In this episode of the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast, Dr. Eric Block, a dentist, author and host of the show, goes solo for what he calls a "deep dive" into class two composites. He took the name from one of his favorite podcasts and says he wants to do a few episodes where he focuses on a single topic. Class two composites, he says, were "one of the most stressful things I had to do all day." He dreaded seeing them on the schedule and was never sure which technique to use. Now he has a step-by-step workflow for them, which he describes as a recipe, and he shares his back-to-back class two composite workflow in this episode. His message throughout is that every practice is different, so the important thing is to have a workflow that works for you.

The walk-through follows the whole appointment. His assistant greets and confirms the patient, places topical anesthetic and sizes the patient for the isolation device. Dr. Block then gets the patient numb, usually with a buccal infiltration of Septocaine, and uses a longer plan for lower molars: a nerve block, a buccal infiltration and a rescue injection if needed. Every case is tested with a piece of cotton soaked in Endo-Ice, and his rule is "no pass through the icy, no drilling." Once the patient is numb and the isolation device is in, he works from a specific set of burs. For back-to-back class twos he uses two bands, one wedge and one ring, then a flowable first layer and a bulk fill. He explains why two bands still give a good proximal contact, and why he photographs the decay before filling, so that patients "own that problem."

He closes with what the workflow has done for his day. Two teeth take about half an hour, lower molars about 40 minutes, and three or four fillings about an hour, and he says he no longer dreads quadrant fillings on his schedule. He also covers checking the bite with thick blue carbon paper, stocking every operatory cart the same way and color coding trays, and says the system puts his "brain on autopilot." Dr. Block ends by pointing listeners to his software, Flomo, where he stores his workflows and instrument pictures so his team stays on the same page, and says a deep dive on crowns is next.

In this episode of the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast, Dr. Eric Block sits down with Dr. Dar Radfar, known as Dr. Rad, a dentist, sleep apnea speaker and trainer, and author of How to Add Six Figures and Save Lives, about how dental teams can screen for sleep apnea, work with patients who already use a CPAP, and add low level laser therapy to their practices. Dr. Radfar is a returning guest and a friend of the show. He says he now works four or five days a month in his two practices, speaks at dental conferences, and has trained a few thousand dentists and their teams since 2014. Dr. Block was his own first sleep apnea patient at 44, going from 10 apnea events an hour to below two, and says he learned zero about sleep in dental school.

The conversation starts with the team. Dr. Radfar describes a 25 minute training for hygienists and assistants built around red flags they can spot in the mouth and in the medical history, from bruxism and a retruded jaw to high blood pressure, AFib and anxiety and depression medications. His advice for the chair is to ask how well the patient sleeps, and when a patient who is snoring says they sleep great, "Plant the seed. Move on." From there the two compare notes on patients who hate their CPAP, patients who love it, and why a mild or moderate case may be a fit for an appliance. They then turn to technology: a green diode laser that Dr. Radfar says now has FDA clearance for reducing chin and neck fat, and his plan to run sleep studies before and after treatment on five patients.

The episode closes with the practical side: GLP-1 medicines, peptides and healing for implant patients, Dr. Radfar's book and coaching, and his advice for young dentists, which is to learn non-invasive skills early, build business skills, find mentors and work on your mindset. As he puts it, "it is because of the fact of how we make them feel." For dentists who feel overwhelmed adding something they were never taught, this is a plain-spoken place to start.

In this episode of the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast, Dr. Eric Block sits down with Dr. Tarryn MacCarthy — orthodontist, practice owner, host of The Business of Happiness podcast and founder of the Radical Happiness program — about the cost of spending your life waiting for the next milestone. She chose dentistry for what looked like the perfect package: the marriage of science and artistry, entrepreneurship, leadership, making a difference and the promise of work-life balance. From Yukon for dental school to an ortho residency at Tufts, she kept moving the goalpost forward — dental school, then residency, then an associateship, then buying a practice within her first year out of residency, then motherhood. By 26 she was running two practices with two kids under two and a husband in residency.

Looking back, she names the pattern clearly: every achievement was supposed to be the thing that finally made her happy, and it never was. "I was blaming everything outside of myself and really wishing my life away." She calls it retirement ideation — wishing for the day you can finally stop doing what you'd been wishing your whole life you couldn't do. Ten of the eighteen years her children were at home, she was somewhere else: working hard in the practice, or physically at the dinner table but not present in her mind.

What followed was rock bottom — a nightly wind-down that escalated from a glass of wine to two martinis, until a night she'd rather forget made her sell the practice and start learning to look after herself. A third pregnancy she finally chose to experience taught her she could take back her health; a scratch-start ortho practice built around what she needed became the biggest in the state within three years, on three days a week. That turned into The Business of Happiness podcast and the Radical Happiness program, coaching dentists on stress, self-leadership and happiness. Her message is plain: happiness isn't being happy all the time — that's toxic positivity — and your happiness is more important than your success.