This evening I had a rather unexpected conversation with a lovely woman in a restaurant. She was a retired dentist and commented on how nice my teeth were. She had amazingly beautiful teeth for eighty-five years old. She said that in all of her eighty-five years, she has never had a cavity, and that her former clients enjoyed the same success. She said that all her clients had to do was follow her instructions \u2013 and no cavities. Her first instruction? Brush your teeth \u2013 before you leave the restaurant! I admit, I had never thought of doing this, and I really wasn\u2019t thinking of starting now, but looking at her teeth set the scale to \u201cmaybe.\u201d Her intact, original set of teeth was a stronger testament to me than any toothpaste commercial, dentist\u2019s admonishment, or health column I had ever ingested. I wanted what she had \u2013 to be like her at eighty-five. And she had done it. So when she shared the secret of how she had achieved, I paid attention. She also said that she was healthy and strong, and in ten years, she wanted to be just as strong. I believed her. When I got home, I brushed my teeth. I even flossed and rinsed with fluoride; that\u2019s usually Gold Star treatment for teeth in my house. But tonight, that became the minimum. The floor instead of the ceiling. The bar had been raised to before-exiting- brushing becoming normal. I began to think about where I could stash toothbrushes and a pocket-sized travel toothbrush. In the few minutes we spoke, the dentist had changed my outlook on dental care \u2013 without even trying \u2013 by leading by example.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening I had a rather unexpected conversation with a lovely woman in a restaurant. She was a retired dentist and commented on how nice my teeth were. She had amazingly beautiful teeth for eighty-five years old. She said that in all of her eighty-five years, she has never had a cavity, and that her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[594,595],"class_list":{"0":"post-5503","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leadership","8":"tag-example","9":"tag-teeth"},"yoast_head":"\n