A Multifactorial Approach to Staying Healthy as a Dental Hygienist - Part II

You're listening to The Dr. Phil Klein Dental Podcast from Viva Learning.com. Welcome to the show. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. Today we'll be discussing how to incorporate yoga, breathing, and meditation as a form of professional self-care in conjunction with proper equipment and ergonomics to help build a routine that leads to better long-term career satisfaction and personal wellness. It's very different for us to talk about yoga because it's not something we've ever talked about on this show. So I'm really excited about hearing about it. Our guest is Schelli Stedke, who has worked in many areas of dentistry, including clinical care. She has a master's degree in dental hygiene education. And we should also note she recently gained her certification as a registered yoga teacher. She has a passion for helping her fellow dental professionals stay healthy and well for the duration of their career. Schelli, it's really a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you, Dr. Phil. It's a pleasure to be here today. So once equipment and control factors are optimized, how do you create good habits to reinforce your physical health throughout the day? So that's a great question. I think creating good habits in our work environment is pretty much just like creating good habits anywhere else in our life. We talked a lot about musculoskeletal disorders that are prevalent. in our profession and what we need to do to address those. And like you said, once we address the ideology of that, we need to be able to create and support the good habits that are going to at least give us the best shot of keeping healthy in a difficult profession. I like to rely on, and we used to teach this in some of our educational programs, is the SMART program. You set SMART goals. And I'm not sure how familiar we are with this, but SMART is an acronym. It refers to specific measurable attainable relevant and time-based so basically you're setting a specific goal and I think what happens is that when when people realize maybe they have a musculoskeletal disorder they want to change everything at once and they want to get better and that's certainly understandable but I think what's important is that we set small goals and those goals that are measurable over a certain amount of time so that might be incorporating one to two small changes in your day whether that's the position of where your tray is that holds your instruments moving that to a more accessible position including five minutes to ten minutes of stretching at the beginning or the end of your day in order to help yourself feel better basically. So when you create any habit, it has to be repeatable and you have to do that every day. But when we try to change everything at once, we're typically not successful. So if we just change one to two small things at a time and reinforce that for about 30 to 60 days, and then that becomes a habit, then you're ready to make your next change. And before you know it, you've made a small change that's turned into a large change and you start to feel better. Just from the standpoint of compliance, When you're trying to do too many things at once, you end up not doing any of it or any of it well. So that's a great approach. And that applies to so many things in life. And that's true. And that's kind of the information we give our patients too. I think sometimes we can overwhelm them with too much information. And if we just ask them to make one to two small changes at a time and incorporate that into their daily routine, then once they do that, then it's easier to make that next step. You kind of answered some of this, but what is the best multifactorial approach that could lead to better long-term physical comfort, career satisfaction, and personal wellness? I do definitely believe in the multifactorial approach. I mentioned that in the first podcast. I don't know that there's a blanket multifactorial approach. Again, it's kind of like how we address our patients. Everyone is individual. We have a treatment plan that is specific for each patient. And I think the key to this is that everyone is different and what works for one person may not work for everyone else. But what I think is important is that we know that there are options out there, that we don't just think our only option is to go to the doctor and get a steroid. injection in our wrist or elbow or whatever may be causing pain to try to ward that off, that we know that there are many other modalities that we can approach that in combination can help us lead to better health. And by all means, there's no one blanket cure. And honestly, I don't know that there is an actual cure. Once you address the etiology, you want to fix it and make it better. But again, what we do is a difficult and physically taxing job. So no matter what we do, we want to improve the outcomes, but it may never be perfect. So we just need to keep that in mind. Yeah. So before we get into, because I want to ask you about breathing and meditation and yoga, but before we get into that, would you recommend if a person has undergone the condition of MSD and they're kind of getting better and they've changed some habits, do you recommend physical therapy as a regular thing going forward to keep their career lasting longer with better satisfaction? You know, I honestly think that's something that has to be diagnosed by their healthcare professional. I think in certain cases, physical therapy is absolutely necessary to get you back where you're going. I don't know if ongoing physical therapy is always necessary. That's really patient dependent. And certainly I couldn't diagnose something like that. But I do think that physical therapy is one approach. I think that chiropractic could be another approach. Massage therapy, Reiki treatments, all of these maybe in combination can be helpful. Yoga therapy, there is some research that supports yoga therapy as a viable method for treatment of musculoskeletal disorders. This could also include like a weight training program. And of course... the healthier we are and the better choices we make, whether that's nutritionally, whether that's exercising, walking, those kinds of things, that in general gives us a better chance to have a better outcome if we're taking those things into consideration. Yeah, for sure. And weight training seems to me would make a lot of sense too, because if you're strengthening the muscles around all the skeletal activity that's going on, you may very well lessen the chance of having some of this MSD up here. That's very true. That is very true. What has research uncovered in the way of improving health through breathing, meditation, and yoga that is specific to the healthcare professional? There's limited research in the area of Western medicine as far as breath work, but it is an increasingly interesting topic. And we are starting to see some, I guess, more traditional Eastern medicines that are... being incorporating or at least being scientifically approached in our Western, typical Western medicine hospitals, clinics, and doctor's offices even sometimes. But there are specific breathing techniques that are recommended that can alleviate anxiety and depression, stress, traumatic stress. There's research being done on incorporating those maybe into chronic illness patients or patients with chronic illness, patients with asthma. And they're finding that although it's not a cure-all, it can have a positive effect long-term. That covers breathing, meditation, and yoga, all of them combined. Yes. And now there is specific research just for breathing exercises. There is specific research just for meditation and there is specific research just for yoga. So I don't know that there's, I didn't, at least I didn't find anything that incorporated all three of them together as a cure. But yes, there's research on breath work or in yoga. It's called Pranayama. there's research on meditation as far as overall wellness. Now specific to healthcare professionals, I would say I found a little bit of information on breath work just to release stress and anxiety, especially during the COVID pandemic. for meditation as well. And then there is a little more research on yoga for healthcare professionals that supports a specific type of yoga leading to longer term comfort and strength. Right. Now you're a registered yoga teacher. That's a whole nother podcast. If I would ask you how you got into that from being, getting a master's degree in dental hygiene education, but that's really cool that you're a registered yoga teacher. I mean, that's amazing. So thank you. Yeah. With that. experience and knowledge you have in yoga, what would you recommend to a dental hygienist that has either experienced MSD and those that have not yet? They may be just new in the profession. Would yoga be somewhat of a prevention behavioral thing to do to keep this from happening? Yes, absolutely. I would recommend it. Again, I don't think it is the only cure-all, but I would absolutely recommend it for a few different reasons. First of all, yoga is great at helping us reduce stress. And what we do is physically stressful, but that can also lead to emotional and long-term stress mentally. emotionally so I think that yoga is key for that but also what a lot of people don't know about yoga there are several different types and if you are incorporating a yoga that increases your strength as well as your flexibility you're kind of getting a twofold benefit in that again you're strengthening the muscles around those supporting bones you're also lending flexibility in the joints which has an increased kind of a dynamic effect that is going to allow you to do your job easier because you're stronger. First of all, you are more flexible. And then when we do sit in these unnatural positions, it's a little bit easier to recover from, or we have the tools at our disposal to recover from the hard things that we put our body through. So I think it increases strength and it increases the resilience in our daily practice. Yeah. And I can't agree with you more. There's a colleague of mine who I used to... know, go around to different dental shows. I don't do it as much, of course, with the pandemic, but I used to see him around and he was very physically fit and we'd be at the hotel and I'd like to go down to the gym, you know, at the end of the day and ride the bike and do some weights. And I'd always see this guy there because he was, he was in the dental space as well, doing his lectures. And then I saw him at another show. I said, Hey, you're still working out. You're still doing the weights. And he said, Phil, all I'm doing is yoga now. He said, I've completely given up lifting weights. And he looked like he was in better shape than ever. Wow. And he said he's stronger than ever. And I said, so you're not lifting any weight. You're not doing the dumbbells. You're not doing press. Nothing. He goes, nope. I'm strictly into yoga. And I feel much stronger, much more flexible, much more healthy. He was just so excited about this change in his life. Yeah. And that seems to be right in line with what you're saying. And it seems to me this. this would be great for the dental profession, but there's so many things dentists have to think about and hygienists are thinking about. How do you get that message to them? Hopefully by doing a podcast like this, maybe. That's a great point. Yeah. So, you know, we're doing, I mean, we have 300,000 users on Viva Learning right now, 300,000. So yeah, it's quite big. Our podcast show is only three years old and we're doing 30,000 listens at this point. uh on these shows so there's quite a big audience but um again you know a lot of people don't listen to this program uh right so but it's a start and we're going to probably i'd love to do some webinars on this because we do have huge audiences on the webinars and the uh we do we're doing a 70 75 000 webinar views per month right now wow yeah that's that's awesome but yeah yeah you know and i would say just to get it that the word out there to the The general listener, I mean, obviously I'm very passionate about it. I talk to all of my dental contacts whenever I get the chance to about the benefits of yoga because it has truly helped me. And sometimes having that experience of, you know, recovering from lower back pain, recovering from a hip injury and seeing how yoga has helped that. And then just talking to your friends about it. You know, there is kind of a yoga world, just like there's a dental world. And I feel like I have a little bit of one foot in each, but I don't know that. that yoga is always good about getting that information out there. And I think there are sometimes some preconceived notions that go along with yoga that maybe people shy away from it a little bit. But what I found in my practice is that really you take what you need to take from that practice and that's going to help you and you leave what you don't need behind because there are certain things in yoga that... I don't understand or I don't know that much about, but I also know that the types of yoga that I've practiced and that I have promoted really do help your strength a lot, your physical strength, as well as just helping your calmness, lowering anxiety levels, working through your breath work and actually doing, they have names for different pranayamas or breaths and actually completing those breaths. on a regular basis, creating a habit to do that has really helped with anxiety, with stress levels. And I feel like if hygienists could incorporate even just portions of that into their day, whether it's five to 10 minutes at the end of the day of some good stretching and some good breath work, they're going to feel a little more refreshed and renewed to go home and deal with whatever they have to deal with at home. You actually started the podcast. I don't know if was this one or the first one of the series about how physically demanding dentistry is. And if you can get this into your workflow or lifestyle early on in your career, like I said, it's a very slow, gradual process of degradation before you really know what's happening. And then you're kind of like stuck in a rut here with MSD. And then you're trying to fight your way out of it. So it's always better to. train when you're an athlete and stretch and prepare so you don't get injured. And that's, if anybody gets anything out of this podcast, I think that's important. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap it up? It's been really excellent. By the way, I'm just curious, are you mostly an instructor now? Do you lecture? I'm a consultant and key opinion leader for NSK Dental. So I have given a webinar for them. I do go to dental shows and help promote some of their products, but because I believe in them and I do believe they are ergonomically superior in some ways to some other products. So doing that and then also training for yoga, continuing education for yoga, as well as I'm fairly a new teacher and then trying to figure out ways, like you said, to reach the dental community for. people that want to do yoga or that may benefit from incorporating yoga into their practice daily. Yeah. And hats off to NSK for hiring somebody like you who is so knowledgeable on this because that really shows how NSK is so focused on ergonomics. They not only build it into their equipment, but they actually, you know, bring people like you on with the expertise and the experience to share this important message to make sure that we stay healthy and, you know, we're prepared for. possibilities of these types of disorders that could really destroy a career it's pretty serious once it gets out of hand it really is and it is and you know and some of the research that i've reviewed and started working on um you know up to 96 of dental professionals report pain due to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. And sometimes that can start as early as year one in their educational training. So if they're beginning to have those signs at year one, I mean, I can't imagine what they're feeling at year 10 or 12 at that point. So really trying to instill the good habits early on and including a healthy lifestyle, which could certainly include yoga as one of the methods to... maintain or promote physical health because ultimately we're going to have habits one way or the other. We're going to either increase our health through those habits or we're going to decrease our health through those habits. So if we know about these things early on, it gives us a better chance of incorporating them into our daily routine in order to increase our health, which hopefully ultimately is the goal. And that's what I'd love to see with our dental health care practitioners, hygienists, dentists, just the whole gambit because We care about other people. We always are, you know, trying to help others feel better and do better. And sometimes we need to turn that back inside and self-reflect and say, you know what? I want to continue to help people feel better in their daily work environment. And how can I do this? And so I think yoga is a great approach for that. Yeah, that makes total sense. We really appreciate your great input, Schelli. We want to have you on the show again. Keep up the great work. And thank you, NSK, for your continual support for continued education. and spreading the word about the importance of ergonomics, both in the workplace, in your equipment, and everywhere else in dentistry. Thanks very much, Ella. You take care. Thanks, Phil. Take care.