Hey all,

On Monday, David, Noah, and I all went for haircuts. Here are some photos.

Now, THAT is a mullet. Business in the front, party in the back.

He almost has a real comb-over going on.

(That is my sister. She owns a hair salon in Orlando.)

"Okay, you stand in front of him and distract him, and you stand behind me and hold his shoulders."

"Daddy, I love my new haircut."

Noah, Noah, Noah. Man, I am telling you he is one funny six year old. In the car on our way home from getting hair cut, he said, "Dad, when David came out of mommy's belly button, could you see inside?"

"You mean could I see her guts and stuff?"

"Yeah", he said.

I said, "Yeah, I could see all of her guts." While I am saying this, I am thinking is it time to tell him that kids don't come out of the belly button. So I continue, "Noah, I think it is time I told you that babies don't come out of the bellybutton."

"Well, where do they come out of?" This is where I almost said, "Ask your mother," but I was in this so I might as well go all the way with it.

I said, "The babies come out of the pee pee hole." He said, "WHAAAATTT?!!!!" Listen, I was not going to get into all the parts of the anatomy with my six-year-old; pee pee hole is simple.

I hear him back there talking to himself, "How do the?... What can you?... David came out of the?..."

"Dad," he said, "How can a baby come out of there?"

"Well" I said, "God made women very strong and their skin stretches to let the baby out." I said, "It hurts, but they can do it."

"WOAH!!" he said. It was quiet in the car for a minute or two, and I wondered why the questions about babies, because I know he didn't want to know all that.

So I asked him, "Why did you want to know about babies and mommy's guts and everything?"

He said, "I just wanted to know if you could see the stomach and if you could see the stomach, could you see food in the stomach?" So all that because he wanted to see if you can see food in your stomach. I am telling you, he is hilarious to be around.

I ran 22 miles this weekend and I did great. The Chicago Marathon is less than 3 weeks away. I am not saying I am going to break any records or anything, but at least I feel better about it. I think I did so well because the weather is changing a bit here. It was 74 degrees at 4am on Saturday. This is a big change from 82 like it was last month. I am a sweater so being a little cool is better on my body (let's not get too excited: it is supposed to be 92 this afternoon). And Chicago will be much cooler than here... I hope. So I am excited about that.

Topic -
BPA... You guys been hearing much about this?

Well, it is a chemical whose derivatives are in dental sealants. And they are saying that after a sealant is done this derivative metabolizes into actual BPA. Who are "they?" Well, all you have to know is that CNN and other major networks are running news bits on the controversy regarding dental sealants, all sparked from an article published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

BPA is bisphosphenol-A, a toxic chemical that is an endocrine disruptor. BPA is used in many plastics and also used in the lining of metal cans, and they think it might be linked to a variety of medical conditions in adults and children. Some physicians say it can cause "disruption" in very small doses.

Don't think I am all that smart and I know all this off the top of my head. I just did a Google search to get all this information. The article I was reading quoted a doctor saying that "you can get more estrogen in your mother's kiss than you can get from a sealant."

The article also went on to say that the biologist Fredrick von Saal, the well-known critic of BPA from Missouri, still had his kids' teeth sealed.

But after I read this and let it sit for awhile,I started to think. What if this thing got traction? ( We all know it doesn't take a lot for something to get traction. It doesn't need facts or truth to get traction.)

If this thing got traction, do you know how much trouble our industry would be in?
If BPA is plastic and most of the stuff we use is resin - resin fillings, resin cements, sealants, composite crowns, all the composite veneers - this is all going to come into question? WOW.

Think of the world of crap our profession would have to go through. What would our profession be without resin? Amalgam was getting a bad rap in the mid to late 90s,
but we had an alternative that everyone loved. It was easy to say, "I just won't use amalgam if it is going to cause my patients to be concerned."

But we don't have that alternative to resin. Gold, ceramics but that is it, and both of those are much more expensive. Can you imagine if some needed 8 fillings, and you had to do 8 gold inlays? You have just increased the cost of dentistry by 500%. (Maybe more, as gold continues to go up past $1600 an ounce).

I have never been the "world is falling in" kind of guy. But I don't know about this stuff. I want to hide my head in the sand and hope it goes away. But I know how media is, I know our profession, and I know there is a big to-do about access.

This could be a pretty bad thing. I am not saying I want to put bad things in my patients' bodies. No - I want the scientists to find that it is not a bad deal. I want my products to be safe to my patients. I want to go on, and my life not to change. Is that too much to ask?

Have you heard of this? Do you know enough about this that you can enlighten us? Have patients started asking you about this? If you don't know about this, you might want to brush up on it because people are going to start asking you about it.

Have a great Wednesday.
John

P.S. I am going to the Florida Academy of Cosmetic Dentists annual meeting this weekend - should be fun.

P.P.S. I just realized the ADA annual meeting, for which I have signed up to volunteer (I was supposed to host a little-known speaker named Gordon Christensen), and have signed up and paid for 7 classes at, is on the same weekend as the Chicago Marathon.

I swear, I am such a dumbass sometimes.