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Since dental school, all my instructors and mentors have stressed the importance of my posture while working on patients, to prevent any back and neck injuries.
While I heard these people give me advice, I would constantly think, “Oh, that won’t happen to me. I work out and stay active.”
Between dental school and my professional dental career, I’ve been practicing dentistry for almost 30 years.
For years, I disregarded any “proper posture” while practicing.
All I cared about was getting the best line of sight that would allow me to perform the best dentistry possible.
Sometimes that would require me to twist and bend into all kinds of weird positions.
Throughout the years, I’ve felt pain in my back but felt that if I waited long enough, it would go away on its own. So, I never looked into it and pretty much ignored it.
Lately, this back pain of mine has lingered longer than in the past. I decided to get it checked out.
According to my doctor, this back pain is completely linked to my bad posture while I work on patients. They instructed me how to protect my back with proper positioning and gave me a series of exercises to help with the pain.
Within 2 weeks, my back pain was completely eliminated.
I had been avoiding the doctor because I was imagining the problem to be a lot more complex than it was.
I imagined that I would be told that I was going to need surgery and have lifelong back problems. But the solution was actually a lot simpler than I ever imagined.
We see this in dentistry all the time. Many people will avoid going to the dentist because they imagine that their mouth is in a lot worse shape than it actually is.
In our heads, we manufacture these stories to have the worst outcome possible. But the majority of the time, we’ve exaggerated the issue and we’re wrong.
Getting started is always the hardest part.
If you haven’t been to the dentist in a while and would like to get evaluated, please visit us at mydente.com and call 773-292-1911 to schedule your appointment.
Floss Like a Madman!
Emilio "Back to Work" Couret
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