Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:00

So, welcome back to Voices in Health and Women's. This is the podcast where we speak with clinicians, innovators, and health leaders who are reshaping the future of medicine through prevention, systems thinking, and intelligent technology. Today's episode is a powerful one. I'm joined by Dr. Mark Whitefield, founder of Implant Evolution in Nashville, Tennessee, an advanced implant surgeon and oral health advocate who is on a mission to bridge the long-overlooked gap between dentistry and medicine. Dr. Whitefield believes that oral health is not a cosmetic afterthought. It's a foundational pillar of longevity from mastication and metabolic health to the oral microbiome's connection with Alzheimer's. His work challenges the way we traditionally separate the mouth from the body. So with that, Mark, I'd like you to welcome you to the show and thank you very much for joining me today.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 0:45

Oh, thanks for having me, Andrew. This is a real treat. I love I love talking to other doctors like you. This is great.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 0:51

Well, very welcome. Perhaps we could start a little at the top and perhaps you could talk us through your journey a little bit in terms of how you got to do what you're currently doing and the path that you've taken.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 1:03

Yeah, it's uh a little convoluted, as you might imagine. I am a fourth-generation general dentist that practices in Nashville. I am uh I'm in the trenches all day, every day, like you are, you know, treating patients, trying to get them healthy, trying to keep them alive, trying to do all these things. And it's uh uh it's really an extremely interesting time that we are in and that we're entering right now. My background is again general dentistry. Um, I grew up watching it since I was a kid and watching my dad, my grandfather uh do dentistry. And then when I've got out, I've been doing it for about 30 years. We uh we realized very quickly on that there were two things that people really want and people really need. They need uh they need teeth, which is implant dentistry and implantology, but they also want cosmetics, which is to make things look better, feel better. And uh this has pretty much become my mission in life is to give people something akin to real teeth again.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 2:22

Amazing. And when did you get the interest for the sort of the systemic impact of oral health? What kind of triggered you to kind of go off in that um direction?

Dr Mark Whitefield: 2:34

You know, it's interesting. I it it it was from the very beginning, the Genesis, because we're taught in school that the you know the the oral cavity is they call it the sentinel of the body, which everything, good, bad, and ugly, comes in through your mouth. And but it in addition to that, there's so many diseases that manifest themselves through oral conditions, you know, diabetes or periodontal disease or sugar rots your teeth out. It's it's a combination of everything, and the oral environment is a really, really good um uh uh viewpoint of what's going on overall systemically for the patient. And so to answer the question, we knew this was a thing. We we knew that we needed to work on this a lot more back in the day, uh, when we were coming out of uh when I was coming out of Tennessee in '95. And when when the but the the real issue was we we we knew what we know what the problems are, but unfortunately, there aren't any real innovative ways to uh that no one was coming up with innovations or solutions for our problems, and so we dentists were kind of fighting with one hand tied behind our back, for lack of a better term. So when over the past several years, I and my my roommates, my buddies from UT, who they operate in other areas of oral microbiology and laser dentistry, and these in these you know really high-end areas where healthcare really comes into play. And because of that, we've really developed more of a focus of it. We've always been focused on it. We were just very limited in our scope of knowledge and the tools that we had, but it's now uh with all the latest developments that are coming out. We now are developing tools and we're having folks bring us tools that are great weapons to help fight these diseases that previously we didn't have. So I'm excited about this, and and and I consider all this together to be the digital revolution of dentistry, but now folks and folks like you are connect making the connection between oral health and total systemic health.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 5:12

Does the wider dental world have this appreciation for the systemic effects, or is it still a little bit niche?

Dr Mark Whitefield: 5:23

It's it's a little of both. It should be widespread, but it is kind of niche. And and we're working hard to to to to change that to open patients' eyes to it, to open medical professionals' eyes to it here in the U.S. Because there's not a I'll just be honest with you, there's not a great deal of collaboration or uh we work together some, but not really well. Uh doctors, they've got their own issues trying to stay alive and keep people afloat and all that kind of stuff. And we, Dennis, we're doing the same thing. We're just we're we're we're focused on the same thing. We're just not very good at communicating. So it's it's it's it's getting better. It's getting better, but nevertheless, you're right, it is still a limited uh space and a little bit niche.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 6:16

Perhaps we could um start off with longevity because you mentioned before that the ability to masticate, so simply being able to chew effectively, can add two or three years to a person's life, and that's really extraordinary finding. Can you unpack that a little bit for uh the listeners? Because I'm sure they'd be very interested to know what the mechanism is behind that and how it was kind of discovered.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 6:37

Yeah, and it's it it and I'll just tell you this it's so this is a a breath of fresh air to me. You're the first MD that's ever asked this or even realizes this. And so it's this this is a treat for me to be able to tell your listeners about it. So, in the world of dentistry, which applies all over the globe, folks think that okay, you go to the dentist, you do kind of basic stuff, like you know, you get cleanings, you get some fillings done, you might get a tooth pulled, and that's um treating disease, basically is what it is. As far as the prevention end of things, we've been very, I don't want to say limited, you know, we're always preaching. Hey, don't, you know, don't drink a lot of cokes, don't drink a lot of sweet tea, don't you know, watch your carbs. We need to brush and floss, and sometimes that goes in one ear and out the other. But the end result is in here in the U.S., and I I'd love to, I need to investigate the numbers in the UK, in the U.S., there are 38 million Americans who don't have any teeth. They literally don't have the ability to masticate. And even if they have conventional dentures, still on a good day, their their actual chewing function is reduced by like 75%. So when you have teeth that when you lose your teeth or you lose the ability to masticate, just by default, it automatically kicks you over into the area of malnutrition. And these folks, it's kind of a vicious cycle because a lot of these people are already in bad shape health-wise. Like my dad said, they're just not very good specimens, and it and that's the reason that they are uh having troubles. I mean, I heard I heard something like some fact that a hundred years ago here in the U.S., the average American ate like six pounds of sugar a year. Now it's like a hundred and six or something like that, and you can see it. I mean, we've got diabetes is double, just uh and I've over my career, over the past 30 years, I've noticed that people here in the U.S., especially here in Tennessee, we're on the we've long been thought of as one of the lower socioeconomic states in the union. Uh, we love sugar, we love bacon and biscuits and all that kind of stuff. We're just we we're just not the healthiest bunch. And I've noticed over the past 30 years, man, we've really kind of been going down, down, and over the past several years, and I think probably COVID probably really just put the bow on top. We we really have become extremely unhealthy. And so that goes right over to teeth. And so when somebody, you know, if they're 55 years old and they come in and we have to extract all their teeth, and they're just not a very healthy person. They are uh um, you know, they may have they may be pre-diabetic, they may be whatever, they can't masticate. And what it does is it kind of snowballs on them. And we just notice that, and again, we we dentists were just trying to fight as hard as we can to get them something that functions like real teeth again, which is a real, it's a dog fight, not gonna lie to you. But now that's the whole mission of my my implant bridge and my implant system, the flex on X system. It makes it uh available and affordable to folks that don't have teeth, so that we can give them something that functions like real teeth again.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 10:17

Thank you. That was a really scary statistic. 38 million. I can't get my head around that.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 10:21

Oh, well, it's hey, it's going up past that too.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 10:25

Yeah, yeah. So you also referenced something even more striking that restoring chewing function can lower the A1C by a full point. And for those that don't know who are listening, the A1C is a very good metric for long-term control of blood sugar over a three-month period. Really interested to know what's happening metabolically behind that.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 10:44

Well, and that's it, it that is uh an extremely interesting dynamic. Again, when I came out of school about 30 years ago, they taught us about what happens with diabetes. And diabetes was at this level. Well, now it's probably doubled here in my area. And I think unfortunately, it's probably that way across the entire landscape. And so diabetes has grown and become it, it's it's pretty destructive as a pathology, as a disease in the oral environment, uh, it'll really wreck you. And uh so we we know that when people lose their teeth or or their teeth decay out and they have them extracted over time, and then they slowly or quickly lose the ability to masticate. A lot of these folks are already heading down the wrong pathway when it comes to blood sugar levels and that type thing. But there was an interesting study done by uh a group here that they monitored it going the other way. So they had patients, some of these 38 million that didn't have teeth. They gave them teeth back and they're able to actually masticate again, and then they went back and checked their their blood sugar levels, and they were able to knock down that A1C by one full point, which is pretty magical on my end of things. Because when we're doing surgery, you know, I have a lot of patients that have A1Cs between seven and ten, and when I'm trying to do surgery on these patients, it's not easy. And thank goodness we've got the GOP1s now helping us out. But the thing that really helps helps out more than anything is when we give them the ability to masticate again, they have the ability to eat broccoli, they have the ability to eat vegetables. And I've had patients come back in and tell me that, and you know, we don't think about that. They go, Man, I could eat broccoli. And I'm like, wait a minute, that's a that's a real valuable thing. So literally the grand takeaway is if we can give people real teeth again, we can add longevity on their life just by knocking down the A1Cs.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 13:00

Amazing, so interesting. I mean, do you think medicine underestimates the inflammatory metabolic load coming from chronic oral disease? Because we're talking about systemic effects.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 13:09

Did you say medicine?

Dr Andrew Greenland: 13:10

Yes, because obviously from your perspective as a dentist and how you see medicine.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 13:15

The the answer is absolutely it there that we do not, and and we're starting to get more crossover a little bit here. Um, oh yeah, there's a and we've been saying this for a long time because those that have periodontal disease or gum disease, they uh that there is there has long been a real correlation between that and diabetes. Diabetes really accentuates the problem. And so uh with periodontal disease, it is a chronic oral infection. And we're finding we're finding uh we're we're we're we're finding out that there are correlations between periodontal disease and you know heart disease, uh Alzheimer's, other other metabolic problems. We you know, we've known that we dentists have known this for a long time, but in the medical world, uh they've had a different focus, which I get it. Uh and and just as a general rule, I've noticed that most doctors don't know much about the oral environment, at least here in the U.S. And uh so it's a breath of fresh air to have you know collaborative conversations like like this because the need is is pretty massive. And you know, we're we're we're now starting to see people are starting to pay attention. A healthy mouth equals a healthy body. So we're doing well.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 14:36

So you and I are both enlightened, I'd like to say. But what do you think um true integration between dentistry and medicine should or well should look like?

Dr Mark Whitefield: 14:46

And you know, that that's that's a great question because that's what you and I were speaking about. And you and I are in two different ecosystems, and uh to some degree. Uh here in the U.S., it's it's just been quite dysfunctional. I'm I'm not gonna lie to you. Our our healthcare system is just a big quagmire of chaotic everything, and what it does is it just really limits access to care. And now uh things are starting to slowly but surely change in that arena. And what what it is is that professionals like us, uh and other uh, you know, dentists and medical doctors here in the U.S., we are starting to collaborate a little bit more, but we're doing it outside of the healthcare system. You know, we're really saying, okay, we have to go over here to actually take care of the patients and get them healthier. And we're starting to find different ways to do this. And and uh, and this is the the innovative part that just really really excites me because if we really get our ducks in a row, I think we're gonna be able to make significant differences and really move the needle as far as health and longevity for folks.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 15:58

Thank you. And and when we spoke before, you mentioned some research conversations with Ed Zuckerberg exploring the links between the oral biome and Alzheimer's. What's kind of showing up in that research? And this is one of my kind of pet subjects because I do a lot of work with Alzheimer's patients, and I'm very, very mindful of the oral microbiome. But what's what's what's on the cards at the moment?

Dr Mark Whitefield: 16:16

That's awesome. Yeah, Ed's uh uh Ed's a retired dentist from New York. He lives in uh he lives in Silicon Valley now and plays the grandkids, is what he says. And he he's a he's a great guy. He uh there is a small, I don't want to say small, but it is a small subsect of dentists that have been around for a long time, and they've been focusing on oral microbiology. You know, in our mouths we've got, I don't know, 300 different kinds of bacteria, and there's a certain small subsect of these bugs that are very, very bad. And those are the ones that we really fight, those are the ones that cause periodontal disease that lead to all these other things. And Ed Ed has long been uh a real advocate for uh being aware of oral microbiology and fighting uh fighting disease on the microbial level, where is with what we dentists do a lot of times, we do fight that, but we really are on a macro level. We're more like engineers or trauma surgeons or something like that. Uh Ed was telling me probably about six, eight months ago, that um that they're making headway and finding an actual correlations between uh these bacteria in the oral environment, and they're finding them. I think don't quote me on this, they may they may be finding these in the amyloids in uh in the brain. Uh and that is uh, but there's there's definitely a correlation there. If you've got active periodontal disease, I think your chances of having you know cognitive issues, Alzheimer's, these type things is dramatically increased. There are other folks, other doctors, uh, for example, my one of my roommates from UT, uh Dr. Tommy Neighbors, and his dad. His dad invented the oral DNA salivary test where we were able to now take a saliva test, uh uh sample, send it off, and get a uh get a report on the bacterial loads of these specific, you know, there are two complexes that we really focus on that are the bad actors. And so we it gives us a much more uh focused uh uh game plan and a plan of attack because at least we know what bugs we're fighting. Previously we didn't we didn't really know what bugs we were fighting, and we were kind of flying blind a lot of times now with the available technology and there are more coming down the pike uh very quickly. And these these you know it's a matter of giving us information that we just didn't have so that we can really come up with treatment plans that are much more effective.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 19:07

So if prevention truly starts in the mouth, what do you think clinicians should be screening for differently?

Dr Mark Whitefield: 19:14

Are you talking about medical clinicians? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I to be honest with you, I'm not really sure what oral clinicians do. Uh I mean, excuse me, uh medical clinicians here in the US do, I know what they do. They go, ah, and then they run on and they look at everything else. Um they have uh they have extremely limited training, and uh, and and the oral cavity kind of freaks doctors out a lot of times, uh, because they just don't know, which I get that. What they should be looking for is um, and they'll they'll tell folks, hey, you need to get into the dentist, you need to get this done, but it it's a it's a it's a harder thing, you know. It's like compliance is a major issue, obviously. So, but what they should be looking for is uh kind of what we're looking for. You can find out a lot just by looking in the mouth. You can tell pretty much what a healthy oral environment looks like. Gum tissue is looks good, it's tight, it's pink, it's not cyanodic, it's not bleedy, there's not bacteria everywhere. You can see bacteria when there's just a lack of home care. Um it's it's these type things, but realistically, once once a doctor gets into looking at the actual dentition and teeth, they really don't know what's going on with it. They really don't know the ramifications of where we're heading out of the pike. And I I get that. I mean, they haven't been trained on it, but it would be the recognition of disease. Like you could look in someone's mouth that's you know uncontrolled diabetic, and you can tell, wow, this is just not the tissues are very bad, they're not really healthy, that kind of thing. If it's just dirty everywhere, that's a bad thing. And I don't I really don't know exactly how far they go with that, but that right there is probably the key issue. We need to be much more observant and ask a lot more questions.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 21:15

Thank you. So, would you mind just talking a little bit about your practice and implant evolution? What's the setup? What are you doing to help people? What's your kind of secret sauce?

Dr Mark Whitefield: 21:25

Well, I don't have much of a secret sauce. I'm I'm I'm like everybody else trying to get by. We're lucky, like I said, I'm I'm I'm a fourth generation dentist, so we've been doing dentistry in my family for like 125 years. Uh, got to practice with my dad. I've been right here in Nashville my whole life, and got to practice with my dad for a good 20 years or so, but I learned everything from him. Uh, my dad, and along with a couple of other doctors that that uh you know, previous specialists that we worked very closely with in all aspects of dentistry. They in actuality were pioneers in the world of dental implants back in the early 80s when it was much more of an I say experimental, a little Frankenstein maybe, but the results that they were doing, you know, our knowledge wasn't near as good as as it is now, but I still see these patients today and they have had real teeth and the ability to masticate for the past 30 years. I had a I had a lady this morning, I had a lady this morning that I did an implant on and she we were looking at her case. She started getting implants like 30 years ago from these doctors I was telling you about. And because of that she's doing extremely well and it's just interesting how how things have developed and especially in the technology realm because the world of of technology in our area and that's that's where things are going all across the board. This is the digital revolution of dentistry. We use I'm the crazy AI guy but in reality these tools that are coming out these tools that we're developing that we we've used a lot of AI technologies for in reality close to 10 years both clinically and administratively but it's really really starting to get better now because for example with implant evolution that was um that's kind of my lab my RD uh uh section under Whitefield Biomed. Whitefield Biomed is my parent company uh of AI and innovation research implant evolution is our implant division and because that's my life because the ultimate goal is I want to give people real teeth again to give them health and longevity but we we're lucky we're we're very lucky because this is just I mean a renaissance of we have tools we have tools that we I never we you know we always kind of thought we would have these things you know back in the days like wow wouldn't it be great if we had this or we can do this with you know AI glasses or if we had a surgical system that does this or whatever. Well it's here now and it's really it's really quite magical so now we have a lot lot more weapons to get people healthier and in the future of dentistry we I always talk about in my lectures shooting over the horizon because when it comes down to it we're still just in the first innings here three years from now five years from now it's going to look totally different still and all these things are just net positives to give people real teeth again in longevity.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 24:51

So it's obviously you have exciting future on the cards but if we just talk about the day-to-day nitty-gritty of doing this what are the kind of challenges and bottlenecks in delivering dentistry in 2026 on a day-to-day basis yeah it's it's hard there's kind of two main areas one is the money you know the the payment of things how how we actually fund oral health care in the U.S.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 25:23

And the second thing is really just access to care which they kind of go hand in hand a lot of times we see I'm here in Nashville we get you know we were kind of a slower town for years and years but in the past 15 years or so Nashville has blown up to become a very metropolitan area where we're we're growing by leaps and bounds I see people coming from all over the US but all over the world here and everybody's got the same problems. I mean it's just teeth if you if you have teeth problems it sucks and finding getting into the correct dentist you know different dentists have different skill sets when it comes to implants uh and implants have become or are becoming the go-to uh just to let you know because we the we do a lot of general dentistry we do a lot of care and that's it's kind of a dogfight not gonna lie to you it's it's it's like running a hospital is what the day-to-day stuff is I'm in charge of everything intake oke insurance staffing the ER the surgery i literally I'm the it's like I have my own hospital here and that's a lot I mean it's a lot and that's the way it's it is for every dentist here in the U.S. but people don't really realize that so we're we're kind of on the tip of the spear really trying to hold everybody and everything together and it's uh we need all the help we can get that's why I always keep gravit gravitating back to the the technology the technology it's bringing us out of the old school analog way of taking care of dental patients and now it's it's progressing to the modern dentistry if you ask me so I don't know if I answered that question or not I think it's uh we have a lot of challenges on a day-to-day basis we're looking for any tool that can help us make it easier and do it better.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 27:25

No that does answer the question and I suppose the question I was going to ask next is what is your biggest time drain with all the hats that you wear and all the things you have to do what's the thing that sucks the most time out of your week I put in about 50 hours a week doing actual clinical treatment on patients.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 27:46

It's all the other stuff uh insurance it has become they have launched a war on us now it uh basically what they're doing is they're turning dentistry into something a lot more like medicine is it's uh where they control stuff and and and it's I mean that real realistically just running a dental office it's it's overwhelming uh but we dentists we buck up and we get it done as far as as far as what it's it's a lot of the admin stuff you know handling staff handling uh uh intake handling the the the money keeping it you're running a business and running a business is just not easy uh here in the U.S. it's uh we have a lot of regulation we have a lot of uh you know other you know with insurance they they really kind of run the show and I would say that's probably the biggest struggle because that's become since COVID that's become probably three times more difficult so it it it uh I I can I can churn out the work you know I could I could work like a mule clinically but then when we get done we got just you know I guess you can call it paperwork or maintenance or whatever that's the part that just makes things a lot harder.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 29:12

So what's the sort of the scaling potential of a dental practice in the US at the moment such as yours with everything that you just said now that is an extremely interesting question.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 29:25

Historically for example my family my grandfather my great grandfather they practiced together a hundred years ago I practiced with my dad it's been a very family oriented thing a lot uh over the I mean forever which is a uh kind of a a a mentorship type thing and up until about COVID I would say probably I don't know if it's as high as like 30 percent of dentists they had another family member whether it's the father or brother or or uh their spouse that was a dentist and so we're we're very I'm not saying clan ish but but we uh uh it's it's been a very generational thing dentistry has forever and for example in my class we had a whole we had like 20 people that that were going in with their dad or their brother or their wife or whatever to practice dentistry that dynamic is changing and the reason is is because up until COVID the majority of dental practices were owned by individual practice owners where you had one or two dentists there. Now uh the group practice model was growing because we had to kind of band together to you know survive keep down costs but since COVID uh corporate dentistry has come in what we call them DSOs dental service organizations and that's a model that is modeled after the way that that uh medicine for profit medicine was done is actually for profit medicine was started here in Nashville in the early 1980s with uh the Frist and HCA we knew them and watched them do that well we I kind of always suspected this time was coming now corporate dentistry has come in like mad and they come into areas like Nashville where you have large populations they're coming in it adds a a ton of chaos and churn and they make deals with the the insurance companies they make deals with uh manufacturers all this kind of thing and the DSOs have really um they're making dentistry more of a a a retailer commercial thing and we're seeing that patients are getting jerked around a whole lot and so I'm sure there are net positives from it that I'm not addressing but for every net positive we see a net negative that really makes it just a lot harder but that's the dynamic going forward and it's um I would I think that trend is slowing down just a little bit and probably here in the next little bit like say three years from now five years from now it's gonna be something like almost half the offices in the U.S. are going to be under a corporate structure umbrella and then the other half are going to be small owner-owned offices and that's probably the way it's gonna sit for a long time uh but it's just an interesting dynamic in the history of dentistry thank you and moving on to AI because I know this is one of your things that you're very excited about and I just wonder what's on the horizon for AI in dentistry but perhaps beyond dentistry whatever you think is interesting and exciting yeah this is this is my mission my passion and yeah I know all about AI and the technologies in dentistry I'm kind of the Elon Musk or the Steve Jobs of dentistry but there is a real uh uh cross pollination or correlation with medicine and met that I think believe it or not the medical end of things I think they're starting to realize that and because we are we are medicine nobody really thinks of us that way but we are medicine and the the technologies that we've been using I'm sitting here in my lab right now I'm looking at about four different kinds of technologies here that we use uh for example facial scanners intraoral scanners that we use photogrammetry with we've got 3D printing we've got the ability to uh use our exoCAD uh surgical design softwares where we can design surgical guides I can mill them here on our on our milling unit we are we operate more like orthopedic surgeons and in the orthopedic surgery realm they use machines like makos uh we we have we have machines that use dynamic guided surgery like that so we're kind of I've looked at dentistry as kind of the the experimentation platform for a lot of medicine uh uh oh and before we even get to that point we use about four different kinds of AI softwares in our admin into things like to uh we we use zoob it goes and it scrapes insurance benefits we work with weave and they're introducing AI agents for communications scheduling patients and it's working out very well where it all of these tools really do two things number one they well they do about three things number one they they reduce an inordinate amount of friction in every system number two that leads to a much more efficient uh or cost effective thing but the third thing is is I don't care if it's scheduling an appointment or getting a surgery done or taking a facial scan so that we can build flex on X the end result is this the the end results of all these systems and outcomes they're just much much better uh for everyone and so this is why things are just this is why I'm so excited about it because things are getting better all across the board and technology is the driver and if you are starting implant evolution again tomorrow and with everything you know and the journey that you've had would you do anything differently the short answer is no I guess I mean when I say differently I would I would I'm I'm a startup guy I'm a founder and I've I've researched that end of things to the nth degree and basically when you're a startup founder or an innovator you're just wandering around in the wilderness uh and and when we there's a book by is it Jeffrey Bean uh I don't know if it's Jeffrey Bean that's not the right name Crossing the Chasm which is a it's an older book like 15 20 years old but it outlines a brilliant story of how if you're gonna bring something new to the world or to the marketplace it's gonna be a slog and you think ah surely not surely it's not this bad or this hard or that people are not this obtuse it is that way and so you know hindsight's 2020 but in reality all the struggles and everything that we've had that I've that I've had with building implant evolution and wife biomed it's exactly the way it should have been and so the next the next go around I would be just better at building stuff uh you know softwares and uh websites and our and and I'll tell you this probably the ultimate thing is this my message which because this is a very complex message that we're sending out to patients to doctors to whoever uh a very good concise easy to understand comprehend and easy to comprehend message that's the one thing if I had a message that was better in the beginning it would have saved me a lot of grief and it gets you further down the road quicker is there um a belief about dentistry or practice ownership that you've now outgrown say that again is there a belief about dentistry or practice ownership that you've outgrown you know I don't know if I've outgrown it I'm I'm I'm the I have a different point of view I've noticed I've had a different point of view than everyone else does uh because Dennis we get kind of in this little groove you know we're in our own little kingdom here we're just trying to fight and get through the day and take care of our pace and stuff I look at the you know I'm the one who's looking over the horizon to see what's coming down the pike and I'm and I'm telling a lot of different folks things uh it's really just kind of interesting I'm I'm just so tickled about where things are going. I'm just so excited about the future because I think this is really the again it's the digital revolution of dentistry. So dentistry is coming out of the old school way and the new school way is crazy exciting because it's just going to be so much better and so much the outcomes are going to be so much better.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 38:40

But and I and a lot of what I do is I teach doctors and the new generations coming up see I've been I've been speaking to the old dogs uh they don't like listen they don't like hearing new stuff they get upset a lot of times but the new generation coming up it's a breath of fresh air these dogs just take it run with it and they're going to be doing some fantastic gents history for folks that's gonna really help people live longer and where would you want your I mean we talked about the future and your excitement for the future but let's just take the say the next 12 months where where would you like to be in the next 12 months with your work and your practice well that's interesting because I uh I'm not bowing out of practicing dentistry.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 39:32

I'm very lucky I'm very I'm in the trenches all day every day I mean that's what I do 24-7 is I treat patients and I get people uh healthier and get them real teeth again I am probably gonna have to carve down some of my time and hand off you know patient treatment to my partners more so we're we're lucky we're in a we're in a real busy spot here and we have we're having tons and tons of people move into Nashville every day I couldn't ask for a better location uh but I am making plans to be able to devote even more time to my mission of of spreading the gospel about AI technologies. So well and and just to maybe to answer the question what other doctors and the the real good ones do it it takes you have to be forward thinking and think about okay we need to do we need to expand do we need to work more hours how can we what systems can we put in place to make things more efficient you know it's running a business and it's just it's or run it's running a hospital and it's just not easy and and I guess to answer the question my focus is finding every technology that can make our you know our our our workflows better and that's that's my focus going forward and it's gonna be amazing I it just blows my mind how many technologies come out every 20 minutes now. And it in that and that that snowball is starting to gain a lot more traction over the past six months. It goes faster and faster every day and I just can't believe it. Again I don't know if I answered that question or not.

Dr Andrew Greenland: 41:15

Thank you. And with that mark I'd like to thank you so much for joining me today. It's been a really powerful discussion you clearly see oral health as a gateway to metabolic health neurological resistance and longevity and you're thinking about AI not just as hype but as infrastructure. So thank you so much for joining me I'm very grateful for your time well thank you for inviting me.

Dr Mark Whitefield: 41:34

This was really a fun thing and I and again I greatly appreciate your attitude your vision going forward and I look forward to what we can do in the future together.