the series of adjustments too because HE HAD IT TOO. (they didn't)

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I used to think not but I have been convinced since my wife occasionally throws her back out and the chiropractor fixes it in a reasonable and legitimate way.

Also, the links in my post show a chiropractor / nutritionist who has a good understanding of the human body and has become famous.

Believe it or not, yes, there are legit chiro's out there.

Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by the quacks.

In my experience, the good ones also use physiotherapy heavily in addition to the snap,crackle and pop methods. The ones that don't are the ones to stay away from.

No. Not even by mainstream wikipedia standards. People are confusing chiropractic practices with physical therapy. Actual chiropractics, that is taught it chiropractic school, has no basis in science. It's similar to reflexology in that manner.

Chiropractors often also offer conventional therapies such as physical therapy and lifestyle counseling, and it may for the lay person be difficult to distinguish the unscientific from the scientific.

chiro is pseudoscience, all a scam.

Fly or drive to Mexico or Asia to get dental or health services done. You get a free vacation while saving money with better service.

Your not wrong, finding one who migrated from those areas can work out just as well.

I actually found a dude that migrated from India in my area on accident, he's really good. I decided to stay with him after he did a crown and root canal for free when he miscalculated the impact on the yearly allowance given by the insurance company.

woooooah that's good dentist. makes an honest mistake but fixes it by doing the work for free?

dentist offices love quoting you on one cost then sending you a bill for way more.

Yeah, I was surprised he would admit to a mistake like that and give up $700 worth of work. I found him when I had an impacted / infected tooth. He's bypassed root canals and just filling or using crowns instead because he thought a root canal wasn't needed a few times, drained an abscessed above a tooth for free, did a cavity for half the cost.

He's really good. Hard to find one like that though

Or to Trinidad and Tobago. I have a great dentist there who studied in Miami. He actually takes a lot of foreign clients as well as the cost of most procedures is 1/6th of the price in the US.

After dealing with incompetent (greedy?) doctors for several years he's one of three who were not terrible.

True facts here i also get different list of stuff from different dentists.

Not only dentists, but every doctor (except the only who are your friends or something) will do the same thing. Last January, I went to a specialist to see if they can do a procedure. The doc looked at my file, said yes, then I went to the billing admins and they told me they don't take my insurance. I said, thank you and left. I was sent a bill for $650 2 months ago. I was so flabbergasted I called and disputed my bill. They offered to lower it to $180. I said, fuck you. I was in and out in 15 minutes. They never told me there would be a consultation fee. The doctor did no tests or even took out his stethoscope. I told them, I'm not paying. If they send my bill to a collection agency and if it results in my credit score getting lowered, I'll sue them. I'm still waiting to see what happens.

I've had the good fortune to have the same honest dentist all my life. He doesn't take insurance, but charges reasonable rates. Never attempts to upsell me. He always recommends the most minimally invasive method possible, and stays current with evolving dental techniques and equipment but thinks critically about them, using some, rejecting others. I have no cavities, and a single filling where I chipped a tooth.

My husband has been to a number of dentists due to moving residences over the years, and has a mouthful of fillings. I'm convinced he's had cavities drilled and filled that didn't exist - he basically got all the fillings from one dentist over the course of a year and a half.

I stopped going to the dentist in my 30s and didn't have a professional cleaning for 10 years. Went back to my dentist, he explained that the sonic care type powered toothbrushes pretty much changed the dentistry game and that many people can get away with just using those and flossing.

Take this:

https://www.standardprocess.com/Products/Standard-Process/Bio-Dent

It is a supplement (I am not affiliated in any way) recommended by this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/user/DiverseHealthService

who gave this famous talk:

https://youtu.be/-aHRMjVHggI

and is definitely WOKE.

What does the supplement do? Actually feeds your teeth, bone and joints and can grow out cavities and restore your teeth - as long as you still have living root.

I agree this is a big problem and many people have been ripped off and hurt by bad dentists.

Can I have some more info about bone health/healing?

I suggest checking out the many vids by Dr. Tent on the DHS youtube page as you have time. His longer lectures, which go back years, are a treasure trove of information.

The biodent supplement has, I presume, ground up bone and tooth pieces as well as other nutrients and the body assimilates those for it's own use.

Think about how people used to make broth, they would put whole animal joints into the pot and cook it down.

I've taken a lot of it in the past and it helped.

I've just watched most of the video that you linked. The stuff I learned is scary, and I knew our government was bad... but this is beyond disgusting. I can't believe this is going on. I had no idea that some vaccines used fetuses, nor did I know the intentional confusion between immunizations and vaccinations. I think that "anti-vaxxers" should focus on this, instead of saying it causes autism. They would get so much further, and would be able to prove much more.

"One dentist told me that the reason the crown came off is that the tooth underneath had decayed. He pointed to a dark area on the x-ray as a sign of decay."

yes the xray thing is a scam. I look at where they say they see cavities and it all looks the same, these xrays are blurry and black and white and I have called bullshit on dentists and gotten into arguments over it. If the tooth hurts then I can believe it but no more drilling into healthy teeth for me.

It all looks the same to you because you aren't trained to look at radiographs. Cavities don't hurt until they reach the pulp, the idea is to remove them before that happens. Most dentists actually want to help you

I'm convinced toothpaste causes tooth decay. I have not used toothpaste for over 20 years now. Never had a cavity or a toothed ache. Never had anything wrong with my teeth. Everyone I know who does use toothpaste has had issues. The people who brush their teeth 2-3 times per day with toothpaste have had the worste teeth of everyone I know.

How do you clean your teeth then? Some folk methods?

I know a man in his 40 with something, who decided to be slavic pagan believer and abstain from all modern things and also stopped to eat meat (in harsh climate of Siberia). After half a year his teeth start to rot and decay, his skin turn yellow and he looked like 55 years old.

I've heard of people brushing with baking soda with about the same results as toothpaste. Never tried it myself.

I use a fluoride-free paste with neem in it.

I just brush with no paste and garggle mouth wash. I also don't eat sugary foods

fllouride makes teeth yellow and brittle. exactly opposite of what should be in toothpaste and water if trying to help teeth.

Source?

florosis

According to all the early google results florosis is from over exposure to fluoride during enamel development, typically in children under the age of 8.

Dentists. The auto mechanics of the medical field.

Yup. I once went from having eight cavities to miraculously only having two. It just depends on which dentist I see.

Dentistry is often a scam.

Think in terms of opportunity and motive:

The opportunity is there. They can say they saw a "cavity" on X-ray, which are open to interpretation, and then eliminate all physical evidence by drilling out the "cavity" and filling it. It's the perfect crime!

The motive is also there - money. More business = more profit. Dentists are usually small businesses who depend on their own selling and upselling of services for revenue.

A thousand upvotes for you.

The main reason for such a trend of dishonesty in dentistry is psychological. Dentistry is the epitome of a profession that one gets into solely for monetary reasons. Nobody wants to spend their life cleaning other people's mouths. This tends to attract particularly scummy individuals. They also feel justified in it because of the sense of resentment they feel for having to perform such tasks. Also the reason why dentistry is the profession with the highest rate of suicide.

This sort of thing has happened to me before as well. I had one dentist tell me I had 3 cavaties that needed to be filled or whatever. I ignore this since my teeth weren't bothering me and I hate the dentist. I then go to see a new dentist a year or so later and no cavities, I even asked them specifically and told them the story.

Fuckers are greedy criminals for the most part. They see your mouth, and they don't see a smiling, creating, communicating portal, they see :-$

My mom took me to a welfare dentist when I was a teen, he wanted to fill almost every tooth. Other dentist only said there was a problem with a couple. No serious cavities.

watch out for root canals. better to just pull the tooth. they need to ban root canals, you can do nerve damage, but then tons of specialists who do that would be out of work so the dentists won't admit that.

The thing though is with root canals you keep the alignment of your teeth ... If you've previously had braces your teeth will shift when you remove one of the teeth.

not worth risks. tooth will be dead and turn black and crumble within a few years anyway

Similar to this happened to my wife. We went to the dental school to see about getting a discounted price on a filling. The doctor at the school told her she has some problem with her roots and that every single tooth needed to be pulled out. I damn near shit my pants and promptly took her to a very expensive dentist who is a client of my employer. He confirmed my suspicion that there was nothing wrong with her roots and she only needed some very normal things done on the dental front.

Dental school is expensive and you gotta pay back those loans.

Wisdom teeth extraction is a billion dollar industry. Think about it this way: would you opt for an appendectomy 'just in case' it might cause you problems in the future?

I had a similar thing happen to me in Santa Rosa California. Report this dentist to your local state dentist regulatory board. I did a search on ddgo and this is where you might want to start: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dentists+regulatory+board&t=ffsb&atb=v35-2&ia=web

I've been having the same exact problem.

Don't get me started with this dentist who tried to sell me $10,000 braces. I'm an adult with perfectly straight teeth. What the hell do they want?

Recently, i read an article about a man who claimed he was moving to the different Cities that he scheduled Dentist appointments in. He said he had a type if insurance through his company that basically would not be questioned. Before he went out, he had two dentists give him an honest assessment. Almost all the Dentist on the East Coast lied to him. In middle American, there was more honesty. The Dental association had some pathetic reply about it being a judgement call. He even went to a student Dentist who got it right 100%. Always get a second opinion before paying for the work.

an operating room nurse told me that if someone needs to lose a leg to a car accident or something, a podiatrist will come in the middle of the night and take the foot off first to rack up some billable hours.

Just type in google.. most denstist re use used braces on new patients... ta da...

Isn't there a homeopathic way to rebuild your teeth and naturally heal cavities,etc? The dental industry as a whole is crooked. You walk into Target or Walmart and they have a whole aisle dedicated to fancy toothpastes, brushes, mouth wash, etc.

Good post.

Isn't there a homeopathic way to rebuild your teeth and naturally heal cavities,etc? The dental industry as a whole is crooked. You walk into Target or Walmart and they have a whole aisle dedicated to fancy toothpastes, brushes, mouth wash, etc.

Good post.

My wife went to the dentist for teeth cleaning and braces just in aug, came home with 4 pulled teeth, a root canal and no braces, shit was 4K. Few weeks later went in for braces... 8k... this has been a fun year. I told her to get a second opinion but she thought his opinion was all she needed.

Insurance fraud.....that is all.

When a dentist does an examination and looks at your xrays, each one is going to see things according to their own opinion.

Imagine posting an article right here. Everybody reads the same article. But the comments are all different. You can expect some similarities in the comments, but everyone will always have their own opinion.

It's the same with dentists.

When I asked why I couldn't have just an ordinary cleaning, which is covered by insurance, they said it would be "unethical" to give me less than optimal care. This deep cleaning involves pushing a metal utensil under your gums to clean out the tartar that is supposedly creating pockets there

The first cleaning sounds like a prophy/polish. This cleans off the top part of your tooth and it's easy to do. The "metal utensil" you mentioned is a periodontal scaler and it's used for cleaning tartar off the roots of your teeth.

Many people get deposits of tartar below the gumline. You can see them and they don't hurt, but over time they can cause the bone to "erode" away from around your roots. Lose enough bone and the tooth eventually gets wobbly.

Having said that...

Yeah, dentists aren't there to run a charity. Every dental practice has a bunch of different costs. Staff salaries, rent, supplies, insurance etc. So when you show up with dental insurance, it represents an opportunity to make money.

Imagine having a meal plan that covers 80% of the bill at a restaurant. You show that to the waiter. Obviously some waiters are gonna show you the most expensive stuff on the menu.

Remember, you said you had dental insurance. To get paid for doing the treatment, a dentist always has to send in xrays/treatment plan and an invoice for the work. Insurance companies always have people working for them who compare the dentist's treatment plan to what they see on the xrays.

It is for this reason that very few dentists will make a bogus diagnosis. Very few dentists will perform treatment that is absolutely not needed. Those that do wind up getting in trouble at some point.

tldr; Many dentists will try and make as much money as they can, but they aren't out of control ... doing stuff that doesn't need to be done. A lot of what needs to be done (and doesn't need to be) comes down to variations in opinion/diagnosis.

ps. You can consider this comment to be reliable because I'm a dentist.

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Yeah, that's what everybody says... until they get a toothache.

People seem to like MD's so much more. But I've known plenty of med students and physicians and believe me, they're just as motivated by $$$ as anyone else.

Cleanings are cheap as hell even without insurance, $50-150. Why say you have insurance at all. Seems not worth the hassle for a few bucks saved. Most people just need frequent cleanings anyway

why pay 50-150 when it is covered by insurance. not that that's a huge amount of money but zero is even better

Because if someone has insurance not finding something wrong is practically leaving money on the table. Unethical dentists take advantage of it and eventually compete ethical dentists out of the market.

great point

How is this a conspiracy exactly? Everyone knows that salesmen gonna sell.

Salesmen selling shit you don't need that involves fucking body modification? I'll bet you'd have a different definition of conspiracy if you were duped into paying thousands of dollars for an entirely unecessary procedure by "professionals" you trusted.

In the dental arena, this kind of bullshit is called "creative diagnosis", and it is a big deal. Altering someone's body for no reason whatsoever other than to make your employing corporation some bucks is a serious departure from acceptability.

"Salesmen gonna sell" is nowhere near an appropriate response to this kind of fraud.

one major piece of proof is a I learned dentists, unlike doctors, don't need to make an oath to do no harm.

Shady business practices are expected. If you could prove that there is a group of dentists that are doing this for more nefarious purposes, other than to get more money out of customers, then it would be a conspiracy. As described, it's more malpractice than conspiracy.

Edited for clarity.

I think we could talk about salesmen being a conspiracy too if they have a guild and thousands agree to lie about their product.

The profit motive needs to be taken out of the medical Industry.

Pay doctors a salary , don't overwork them , and have every procedure evaluated by 3rd parties.

Medical Error is reported to be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.

My dentist keeps trying to get my to "upgrade" to motorized, rotating toothbrushes, because they do a better job cleaning the teeth. At my last visit (two weeks ago) I was told by both the hygienist and the dentist that my teeth looked pretty good (and hygienist even asked me which type of toothbrush I was using).

My point is that within the last year, I was able to take my teeth (which didn't look as good as they should have) and brush them with my regular old toothbrush to make them look "pretty good" a year later.