“Zero Sensitivity Whitening!”
With special guest – Dr. Marty Zase
Richard Madow: Hi, this is Dr. Richard Madow and our guest today is Dr. Marty Zase. How are you doing, Marty?
Marty Zase: I’m doing great, Rich. It’s a beautiful day in Connecticut, and I’m having a ball.
Richard Madow: It’s always a beautiful day in Connecticut. It’s a beautiful day down here in Baltimore. You may think it’s down South but we don’t really feel like it’s down South; you Yankees think we’re Southern. So we’ve got the North meets the South, and I’m really excited to have you. We were just discussing before we went live here, that you did an interview for our series, but it was many, many years ago, and it is just fantastic to have you back.
Marty Zase: Well, thanks, Rich, I’m really glad to be back and looking forward to having a conversation with you.
Richard Madow: Excellent. We actually reconnected in Connecticut when Dave and I were doing a lecture for the Connecticut State Dental Association. And what a fantastic group that was, beautiful facility, they had about 800 people in the room, met some really cool people, and it was great to reconnect with you there as well.
Marty Zase: And you also kept us thoroughly entertained, so thank you for a day of great entertainment. A little learning and a little knowledge, but a lot of entertainment; it was a fabulous day, thanks.
Richard Madow: Well, thanks, it’s great to hear that. So I know some of our listeners were probably not onboard many years ago when you were last on the series. So I’ll give a quick rundown of some of your accomplishments, which you are incredibly accomplished. You are accredited by the AACD, of course, which is the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, a past president of that organization, and you were also on the board of accreditation examiners for the AACD; you’re a master of the AGD, MAGD. You also got a cool award from the AGD, I wasn’t even aware that this award actually existed: The Lifelong Learning and Service Recognition. Whose butt did you have to kiss to get that one? What is that all about?
Marty Zase: You don’t have to actually kiss any butt, but after you become a master, if you do another 500 hours and also do 100 hours of community service to the dental community at large and outside of that, then you are eligible for it, and then they vote on that. There’s been about a hundred of them, so far, hundred, hundred-fifty, maybe.
Richard Madow: Wow, you’re really in elite company. Congratulations, that is fantastic.
Marty Zase: Thank you.
Richard Madow: And you were president of the New England Academy. Okay, that’s enough. I think we get the picture that you are not only a great dentist and a great teacher but also really involved in moving the profession forward and have been duly rewarded. So great job, Marty, way to go.
Marty Zase: Thank you very much, Rich.
.
Richard Madow: Okay. We’re gonna talk about a fantastic topic today, but before that, I just have a couple weird questions for you.
Marty Zase: I like weird questions.
Richard Madow: Okay, good. Now people listening, of course they already know that we’re in Baltimore and you’re in Connecticut, but what they don’t know is that we’re recording this on a Monday afternoon, which is actually unusual for me when I’m doing an interview with an actual practicing dentist because it seems like most practicing dentists choose either Wednesday or Friday for their day off. But I think for quite some time you have chosen to make Monday your day off from clinical dentistry. Why did you make that decision?
Marty Zase: Well, probably two reasons, the best one, of course, is I never have to work on Monday; there is no Monday, and that’s a great start. But the real reason that I ended up doing it is that I work occasional Saturdays, and this way I always have a long weekend, even if I work on a Saturday, so that’s great. Second thing, everybody else is working so I can go shopping or whatever else it is that I want to do, and there’s nobody in the stores, there’s nobody around, so I can get what I want. I go in; I get out. I shop like a guy.
Richard Madow: That’s a great point. I think most of the world slows down on Monday because everybody is in that back-to-work mode, so very cool move.
Marty Zase: Yeah, my Tuesday is my Monday; it doesn’t seem like a Monday.
Richard Madow: Well, my Friday is my Wednesday, so, you know, whatever. The second thing is, I’ve seen a picture of your closet full of Hawaiian shirts, and when we…
Marty Zase: Which one did you see? Did you see the short sleeve closet or the long sleeve closet?
Richard Madow: Oh my goodness, you have two closets that differentiate your Hawaiian shirts?
Marty Zase: Well, it gets cold in New England, so in the wintertime I have to wear the long sleeve ones.
Richard Madow: You’re definitely known for wearing Hawaiian shirts. It’s funny, when I took the stage in Connecticut, I didn’t see it before, I wasn’t into the room much, as soon as I got on stage, I could see from about 20 miles away. Is that why you wear Hawaiian shirts; you like to be easily recognized in a crowd?
Marty Zase: It’s kind of a camouflage. There is a reason why they call them loud shirts, you know.
Richard Madow: How long have you been doing the Hawaiian shirts thing?
Marty Zase: Oh, a very long time. A radio DJ in Connecticut started a thing called Hawaiian Shirt Fridays many, many centuries ago. And I got a lot of Hawaiian shirts for Fridays, and I have no children, so after a while I had more shirts than there were Fridays, and that developed into me wearing Hawaiian shirts every day. I tell you one thing though, it does set my patients at ease. I come in in a Hawaiian shirt. I’m not sitting in a white shirt: they don’t have that whole syndrome with the doctor coming in. And people stop by my office just to see what I’m wearing, just to see if my shirt matches my socks that day.
Richard Madow: That’s great, you’ve actually become a form of marketing.
Marty Zase: It is.
Richard Madow: Unbelievable. Okay, those were my two odd questions. Now we’re getting– I don’t know if I should call them normal or not because you’ve always had some interesting answers to everything. But our topic is “Zero Sensitivity Whitening” and other bleaching pearls, and you’ve really over the years become not just an expert in whitening, but somebody who’s really, really been touting the fact that you can do whitening with absolutely zero sensitivity. Is that your promise for us all today?
Marty Zase: My promise is that if you’ll really follow the protocols, you’ll be able to do that exactly.
Richard Madow: Fantastic. Well, let’s start with kind of a little technique that you have, maybe you developed this because maybe you didn’t only use it in your practice, but because dentists have been saying to you after your course, some are, like, hey, it sounds great, but I don’t do that many whitening cases; how can I do more whitening cases? What’s the secret to get my patients excited about whitening? How do you do it?
Marty Zase: Well, of course, the secret is that you’ve got to get their attention. The question that I ask dentists all the time is: Would you like to do more cosmetic dentistry? Except for the oral surgeons, everybody always says yes. I just tell them if you do the thing I’m about to tell you for the next two weeks, you’ll be doing more cosmetic dentistry in two months, and I can absolutely guarantee that that’s true.
Richard Madow: So what is, what’s the secret?
Marty Zase: The secret is, believe it or not, just go out and buy a bleach guide shade tab system that the VITA people make: the 3D bleach guide. And what it is, is a set of all of the shades that we normally use in dentistry, set up by value, but it’s very evenly dispersed so it’s an even chain from very light to very dark. Look at all the shades, and you have one template for each one; when you hold it up, it looks like a colorful harmonica that goes from very light to very dark. I have my hygienist show that to the patient, then hand the patient a mirror, and then the two of them together pick a shade. Usually they do it before I get in but sometimes they wait until I get into the room to check it, which is what my preference is. I check and say, “Let’s find the one that’s closest to tooth number 8.” Now these are only shades by value, which means it’s about whiteness or brightness, it’s not about how yellow it is or gray. So if it’s just value, we can all recognize that: old or young, male or female, value we get: that’s how bright it is. So they all go and they pick it and the hygienist looks at it, she has the shade in her mind and the patient does it, and the patient and the hygienist and I every single time either hit it exactly the same or be within one shade of each other. So we take the shade and we write it down and the patient would usually say something like: why’d you do that? And we say, we mark down everything else about your mouth; we look at your gums; we look at your teeth; we look at the hard tissues; we thought it would be a good idea that we know what color your teeth are and see if they change as you get older. And all of a sudden you start to get their attention and they look at the shade tab and say, do people have teeth that are that dark? Yeah. Oh, I’m glad I’m not there, and some have them that white? Oh, yeah, you see some of those folks on TV. And before you know it, the conversation starts to get into their mind about the fact that the color of teeth is variable, and then it comes down to maybe there is a choice. And then you have to do the most important thing there is and that’s ask them the question like, do you like the color of your teeth? Now that you’ve looked at them, do you like the color of your teeth? And most of the time the answer is going to be, well, they could be a little lighter. And the next job is to say, and is there anything else? Then typically their finger is in their mouth and they’re pointing to their crown and they say, that one has a really dark line at the bottom, or these teeth look gray, and they’ll go on and on. All you keep saying is, is there anything else? And they are diagnosing their case without knowing that’s what they are doing, and when they get all through, you say, if you’d like to, I can help you with that. Then there is a really soft sell, and they sit there looking at you and you say, you know, we shouldn’t discuss it now; you’re sitting in the hygienist’s chair, so why don’t come on back and you can see me, and we can talk about it and we’ll go over how long things will take. We can talk about the cost, we can talk about benefit of it, and I’m not gonna charge you. Come on in for a no-cost consultation. And in that very short time, which takes less time than I just spent with you telling you about it, you actually got the patient interested in a possible change in their mouth. Some people are gonna say, hey, you know what, I think my teeth look fine. That’s the end of the question; you just turn around and say, we’ll ask you again in case things change when I see you six months from now. If they are interested, set them up and do a consult. If they start to do bleaching, and everybody knows that bleaching is the doorway of cosmetic dentistry, and if we get them in that doorway and they start looking at their teeth, that’s when they start saying, I’d like to get rid of that silver filling here, or I’d like to get that crown changed, or whatever it is that comes next, and you’re on your way to doing more cosmetic dentistry. It’s all about asking a couple of questions and get them to look at their teeth and pay attention.
Richard Madow: Very cool, and it’s absolutely no pressure, no hard sell, I mean, the thing that so many dentists are afraid of when it comes to talking about cosmetic dentistry with their patients.
Marty Zase: Absolutely, and that’s the whole point. I’m not really a hard-sell guy. I want the patient to select it because I want to believe that patients will do what they want. We don’t do what we think they need; they do what they want. So the idea is to present them with some ideas so that they want to do it.
Richard Madow: So now, do you often pull them right from the hygiene room right to your office if you have time, or do you have them kind of marinate on it for a few days?
Marty Zase: I seldom pull them out of the hygiene room and pull them into my private office, if you will, and then have that discussion, unless the time is open and we’re all through with that hygiene patient. I think it’s more important for me to get out of the room and let the hygienist finish up whatever it is that she’s doing. Dentistry reinforces from the second person, so the hygienist reinforces what I’ve said. They may have a conversation that they may not have with me, and then later they’ll come back and they’ll see me. I don’t think I have to lasso them and then Velcro them to a chair.
Richard Madow: You know, Velcro is not so great. Maybe some packing tape.
Marty Zase: It makes too much noise when they get up.
Richard Madow: Exactly. Let me ask you something real quickly about the VITA bleach guide 3D Master. Are you saying that it’s by value, are you saying it’s not with the A’s and the B’s and the 1’s and the 2’s? What’s the designation?
Marty Zase: Right, their whole 3D Master system was set on the things that they call like: 1M2, 1M1, 2M2. People have seen some of those; they were the colors that first started I think with Empress some years ago. And they were looking at what these shades were, and they decided that it was better to have true colors on it with the true difference between them, that was very defined scientifically, and that’s the difference. As opposed to the old VITA shades, the A1’s and the A2’s, those had multiple shades in each tab; you know, like a typical A2 shape tab has six different colors in it and most people don’t know that. So these are a single color in each shade and it’s very obvious when you look at it how it’s made. And that VITA guide, the bleach guide, that’s the best investment I’ve made in years in my practice.