Westchester Oral Surgery - December 2019

Westchester Oral Surgery - December 2019

2975 Westchester Avenue, Suite G02, Purchase, NY 10577

• www.oralsurgeryofwestchester.com

Stop Searching for the ‘Perfect’ Gift GREATEST GIFT OF ALL

We don’t give gifts to make ourselves look good; we do it to make the people we care about feel loved. “

On my 40th birthday, my wife and kids covered my eyes with a blindfold and took me on a surprise trip. Initially, I expected a brief outing, but that mystery ride ended up lasting two hours. When the blindfold finally came off, I found myself standing in front of Pocono International Raceway. I was thrilled! I have been into motorsports and car racing for years. My family arranged for me to spend my birthday driving formula race cars. It was a real dream come true! Sharing the experience with my family made the day that much more fun. That surprise trip to Pennsylvania is still one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.

This time of year, there are a lot of retail ads insisting that we need to find the “perfect” gift for our loved ones. Giving gifts for Christmas or Hanukkah has become an integral part of the holiday season, especially here in the United States. Part of the blame for this belongs to us New Yorkers — or at least the New Yorkers of the 1800s. If you look at Christmas in particular, gift-giving wasn’t part of the traditions until wealthy and middle-class citizens in New York City transformed the holiday from a public revelry to a home-centered holiday. Historian Stephen Nissenbaum wrote a book called “The Battle for Christmas” that covers this transition in depth, but, basically, wealthy citizens worried that working class folks would use Christmas celebrations as a way to protest labor conditions. That fear would pave the way to the Black Friday madness we see today. Many people bemoan the “over-commercialization” of the season, and while I love giving and getting gifts myself, I’ll agree that there is a lot of pressure to give the “perfect” gift. There’s this idea that buying a gift for a loved one is a test. It doesn’t matter if we’re shopping for their birthday or some other holiday; we need to find just the right gift that will prove how well we know this person. But this isn’t the point of gift-giving.

We don’t give gifts to make ourselves look good; we do it to make the people we care about feel loved. My 40th birthday present isn’t my favorite gift just because I got to drive race cars — it was great because I got to share that experience with my family. When I set out to give someone a gift, I looking for three things: What would they want, what do they need, and, most importantly, what would make them smile? If the person smiled when they open their gift, then I know I found the “perfect” thing. The best gift I’ve ever given wasn’t technically a gift, but it was a huge surprise. When my wife and I were buying our new house, we kept it a secret from our kids until we closed. Then we took a page from my birthday, blindfolded our children, and brought them to our new home. They were as excited to see the house as I was to drive race cars. All the kids ran around and played hide-and-seek in the new house for hours. It was great!

I want to wish you all a wonderful end to 2019. May you enjoy a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year with lots of smiles.

–Dr. Harrison Linsky

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Westchester Office • 914-251-0313

DELEGATE TO ELEVATE The Secret to Being a Great Leader

Poor delegation is the Achilles’ heel of most leaders, who often confuse being “involved” with being “essential.” To determine if you’re holding on to work you should delegate out, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) recommends asking this simple question: “If you had to take an unexpected week off work, would your initiatives and priorities advance in your absence?” If your answer is no or you aren’t sure, then you’re probably too involved. No one person should be the cog that keeps everything in motion, no matter their position in the company. Luckily, HBR has created an audit using the following six T’s to identify which tasks can be delegated. Tiny: Small tasks that stack up can undermine the flow of your work. Registering for a conference, putting it on the calendar, and On the evening of Dec. 8, 1881, the Ringtheater of Vienna, Austria, burned down when a stagehand, trying to light the gaslights over the stage, accidentally set fire to the prop clouds. The theater was already packed for the evening’s performance and in the chaos, the fire procedures were not followed. By the end of the evening, over 600 people were dead. The damage from the fire made it difficult to identify the victims. Fortunately, officials were able to use dental records to identify many of the victims so their loved ones could give them a proper burial. The unique nature of teeth has allowed investigators to determine identity in many different circumstances. While the Ringtheater fire was the first time that forensic odontology was used to identify victims of a mass disaster, it wasn’t the first time dental records were used to determine identity. Dental forensics

booking the flight are all small tasks someone else can handle.

task will get done faster and at a much higher quality.

Tedious: These tasks are straightforward but not the best use of your time. Someone else can input lists into spreadsheets or update key performance indicators for a presentation. Time-Consuming: These important, complex tasks don’t require you to do the first 80% of the work. Identify what they are, pass them to someone else, and step in for the final 20% to give approval. Teachable: Is there a task only you know how to do? If so, teach someone else to do it, and step in for the last quality check when it’s done. Terrible At: It’s okay to be bad at some things. Great leaders knowwhen to pass tasks off to someone who is more skilled than they are. The

Time-Sensitive: These tasks need to get done right now but are competing with tasks of a higher priority. Just because it has to get done immediately doesn’t mean you have to be the one to do it. Sure, some tasks only you can accomplish, but these are extremely rare. As the Virgin Group founder Richard Branson warns, needlessly resisting delegation is the path to disaster. “You need to learn to delegate so that you can focus on the big picture,” Branson says. “It’s vital to the success of your business that you learn to hand off those things that you aren’t able to do well.”

PAUL REVERE, FORENSIC ODONTOLOGIST?

A Brief History of Forensic Dentistry

happens to have a long history in the United States, where the first forensic dentist was none other than Paul Revere. A silversmith by trade, Revere studied under George Washington’s own “dental surgeon,” John Baker. Before the start of the RevolutionaryWar, Revere had his own dental practice. One of his patients was Major General Joseph Warren, who would eventually send Revere on his famous midnight ride in 1775.

Revere built a dental prosthetic to replace two of Warren’s teeth.

Warren was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill and his body buried in a mass grave. By the time Warren’s loved ones were able to give him a proper burial, it was impossible to tell the bodies apart. Revere was summoned and able to identifyWarren based on the prosthetic he’d made. The National Museum of Health and Medicine notes that, “Revere’s confirmation of General Warren’s identity was the first instance in this country of an identification of a military service member using dental remains.” Thanks in part to this founding father of forensic dentistry, the practice has expanded to aid many different fields. From law enforcement to archeology, dental records are used to solve mysteries and bring closure all over the world.

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Teeth whitening is the most popular cosmetic dentistry procedure. It’s estimated that 39.3 million Americans used at-home or in-office teeth whitening products in 2019. However, the side effects of teeth whitening, most notably tooth sensitivity and gingival inflammation, still prevent many patients from seeking out this treatment. Since the inflammation process contributes to post-bleaching tooth sensitivity, some dental professionals have tried administering anti- inflammatory or analgesic drugs to their patients before whitening their teeth. However, a recent systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Dental Association questioned the effectiveness of this approach. To evaluate the effectiveness of administering anti-inflammatory or analgesic drugs, the authors searched the >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4

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