At least once every month or every two months I take a refresher or workshop course. When I take the courses, I take full weekend courses, or sometimes monthly courses, where you’re going back multiple times with a given time frame. I’m constantly reading, and studying up, and staying in tune with what’s out there.
One of the most recent workshops that I attended was for the NTI device. The NTI device is a night guard, but it’s fantastic for a lot of reason. Number one, it’s not like a traditional night guard where it encompasses all of the top or all of the bottom teeth. It only sits on the teeth in the front. I find that my patients are much more compliant with it. They find it easier to wear; they find it less cumbersome.
They get the same results, arguably better results, because it opens up the bite in the back. It would be kind of like if you put a pin in between your front two teeth, your top and your bottom teeth, and you bit down on it. You’re back teeth, obviously, aren’t going to be touching, so it prevents that grinding, that aggressive grinding that patients often do at night and slowly break the tooth, wear the teeth down, and ultimately break them down.
That device has worked wonders, and for a lot of my patients it’s eliminated migraines. I’ve had patients that have come to me in the past where they’ve had really bad migraines and with this new device I’ve been able to eliminate that completely.
