Going To The Dentist? Relax!

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 15, 1998 / 8:48 AM EST / CBS

Uh oh: a trip to the dentist! Believe it or not, it doesn't have to be one of life's worst necessities. CBS This Morning Health Correspondent Dr. Emily Senay has good news for those suffering from dental phobia.

About 35 million adults in the U.S. are anxious about their dental visits. The sounds. The shots. The pain. We endure them for the sake of healthy teeth and gums.

But many people truly dread going to the dentist. Take Mary Joe Wright: "I was so bad that people used to drop me off at my appointment, wait, and then bring me home. And I cried through the whole thing."

Dentist Terry Gotthelf says that most dental patients are anxious during their visits: "The most frequent complaints about the dentists are the pain, the length of the time they have to sit in the chair, the fear of the unknown, and cost."

But there is hope. For most of her life, Marla Kirbin hated going to the dentist. Today, she actually looks forwards to it: "I like coming here. I find that coming here becomes an enjoyable experience."

Why the change? Well, the foot massages might have something to do with it. Marla Kirbin explains: "At first I thought, my goodness this feels a little decadent. But it really made a difference. It made me relax, and I enjoyed it."

Kirbin is a patient at the Dental Phobia Treatment Center of New York, where services like reflexology and virtual reality goggles are offered to help calm patients during treatment. "I found myself taking the focus off what was going on in my mouth and just concentrating on my foot massage," Kirbin says.

Michael Kroschak, director of the center, believes the key to reducing patient anxiety is relaxation: "We do anything it takes to get the patient comfortable and allay any fears they have over the dental environment," he says.

Patients at the center say the 3D goggles are a great distraction. Maureen McCarthy is a patient: "I find them helpful, because it takes my mind off the noise. The goggles have both a picture that you look at as though you're seeing a movie, and there's a music soundtrack that accompanies it."

Techniques like these have helped Mary Jo Wright get over her phobia. Today when she goes to the dentist, she is treated with everything from warm comfort pillows to reflexology to aromatherapy. "It takes you into another place," she says. "Your concentration is on something other than the drill or where you are. It's very soothing."

There may not be a lot of science to explain why these services help reduce anxiety, but the patients don't really care. As a matter of fact, says Wright: "If somebody said to me that I'd have to come back to the old way of going to a dentist, you know what? I wouldn't go agai. I would not go."