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Toronto dentist Dr. Natalie Archer was interviewed live on Rogers Daytime on the morning of Thursday Feb 7th 2013, in Barrie, Ontario.  In a ten minute long interview, the dentist detailed five different ways to maintain proper oral health.  These are simple rituals that anyone can easily incorporate into their daily routine and possibly live longer and achieve better overall health because of these five dental exercises.

Dr. Archer describes the mouth as the ‘window to the human body’ as she stresses how important it is to keep your teeth and gums healthy, clear of food, sugars and free of decay. Proper oral hygiene is a very important ingredient in everyone’s overall health.

Rogers Daytime Host Melanie Case did a great interview with the dentist as Dr. Archer described her favourite easy-to-perform and highly effective tactics for maintaining a healthy mouth, teeth and gums.

Live a longer healthier life because of these five simple oral hygiene tips:

Dr Archer shares five simple tips for maintaining oral hygiene,

1. RINSE WITH SALTWATER     Prepare a salt water solution of two shakes of (sea) salt in a small dixie cup filled with warm water. Rinse your mouth with the mixture in the mornings to quickly and efficiently kill all the bacteria that may be in your mouth.
2. USE FLOSS PICKS     Keep and use the small plastic floss picks after meals. Ritualize a brief cleaning during the day.
3. USE A BETTER TOOTHBRUSH     Use new ergonomically advanced toothbrushes to help reach those hard to clean areas of your mouth. These special tooth brushes can really help caregivers clean the teeth of elderly or those with dexterity and mobility issues.
4. PRACTICE THIS TONGUE TRICK    Dr Archer shares a tongue trick to relax all the joints in your mouth – press your tongue against the back of your front two teeth.
5. EAT FOODS TO INCREASE SALIVA FLOW    Snack on natural foods that increase saliva levels in your mouth by stimulating your salivary glands to be more active, naturally. More saliva is critical to better dental hygiene.

Post by Robert Campbell on Feb 12, 2012

Canadians searching for a nearby dentist on the internet soon discover lots of dental finder services eager to help them find one.  These local search operations collect data in different ways, and the means by which they gather information is what really separates the many players in local search.

Your hunt for a dentist is a microcosm of the intensely competitive local search marketplace.

The rise and fall of local search engines mirrors many elements of the American dream, and everyone’s dream of a Utopian society made more effective by improved connectivity. There’s no question the search for a dentist is certainly at the ‘bleeding edge’ of a sociological phenomenon.

Big players like Facebook are enjoying a growing percentage of the local search market, as people do tend to trust their friends, and more and more people are doing that everyday; it could even be said that the social networking giant causes people to seek out cosmetic dental services after seeing their pictures online.

Local search directories like Yelp, Gigpark, and Localfaves.com all index dentists  with good results. The five dentist discovery services that I have outlined in this article use yellow pages data, dental association information or even dental school alumni records to give users accurate local choices.  The fastest growing dental location services are building their own databases. The benchmark is Google, which has set the bar quite high in terms of delivering accurate and useful information for local search queries.  Each of the web services listed below has to believe that they can provide better search results than Google for users seeking local dentists.

History of Dental Associations

South of the border, in the United States the ADA or American Dental Association was founded August 1859 in Niagara Falls NY, and that makes it the oldest national dental association in the world. It’s also the largest association with more than 152,000 members, 55 constituent (state-territorial) and 545 component (local) dental societies. Today they help people find dentists all across the nation with a website called MouthHealthy.org , which is filled with information about oral health advances and best practices, but they have lost their dominant position in terms of indexing and managing the search for dentists in America.

The CDA or Canadian Dental Association was established in 1902 and remains important today for standardizing details like the language on health insurance forms,  the specifications of new dental equipment, medication, surgical supplies and training. For almost one hundred years, before the advent of the internet, this was how many Canadians found their dentist. They interacted one way or another with CDA data, dentists information, and literature relating to its members.

The Ontario Dental Association, ODA

The Ontario Dental Association or ODA is a big player in the pledge to provide patients with up-to-date information on dentist locations and specialties.  Eight out of ten dental practitioners in the province of Ontario are members of this club, that was started by Dr. Barnabus Day in Kingston Ontario in 1867, which was a few years before Canadian confederation and before Upper Canada was called Ontario. The mandate of this organization reads,  “This Association is instituted with the view of promoting professional and social intercourse among dental practitioners in the Province of Ontario, Dominion of Canada, and to encourage a disposition for investigation on their part in every direction which relates to the principles and practice of the profession and collateral science.”

YourOralHealth.ca is the brainchild of the ODA and is a consumer facing portal filled with great information about keeping your teeth healthy. They have interesting articles on nutrition, cosmetic dentistry, fluoride and community water fluoridation, how to choose the right toothbrush, and how certain medical conditions can affect your smile.  Your oral health is mandated to raise awareness about how your mouth and teeth are so intimately connected with the rest of your body. It’s a real friendly place with a powerful dental finder tool that skims a large database.

The ODA is a popular choice for provincial dentists to join, but it’s not omnipresent in the niche and membership is not legally required by the province; its just another useful association of Ontario dentists and by their own accounting approximately eight out of ten dentists in the province are ODA members in good standing.  As mentioned above, the history of Ontario Dental Association is rooted in the colourful figure, Dr. Barnubus Day who was a dentist in Kingston, Ontario in the 1860s.  He circulated a letter dated January 3, 1867, after which the Ontario Dental Association was born.  The purpose of the new Association was described in its constitution, written by Day along with nine other dentists who were its first members and their names are recorded in the minutes of the first meeting.

Today the ODA has thousands of members and YourOralhealth.ca helps the people of Ontario find them. Users can search by last name, in case you had heard about a good one and wanted to track that person down. Or you enter city, town or postal code.  One great feature is that you can search by specialty. Clicking the Specialty option produces a drop down menu that lets you select from the following options:  Public Health Dentists , Endodontist , Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery , Oral Pathologists , Oral Medicine, Orthodontics & Dentofacial Orthopaedics, Pediatrics Dentist, Periodontics, Prosthodontics, Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Dental Anesthesia… and that’s pretty amazing and this is certainly something Google doesn’t offer.

The ODA website YourOralHealth.ca is a very popular result in search engines because it has hundreds of incoming links from dentists’ sites, which place its badge of recognition on their homepage, but also from many hundreds of public schools and community program websites.

DentistFind.com

Dentistfind.com is a map centric website that is really easy to use. It’s actually better than easy, it’s fun to drag that little pink man around the map and watch all of the nearby dentists appear.  The blue pins that pop up correspond to the business card blurbs that appear in the left hand sidebar; each info card details a nearby dentist.

This website is made for Canadians to explore the service practitioners in their area code. The site is real easy to use because there is no stressful forms to fill out, or any registration at all beyond simply typing in your postal code.  Once you click the FIND A DENTIST button, the website goes to work and sets you (a pink man)  in the center of your area and little blue pins appear in a wide map around you where you can check services, specialties, hours, languages as you hover over the display. Its an excellent interface.

Below the map there is a narrow buffer of content. Three stories in boxes hook readers who scroll down and for those that keep scrolling there is a reservoir of additional services. On the bottom of this website are three more boxes each containing different, more traditional search options. The first box says Search By City? and has a list of neighboring cities and suburbs. Secondly, there is a long list of specialists detailing their services; Cosmetic Dentistry, Bridges, Dental Bonding, Gum Reduction, Teeth Whitening, and Veneers are right up at the top.

Under General Dentistry they list, Cleaning/Scaling, Crowns, Dental Emergency, Extractions/Wisdom Teeth Removal, Fillings, Pediatric Dentistry, Periodontal Therapy, Root Canal Therapy, Sealants for Kids, Sedation Dentistry, Teeth Grinding, Tooth Desensitization. They have a Products section, and list Canker Sores and Cold Sores, Mouthguards, Night Guards, Sleep Apnea, Sports Guards, Thumb Sucking/Snoring Appliances. They also list Specialized Procedures including Braces, Dentures (Prosthetic), Headaches, Implants and Bone Grafting, Invisalign (Braces), TMJ Disorder Treatment. The Technology section lists Digital Impression for Crowns, Digital X-Rays, Laser Dentistry, Periowave. It’s an extensive list, and they get points for these details.

Smile Canada

Smile Canada is a dental service marketing company and is proud to be the only such corporation in Canada. They help Canadian dentists find customers by helping the public find dentists – they strive to make their website a one-stop information portal and to inspire each visitor to achieve their optimal dental health. They stand committed to helping consumers by educating them, and making it super convenient for users to find and contract nearby dental practitioners.

Smile Canada pledges to beat Google by offering users a customizable experience to help them find the right dentist who perfectly meets their needs. Their site is particularly geared to provide users with an in-depth understanding of many different treatments and procedures that are available in Canada.  They have a separate section dedicated to kids’ dentistry where kids can play games and learn healthy dental habits.

Smile Canada users can use the dentist search tool to find the individual professional or the type of dental service they desire right in their own neighbourhoods. With some level of detail, they can even research the dentist’s bio and read the various specialty services they offer, along with the flexible payment and insurance options.  And of course, they have provided maps, driving directions and dentists’ office times. Find out wait times in a special dentist review section that provides access to other patient feedback.

Dental Referral

For over twenty four years there has been a dentist referral business called Dental Referral.  The organization has helped hundreds of thousands of dental patients find good dentists that are perfectly suited to their needs, all across across Canada and the United States.  The service boasts that they deliver a human tested result when they promise to find users “…Not just any dentist but a top-rated local professional who’s been carefully prescreened by us. In just seconds, we’ll match you with a dentist who offers the exact mix of dental treatments, office hours and payment options you’re looking for…” which is certainly more than Google pledges.

Dental Referral is free. There’s no charge, no obligation and never any fine print involved with finding a dentist through DentalReferral.com.

Dental Referral’s mission is to be the number one trusted online dentist directory available to help consumers find the best dentist in their area. The website boasts that they provide “so much more than the name and phone number of a local dentist.”  By accessing the online database (or calling a toll-free number), users will receive comprehensive background information on dentists and dental offices including years in practice, education, current licenses, practice specialties (such as whitening), latest dental equipment and technology, what type of sedation is available, and whether or not that practice accepts emergency patients.

One thing I will concede about Dental Referral is their belief ideology about how ‘word of mouth’ advertising is NOT the best way to find a dentist. They claim that folks who visit their friends’ dentists soon discover that they have much different needs and often have unhappy experiences. Its true I bet.

Canpages

CanPages is the digital child of the Yellow Pages, and this child was adopted and not born unto its wealthy parents; the Burnaby-based phone book and internet advertising company was bought by Yellow Media in 2009  for a reported $225 million dollars.  The Yellow Pages directory once had over 50% of the local search market for dentists.

Throughout most of the twentieth century, the telephone directory was by far the the biggest player in the search for a family medicine, home service, automotive care and things that could be sourced locally, alphabetically and then ordered remotely by either business and residential consumers.  But the times have changed…

Just last year, on February 1st 2012, CanPages laid off seven hundred employees across Canada in a move to eliminate duplication and streamline business operations, in part I believe, so they could concentrate on serving up better results on the web.  And they do a pretty decent job online.

CanPages local search web service is quite intuitive and easy to use and separates all queries into business or people, just like Yellow Pages did with the White Pages set aside for residential numbers, and the Blue Pages were government.

When a visitor arrives from another search engine, the Canpages website  shows the category she was searching for and offers new suggestions to use for their tool.  A search for ‘Queen St east dentist’ on Google might prompt Canpages to suggest a search for ‘Dentists in The Beaches’ to find practitioners that have optimized their listings for that popular neighbourhood search term.  Once again the map is interactive and the user icon can be dragged and dropped to show hyper local results in real time.

The first results in a Canpages query are sponsored ads and clearly identified as such.  In my experience, most ads were not closely related to my search term.  Similar off-topic ‘featured listings’ appear as advertising buttons below the map tool.

Where does Canpages get its data? Canpages crunches data provided by the Yellow Pages Group which is a data harvesting machine.

In summary, the business of capturing the search for a dentist is very competitive, and delivering high quality results in this niche is equally challenging.

What do you think is the next big thing in the search for a dentist?

Post by Robert Campbell on Dec 8, 2012

Fresh back from the ZoomerShow at the Direct Energy Centre in Toronto, we’re really excited to reconnect with all the wonderful people we met at the Show. There were two hundred and fifty exhibitors here this weekend, and almost eighteen thousand attendees, and I feel like we talked to every one of them. It was a vortex of energy second only to Hurricane Sandy which stole some of thunder and swept the parking lots outside the Direct Energy Centre with rain and misery. But inside the complex, folks were warm and dry and absolutely wowed by the 5th annual ZoomerShow and all that it has become…

For two days from October 27th-28th, 2012, myself and my team took station at our booth to meet and speak with hundreds of Zoomers about the importance of dental care. The Zoomers we met were enthusiastic about our educative and preventative approach to dentistry and were thrilled to receive complementary samples of toothpaste , dental floss and other oral care products including Biotene’s dry mouth rinse.

We were extra fortunate to find our booth was located beside the Active Zone.  This area was really rocking with Zumba demonstrations and Tai Chi workshops which really got the crowd moving and trying various aerobic exercise routines.

The ZoomerShow is a lifestyle expo for men and women aged 45 plus.  There were over two hundred and fifty exhibitors featuring everything from health advice, money management tips, travel destinations, and lifestyle.

From our spot near the Active Zone, we could see a large section of the floor and we found ourselves moving our hips and dancing to the music, as we spent two days talking to folks about oral health.

Zoomers need to be aware that there is a direct connection between oral health and your overall health. Perhaps it threw some off guard to see myself and my staff at a show like this, but then again we are not your typical dentists and we made a lot of friends here.

The mantra at this event is that if it’s hot and it’s important, and if it can benefit people age 45+ then it’s welcome at the ZoomerShow!

Zoomers are Baby Boomers age 45 – 60 and older. It’s a vast group

of more than 14.5 million and accounts for 44 percent of the population, while controlling more than 70 percent of Canadian wealth. Moses Znaimer says that Zoomers were the labour surplus generation in the fifties and sixties that have now retired but remain a dominant force in our world economy and popular culture.

The key to staying young is staying fit and making smart choices; the 2012 Toronto Zoomershow was all about showcasing healthy lifestyle options.

There were crepes made with fruit and honey and free yogurt cups and all manner of protein bars and nutrient supplements being distributed to attendees.

It does seem a little out of the box, but here at Rosedale Family Dental Care and at my other clinics we do things differently and you can depend on us to be attentive and helpful for your oral health whatever age group or demographic you dance with.

Winston’s parents, Jan and Ralph who are patients of Dr. Archer’s, know the importance of good oral health even for our furry four-legged friends!

Check out what Ostomy Toronto has to say about Dr. Archer…

There are some people in the world who are prepared to look beyond their own personal business interests and are willing to help their fellow citizens when an unusual request comes their way. You, Dr Archer are one of these special people.

There is no connection between your dental practice and the not for profit organization Ostomy Toronto, other than you have a patient who has had ostomy surgery.  Out of the blue you were asked to provide some “goodies” for the “goodie bags” that were handed out to all persons attending our conference this past August.

Now first of all, what conference and what has it to do with dental practices?  Well, this conference was hosted by Ostomy Toronto on behalf of the United Ostomy Association of Canada Inc (UOAC).  Never heard of this association; not surprising “ostomy” is not a household word.

There is probably no surgical procedure that produces more misunderstanding and fear than an “ostomy”.  An “ostomy” is a surgically formed opening on the surface of the abdomen through which bodily wastes are eliminated. Conditions that call for this procedure are cancer of the colon and rectum, cancer of the bladder, physical trauma, congenital disorders, bowel obstructions and complications of Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s disease.

The Toronto Ostomy Community is made up of a group of people who have successfully transitioned to living with an ostomy.  We swim, dance, work, travel and participate in activities just as we did before surgery.  We believe that living with an ostomy does not define the individual.  In fact, a person with an ostomy is unrecognizable on the street.

Ostomy Toronto is just one chapter that belongs to the national organization; there are some forty plus chapters across Canada.  We hold a conference every two years; including this past August in Toronto.  This year our theme was “Caring in a Changing World.”

There are so many ways that we can show caring and you, Dr. Archer, certainly demonstrated that you care in helping others.  For those of us who live with a stoma, we know how important it is that we take care of our diet and that we chew properly. You provided two hundred toothbrushes together with dental floss for our attendees. No excuse for our attendees to fail to brush and floss their teeth!

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Dr Archer, from your actions and donations you embody this change.   Thank you again for your support of Ostomy Toronto and the United Ostomy Association of Canada Inc. by giving an important donation to each attendee at our conference.

Di Bracken, Conference Chair

dib@ostomytoronto.com

Toronto Dentist Dr. Natalie Archer was a judge a 2012 Search for Miss Teen Canada –World on Sunday July 15th 2012.

She hobnobbed with Canadian Idol judge Zack Werner and helped pick the 2012 Miss Teen Canada World, Megha Sandhu.

Dr Archer was also a mentor to all contestants on Miss Teen Canada Mentor Night

It was a hot Sunday evening and the hotel air conditioning unit was set to maximum cool in the Sutton Suite conference room of the Westin Bristol airport hotel.  Dr Archer made the trip out there that evening to lend her charm and leadership as Event Moderator in a unique first annual Miss Teen Canada – World Mentor Night.

As a trusted Moderator, Dr. Archer introduced three other speakers before taking her turn at the podium. She introduced Melani Chong, Katrina Hadden, and Alexandra Orlando in that order. The event lasted two hours with questions and photo mingling afterwards.

Mentors are important. In our increasingly advanced technological society, our education system struggles to keep up. Youth can get confused. Most teens can get really anxious and slightly overwhelmed by all that’s expected of them in the race to succeed. Mentors are there to point a clear way forward.

A much loved Toronto dentist, Dr. Natalie Archer D.D.S. showed the Miss Teens the possibility of creating a satisfying career in the sciences.

Dr. Archer talked about the true value of getting a top quality education as being a decision that preserves choices.  Having a good University degree and being smart and well schooled is something the ‘nobody can ever take away from you‘.  Life is indeed a very long journey.

Half way through the presentation, Dr. Archer  described her son’s most recent fascination with spiders and how he has taught her a few things about these Arachnids and even more about her own life. She related an interesting story about these creatures and how and why they spin their webs.  She said that each of the teens listening should also be building their web out in all directions because nobody in the room can ever be really sure about which direction their lives will take, and where they get their first all-important opportunities. You can peruse some of the best Miss Teen Canada World Mentor blogs in this Squidoo lens (coming soon).

Many of the girls were very impressed and took copious notes with Dr. Archer and the Teens saw her as a real role model in being able to “have it all” as a professional and mother of two with extensive community work.   Dr. Archer was straight as an arrow living up to her name  in giving the Miss Teens real personal advice about the importance of personal life choices and planning but also was powerful in her message for these young women to be strategic  to think BIG from a  business perspective .   The teens also had an awe for Melani Chong and most hope to have a life that’s equal to or even half as exciting and glamourous as hers. Plenty of girls took pictures of the Katrina Hadden, well  known for the Dove Esteem campaign and her modelling work; a contributor to the best selling self-help book “Making it in High Heels” and life coach Katrina Hadden has had quite a life already. She passed along memories as notes to young people to internalize and carry forth as their own wisdom. She talked about body image and how to measure success. Third in the line-up, Alexandra Orlando described her challenges and hurdles as an Olympic Athlete that she overcame to succeed and included some powerful poetry.

Dr. Archer shared some of her secrets to leading a more balanced life.  In the tiny clip below Dr. Archer answers the question ” How and when did you know you were ready to start having a family?” She is describing how she was over thirty years old when she had her first child.  At that time she was a few years out of school, recently married and had a good business opportunity to starting a business – her own dental practice. You would think this would be a terrible time to have children, and yet she tells the girls to take calculated business risks just as she did.  It was that first big business move that started her successful career path and likely without that particular business opportunity decision at that exact time, “she would not be at here at the podium tonight.”   Dr. Archer spoke from the heart encouraging them to plan, choose carefully in important decisions and wanting them to have a complete and balanced life with no regrets as a senior citizen.

Its a very short clip but it shows the Miss Teens learning from these speakers – Mentor Night was a very positive experience for everyone involved.

Ann McConvey is now helping Toronto dentist Dr Natalie Archer in two different locations.

You can catch Ann McConvey helping Dr Archer at either

Rosedale Family dental care located at 600 Sherbourne Street suite 808 (across from Sherbourne subway station) or at the Runnymede Dental Centre  located at 625 Runnymede Road with plenty of economical parking.

Teeth Cleaning and Oral Hygiene

Ann McConvey has lots of experience and an unmistakeable chair-side manner.  Her knowledge, skill and gentle manner is what has grown her practice over many years.

She has a loyal group of patients that have followed Ann over the years.  Working for many years with the  late Dr. Judith Dixon-Moody, Ann has moved her downtown practice to the Rosedale Medical Building at the corner of Bloor and Sherbourne.  For all of the patients looking for Annie…”I’m here and in my new home.”  Feel free to call her at our office 416.964.9070 and ask to speak with her.  She’d be delighted to connect with you.

Earlier this spring Dr Natalie Archer DDS sponsored a Good Dental Habits photo contest on Lenzr, which is a serial photo contest website that harnesses business to make art.

Dr Archer did this for a number of reasons:  First, she wanted to build awareness for her services in the digital contest space, which is very busy and quite good for making Google friendly links to her website. Secondly, she wanted to license the photo feed and make a visual repository of images on her website and third she hoped to learn some new and unusual methods of keeping teeth clean and healthy, and then to share these ideas with her readership here on the website.  The contest was big success on all three fronts!  You can see the images we collected here in the Good Dental Habits photo gallery.

“What are some of the things you do that protect and preserve your brilliant white smile?” she asked, “Do you have any outrageously healthy dental habits?”

The challenge was set to find images that really wow other web users and make them think about their own quirky dental habits.  Maybe not just the bathroom teeth brushing, although such images were certainly accepted and the practice was definitely encouraged, but people wearing mouth guards playing sports and using night guards to prevent their teeth grinding. And how about close-ups of people using flossing picks to get small pieces of meat and doughy bread stuck between their teeth?  The more creative a solution to fighting cavities the users could dream up, the better score they received in the voting, and from the seven judges who picked one winner from the top ten images collected.

Lastly, all submitters were reminded to use the 140 character caption to tell a story about their particular dental habits.  The Judges are photographers too and they were looking for quality images and short 140 character stories.

Mary Mah won the prize – an Apple iPad2

This contest ended at 12:01am on March 1st, 2012 with a user named Mary Mah being celebrated as #1 submitter. Here is a picture of her grandchild which she titled, Starting Early.

Thanks Mary for this terrific image and we sure do hope you enjoy your wonderful prize as much as we enjoy your photo.

Below is the 2nd runner-up which is also a very impressive picture – this is a very purple plaque attack!

Thanks to all the people who participated in this wholesome contest for making a repository of good images that will help convey good ideas and easy-to-implement dental habits that are sure to help save teeth and protect healthy smiles.

Drum roll please…..

And the Winner of Monday’s True or False | Dental Facts Contest is:

MR/MRS JANE/JOHN DOE from XX, ON

Congratulations!

You’ll be receiving a XX!

[INSERT IMAGE OF THE PRIZE]

The answers to last weeks quiz were:

1) Halitosis is the term for bad breath: TRUE

2) The Romans invented flossing: FALSE

3) Halitosis, tooth decay and periodontal disease are the top three reasons for seeking dental services: TRUE

For full answers to last week’s questions, check back at last Monday’s blog post.

To stay-up-to-date on the latest contests, please visit our Facebook and Twitter pages.

This Monday, we thought it would be fun to do a little dental True or False quiz. We’ll be giving away a secret surprise. *Hint: it’s something you can use to clean your teeth with…

Quiz Timeline:

1. Fill in your answers to the questions in the comments section below.
2. Next Monday, we’ll draw a winner from everyone that provides the correct answers, and announce the answers, the prize and the winner!

Here are the questions:

1) True or False?: Halitosis is the term for bad breath

2) True or False?: The romans invented flossing

3) True or False?: Halitosis, tooth decay and periodontal disease are the top three reasons for seeking dental services

Submit your answers below! Stay tuned for the answers, the prize and the winner on next Monday!

Good luck!