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Could adding sleep apnea services to your practice be a life saver for patients? In this episode, we've brought on Dr. Dar Radfar to uncover why dentists are uniquely positioned to identify and treat sleep apnea, a commonly overlooked yet critical health concern. By breaking down how dentists can implement sleep apnea treatments into their practice using oral appliances, Dr. Radfar emphasizes the ethical responsibility and the immense health benefits this can afford to patients. Throughout our conversation, the importance of a systematic approach and patient education shines as a key takeaway, with Dar weaving in anecdotal insights from his personal experience in coaching and seminars.
The episode delivers profound insights not only into the moral imperatives but also sheds light on the practicalities and financial benefits of adopting sleep apnea treatments. Dr. Radfar's recounting of his harrowing personal story about a car accident vividly illustrates the potential lifesaving impacts of proper sleep apnea diagnosis. His advice is clear and actionable, ending on a motivating note urging dentists to invest in ongoing education and practical implementation to make a real difference in their patients' lives.
Don't miss this episode – your approach to sleep apnea treatment could profoundly impact your practice and your patient's well-being!
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Website: https://radseminar.com/
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Michael: Hey Dar, so talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning?
Dar: Alright, so if you're not doing sleep apnea treatment in your office, I think you're unethically treating your patients, or lack thereof. We look in the mouth as dentists and hygienists and dental assistants, and we are capable of identifying if someone has signs or patterns of sleep apnea or snoring issues.
when I teach my courses on how to do sleep apnea implementation and screening and treatment and practices, people in the audience are shocked how many patients are walking in through the door. And as dentists, we see them two, three, three, four times a year. So it behooves us to be able to look in the mouth, look at the patient and go, Hey, Michael, do you sleep well at night?
Anyone tell you that you snore, do you feel tired throughout the day? And it's really our job because there's only really three major treatments sleep and snoring. And that's a CPAP machine, which everybody loves, sarcastically speaking, and oral appliance that brings the jaw forward and couple of different kinds of surgery.
Guess who can only do the oral appliance, the dentist. So we are the only ones that can actually treat a medical disease called sleep apnea. So, The a DA is pushing the screening to become mandatory, and I believe all dentists should definitely be doing this on a Monday morning.
Michael: do you feel or practice owners aren't doing it?
Dar: I think it's a lack of implementation of systems, worrying about where do I send this home sleep study can I do it? the answer is yes, you're obligated to do it. If a patient has diagnosis for sleep, there's one of the treatment modalities is an oral appliance as deemed by the American Medical Association for dentists to make.
the hindrance here is the dentistry is easy to make the impression and the bite and the adjustments that I teach. It's super easy. It's as easy as doing sealants in dentistry. It's really the systems and the system is what do I do with the medical billing? have my own medical billing company that I refer to.
never recommend anyone doing it in house unless that's all you're doing. And then you can have your team dedicated to that. But if you're busy doing dentistry, if staff is busy sending out dental insurance claims or remotely, there's dental billing companies. Now, why not have a medical billing company remotely do that?
And at the end of the day, Mike, it's not just about medical billing. You can charge cash. We, as dentists charge cash for Invisalign, for ortho, for implants, for three, four, five, six, 7, 000 for these types of procedures. Why not 3, 000 for an oral appliance?
Michael: You do seminars, right?
Dar: Correct. Rad seminar. com. I have a list of all the seminars that I have, and I also have a coaching program. So when someone takes my full day course, that's not it. I teach them how to implement systems. We do weekly meetings 30 minutes a week. for total of six months to make sure that it's successful.
Mike, the biggest thing here is we're saving lives 12 to 15 years off your life. If you have sleep apnea and you're not treated for it, 12 to 15 years. Five times higher risk of cancer of any kind. If you're not treated for sleep apnea, you know, a university of Wisconsin study reported a few years ago.
So not only are you saving lives, but also the offices that I train about a quarter million dollars the first year to their practice, if they're open at least three days a week. that's a lot of good ROI and what we call R O L or return on life.
Michael: I like that. So then, have you seen this, especially in your seminars or maybe just in general, Doctor goes, they get trained, they're hyped, they're excited to do this, and then it slowly starts dying down. The team's like, hey, it's slowing us down, we're not doing as great, we don't know what to do, right? And then it just ends there. And so that's the reason why they're saying, hey, we tried sleep apnea.
We're trying it, but it just doesn't work in our community. Is that true?
Dar: Yeah. since 2014 was my first course and when I used to do is just do courses then they would go home and on Monday they would try to implement. realistically, it was when we were doing follow ups with these doctors from the medical billing company and the home sleep testing coming to try to onboard them so they can refer home sleep tests to them do the medical billing for them, about 15 percent dentists would actually start doing this out of the.
People who came to the course I believe without any arrogance, I have one of the best courses out there because it's real it's easy. It's implementation is easy. It's basically you come back on Monday and there's a patient that's upset and staff doesn't show the crown doesn't fit.
So people get, bottled up with general dentistry stuff. And that's why I created the coaching program. and there's nothing out there like it.
Michael: Really
Dar: holds your hand after you do the instructional videos. Now you can do it on, your own. It's six hours of video for the doctor, 25 minutes of video for staff and hygienists to be able to say, okay, now I have the information.
So now it's about implementation and just like any great athlete Michael Jordan or Steph Curry or Kobe Bryant had, coaches, even though they shot the ball. They still had coaches reminding them to take a thousand free throws every week. And it's the same thing, reminding you to do the screening, reminding you, this is the home sleep test.
What have you discovered? What troubleshooting have you had when a patient says no to this or yes to this or has jaw problems or, or, any sort of other issues like dry mouth. How do you resolve for that when we're in the mouthpiece? So there's a lot of little things that are in the video, but we, kind of forget until we start playing the game push the doctors to play the game.
When they see the outcomes coming and they get on I call it cruise control after six months, then they go month to month with me and I'm available for any more coaching on a monthly basis.
Michael: Nice. Okay. So where do you see when it comes to implementation, especially with a sleep apnea, most drop the ball?
Dar: the most drop ball is just basically being, let's call it not shy and opening your mouth. Elijah Desmond, my buddy and mastermind mentor. said to me one time, close mouths, don't get fed. So if you keep your mouth closed, you're not going to get, the response that you want and help the humans out there that are truly suffering from being able to sleep next to someone to snoring issues, to high blood pressure, to acid reflux, to cancer risks, to heart attacks, stroke, depression, anxiety, mental health connections.
And so we are shy sometimes to, bring it up and say, Hey, see a little bit of scalloping on the side of the tongue shows maybe some thrusting of the tongue when you're sleeping at night, you sleep. Okay, Mike, you feel like you get enough air? You wake up feeling refreshed.
Are you tired throughout the day? Or I see, you know, grinding of your lower front teeth. That's indicative of the jaw grinding forward at night when you sleep, that could mean that your breathing is altered and you're trying to do your own kind of CPR movement with your jaw, bringing your jaw forward, your teeth are grinding on the front.
Can I help you with your sleep? That's it. the answer is either a yes or a no. we get rejected in dentistry and in life when we recommend other types of treatment modalities. And I kind of brush it off when it's okay. You don't want to do a crown. Okay. Half the cusp is fractured. no pain yet.
Nine out of 10 may say yes. One says no, but people are really suffering energy levels being low to sleeping in other bedrooms. This is a different, Beast of practice. And so if we can actually just screen them properly, which is the number one thing, open your mouth and then know who do you refer to if they don't have a sleep study, which, talk about all that handed off to a home sleep testing company, no equipment to buy nothing like that.
It's just know the knowledge and execute. And so I think that's the problem is just opening up the conversation because you think someone's complaining about their finances or their work and this, and you're too shy to bring it up because you don't want to scare your patients away. I there's a reason why I got into this, Mike.
And I don't know if you know my story. I fell asleep with the wheel in 2009. I crashed my car into a tree, not knowing I had sleep apnea. I wasn't overweight. so if someone were to look in my mouth and say, Hey, Dar, how's your sleep? Are you feeling tired? I'd be like, yeah, you know what dentist?
I actually am feeling a little bit more tired. Well, I can help you. Maybe you can do a home sleep test. You don't have to go to a lab anymore. And if I actually executed and said that I may have not had that accident. What if I hit somebody? 4 percent of crashes occur because people fall asleep at the wheel and it can happen to anyone, including our patients.
So it behooves us to jump in and try to at least screen the patient to be able to see what's going on.
Michael: So screening the patient is like the best way to not just, I guess for like lack of a better word, sell it, but at the same time to. Bring awareness to let them know to say like, Hey, we're not going to drop the ball here because Your mouth is showing these symptoms.
Does your life reflect that and if they're like, you know what? Yeah, I am not sleeping Well, I'm not doing that. Now's the point where we do what we can just oh, let's do a Yeah,
Dar: the screening is there, but also like when people are a part of my program we have emails ready to go that sends through the, software program, like dental Intel or we've, when they confirm their appointments, they also have weekly emails and say, did you know snoring can affect not only, your bed partner, but also your bed partner's life expectancy.
The person who sleeps next to a snore is not sleeping well and waking up a bunch of times that's going to affect their overall health. Come in and see Dr. Rad for a complimentary consult. He now treats snoring and sleep apnea. Next email. congratulations Dr. Rad for finishing the course and being able to treat snoring and sleep apnea with an oral appliance.
For those of you who have been tested and don't like your CPAP machine or haven't been home sleep tested at all, come in and have Dr. Rad do a complimentary consult for you. So educating your patients before they even come in. Through emails once every other week for once a week, giving them information like the five times high risk of cancer.
Come on in, let's do an evaluation or bring it up at your next checkup appointment. These are ways to be able to touch your patients a lot of these patients have no idea that an oral appliance is a solution, let alone that you're capable of doing it.
Michael: Have you seen this? People would say like, I'd rather snore a little bit more than have that big machine.
Dar: Oh yeah, absolutely. It's like, I'm not going to wear that thing, but also Mike, think about it, you're single you're dating be adults for a minute.
you get intimate and putting that mask on let alone traveling with that to go to your partner's. Home. It's so much easier to carry your mouthpiece with you to at least reduce the story, if not eliminate it depending on how severe, 80 percent of patients mild to moderate sleep apnea, which the mouthpiece works brilliantly for them.
And even severe patients, we can get their scores down to a mild to moderate in most cases. And so, it's not for everyone, but CPAPs not for everyone. You know, it's a mild case, I have patients, I'm like why did the medical doctor even give you a CPAP when your apnea is so mild? And they come in mouthpiece, one shot, you put it in, they go home, they're like, Oh my God, this is so much easier than wearing the CPAP machine, travel purposes, camping on an airplane, hotels, keeping the machine clean.
That's it. You've got nothing else. You've got the mouthpiece, you've got the CPAP and the surgery is very invasive. And you have to pretty much be very severe to end up having any sort of surgery called Inspire, which is a hypoglossal nerve stimulation device that's put onto your chest muscle there.
And then there's also some rotor rooter of your throat called the triple UP where they remove the tonsils, the uvula. I mean, It's not easy for the surgical part as well.
Michael: that's a good way to also educate the patient is like, Hey man, You want to go camping? so much, I guess we can talk about this, but any final pieces of advice that you'd like to give to our audience.
Dar: first thing is, get educated, have the ammunition to understand what to look for when you look in the mouth and the medical history and then all of a sudden you see like these patients coming in with class five lesions near the gum line, the little or acid reflux and you see dentin exposure and it's It's not just dentistry now. It's, we need to see what the root cause is. And part of the root cause clenching and grinding of your teeth over 50 percent of people who grind their teeth is because they have a fight or flight response because they're not getting up oxygen. You open up the airway, their TMJ symptoms actually get better.
And so educate yourself. Once you get educated and you understand how to do this, the rest is implementation. helped over 3000 dental offices. Now I'm open to help more just because if I can help one dentist and he or she can help dozens, if not hundreds of their patients we all come together, we sleep better.
we're not as grumpy. We're more kind to each other in the mornings and throughout the day. And we have more energy for our loved ones. For working out, at our work, being more focused and alert. it's, our duty as dentists to be able to do this.
And it also makes some good money too, if that's one of your motivating factor.
Michael: Nice. Awesome. I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?
Dar: if you go to rad seminar dot com r a d seminar dot com there's a chat there that you can throw message and it comes directly to my cell phone.
It also shows my virtual courses as well. If you want to do all the cart stuff, I also do webinars once a month. For the masses to come on just get some new information and updates. So I'd love to have you guys on, and then we'll do a call together once you send me a message and I can show everyone how to be able to do this in their own practice.
whatever I do for the six months, I guarantee that the investment that the dentist puts in, they get it back. I've never had to give a full refund or any refund whatsoever to any dentists out there. That's how confident we are that. It works it's profitable.
Michael: Thank you so much, Doc, for being with us. It's been a pleasure. And thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.
Dar: Thank you guys.