I started out working in health care when I was 13 years old. My father was chief of physical therapy at a Philadelphia hospital and helped get me get summer jobs working in the admissions office and the pharmacy department. I was on the track of becoming a physician and was pre-med in college in the late 60s. My science courses taught me how to think abstractly, but I really wanted to know more useful information about the human body and apply that knowledge to healing. After two years, I changed my major, entered the College of Allied Health and obtained my Bachelors in Nursing.
It was working in Intensive/Coronary Care that opened my eyes to the medical system where the tiresome hours of working, the overuse and misuse of drugs, the staff errors and neglect, and the needless complications made me want to personally stay away from hospitals. Again, I shifted course and went back to school to study to be a dentist where I could treat healthy people. Little did I know how off target my thinking was.
Because of my nursing background, I wasn’t intimidated by doing dental procedures on patients who had heart disease, strokes, organ transplants, neurological disorders, psychiatric problems, or cancer. As a result, very sick patients were continually referred to me. I noticed that I could restore their teeth and clean their gums, but dental caries and periodontal infections would soon reappear.
The courses in nursing school on nutrition, pharmacology, analysis of blood chemistries, and systemic disease had me thinking that dental problems may be symptomatic of something not related to how good their dental hygiene was. I then took a more in depth health history and diet analysis of all my patients. Back in the 80’s, this was quite radical. Cleaning up the diet was first on the agenda before dental work was provided. Removing toxic dental materials and testing for biocompatible restorative materials was done for patients with compromised immune systems, allergies, or chronic pain. We worked with their other health providers to detox and restore chemical, physical, and emotional balance. And then a funny thing happened. People reported that they felt better both physically and mentally. They showed excellent dental health on recall visits. For some reason, this dental-systemic health relationship never made it into any of my nursing or dental education, but it sure seemed to make perfect sense to me.
What followed in the next several years was learning more about how to prevent dental and medical problems. We routinely incorporated nutrition counseling, methods to relieve stress in the dental office and elsewhere, and suggestions for lifestyle enhancements. I found that writing and lecturing on my holistic philosophy greatly increased my reach and credibility with both the public and other healthcare professionals. Other dentists soon wanted to know how they could develop a more health-focused practice. Hence OraMedica International was founded.
OraMedica continues to evolve with dental wellness information products and consulting for consumers, healthcare providers, employee wellness programs, and businesses committed to making this world a better place. As ideas and changes in health care often depend on media coverage either in news or advertisements, the less recognized holistic companies can’t compete for the larger audience with their smaller marketing budgets. From a health provider’s experience, however, patients have for the most part trusted our professional opinions and purchased products we recommend. It is with knowledge of the mindset and practices of health practitioners and the vast captive consumer health audience that I help socially and environmentally responsible companies greatly increase their visibility and market share.
Yours for better health,
Andrea H. Brockman, BSN, DDS
President, OraMedica International, LLC
