Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis. This is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy life right up to the very end. And if that’s the way you feel, you’re in the right place.

It’s the fifth of July, 2024, and I’m out here at Lake Fayetteville taking a walk. Just jumped into my sweats and came down here. I was feeling kind of jittery. I’m playing hooky from work. This year Independence Day fell on Thursday, so most people are taking Friday off, and so I did the same.

I started the day doing a little reading. I thought I would catch up on my reading this weekend. And then I was just too jittery. Sometimes, I wake up energetic. Maybe not at first, but after I get fully awake. I have this kind of nervous energy, and I had a couple of cups of decaf. I was able to get through probably thirty or forty pages of a novel, and I just wanted to do something.

I’ve been doing a couple of other things. They’re just little taking-care-of-business things. I’m taking care of stuff that just gets piled up around the house and doing whatever I need to do with it. I’ve been doing laundry. I tried to put on shorts today, and they don’t fit. I guess I bought them when I was somewhat less of a man than I am today.

I didn’t put on sunscreen. I did get water, though—plenty of water. And I can only drink water now most of the time, which brings me to the topic of the day: dental health.

So, the big news is that I’ve got braces. I’ve had braces for the first time in probably 45 years. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I had them the first time, but I was very young.

Why am I getting braces? Well, I’m concerned about my appearance. I have to look good for the podcast, handsome for you people, have a bright smile, and have everything in place. So that’s why I’m doing this. I have some plastic surgery coming up, too. Just kidding!

There is actually a medical reason. I’m going to do a whole series — I’ve planned a whole series on dental health, by the way. But this isn’t part of that series. I do practice what I preach sometimes and I have talked before on the show about how important dental health is to your overall health. So I go to my dentist when I need to. I’ve had a lot of reconstructive work done over the last few years. But I also go for my cleanings. I’m going every four months now. And a checkup, whenever that happens, once a year or something. And I try to take my dentist’s advice and do the best I can with that.

It was discovered that my top teeth are rubbing against my bottom teeth in the front, causing them to wear off the tops of my lower teeth. About fifteen years ago, I got some crowns on the front. At that time, they were using metal, so it’s metal with some material, tooth-like material, ceramic, or whatever, attached to it. Not that that would have made a difference because whatever it is, it’s harder than my lower teeth, which are still natural. So, my original teeth and tops of teeth.

So what happens is that the tops are completely worn off, such that you can actually see what they call the dentin, which is the middle of the tooth. It’s a different material, softer. Howdy!

It’s pretty humid today on Lake Fayetteville Trail. It’s a chilly 80 degrees. I say chilly because the last couple of weeks, we’ve had temperatures in the 90s. I just didn’t want to go out at all. I’m doing it today, but it is pretty humid out here, so the “real feel” is probably higher than 80. I think the high is supposed to be 85 today, which is nice.

Anyway, dentin. That’s not a good thing, and it would be — I can’t get crowns on those until the alignment situation is resolved. So they have this thing you’ve probably heard of called Invisalign. And those are removable braces. It’s a plastic tray that’s fitted directly to your teeth and engineered in such a way to move your teeth the way they’re supposed to be moved. The dentist can do those. At least my dentist can. But he said that I was probably going to need an orthodontist, so he referred me to an orthodontist.

They took all kinds of pictures. It’s pretty amazing what they can do. They even fitted my Invisalign based on 3-D photography. There are no impressions done like you may have done before. They use some kind of rubbery, quick-hardening thing.

4.25 from 3.81, that’s about forty… four. Point-four-four miles we’ve gone so far.

Anyway, all this information is on the computer, and I go into a room with the orthodontist. He asks me about music and what I like to do, and we talk about Nirvana for a few seconds. It was kind of weird.

We’ll go a little bit further here—farther. One of these days, I’m going to get the whole further/farther thing down so that I can say it right the first time.

Then, he actually showed me where the dentin was showing through on my lower teeth. They had a few options, and we settled on braces on the bottom and Invisalign on the top. That’s what he recommended because it would give him more control, and I want him to do the best job he can. So I’ve got braces just like I had back in grade school on the bottom, and I’ve got this Invisalign thing on the top.

The rules about Invisalign are: when I have it in, I can only drink water, and I can’t eat anything. And the key to success, in addition to the same hygiene you always have, brushing, flossing, etc, is having the tray in for at least 22 hours a day. I had these habits, bad or not, of just taking my time eating, drinking, so forth. I usually drink my coffee all morning, even though it’s only a few cups. So I had to modify that.

Wow, there goes a deer galloping through the woods! Uphill on the way back.

So that’s a challenge for me. Today, I’m not having any Mio, just water for my hydration, and no BCAAs. I did have some oatmeal this morning and coffee—decaf.

The process is going to take approximately eighteen months. And because of the braces, there are other things you can’t eat even when you have your Invisalign tray out. Anything hard, crunchy, sticky, chewy. Anything that might, you know, knock off the bracket. So that’s a challenge. I’m looking at another seventeen and a half months or sixteen and a half months of not having crunchy tacos. We have to have soft tacos, if anything. It will be seen as a minor inconvenience, but it will be good to celebrate that when it’s all over.

Hygiene is also interesting. It’s not a big deal with Invisalign because you do your normal brushing and flossing and wash it with toothpaste or something. I think I got a thing of special crystals you’re supposed to wash it with, but I don’t need to. You only wear these for a week, by the way. They give me six at a time. I just put a new one in yesterday. Every Thursday, I put the next one in. They move your teeth a little bit; then the next one moves them a little bit more. So it’s that gradual process. Anyway, you only wear them for a week. I usually keep the previous week’s one in case something goes wrong. But they said it’s unbreakable. They’ve had destructive teenagers wearing them. It’s very hard to break them. But I’m careful with them anyway.

They are expensive but financed at zero percent, and there is no benefit to paying in cash. So I’m paying on time, which I don’t like, but it makes financial sense in this case.

Hygiene on the bottom. If you don’t know what braces look like, there’s a bracket on each tooth, and they are all connected with a wire. And you go in, and every time you go back in, they tighten the wire, and it’s sore for a couple of days. So that makes it difficult to floss. The procedure is that they have this plastic thing like a needle; although it’s bigger, it has a big loop. You put the floss through the loop, and you put the needle underneath the wire between your teeth and the two brackets. You floss that one tooth, and you take it out and do it on the next tooth.

I never really liked that plan. I don’t have the patience for it. So I got a Waterpik. And I remember having one of these as a kid, too. A Waterpik uses a jet of water instead of floss to do the same job. You could say it does a little better, too, because you can hit the full front and back of your teeth, not just in between like you would with floss. So I’ve been using that, and it’s working okay. I haven’t had a real close look at my gums. I imagine they are not looking as good as they were before the braces, but hopefully, they are good enough.

I can see the parking lot, and I’m feeling this in my legs today. It’s getting kind of warm and that sun is bright. Fortunately, the way I took, there’s a lot of shade. But I’m going to be burned for sure; it only takes a few minutes for me, but it won’t be too bad.

So that’s a new development that I hope you find interesting. I’d love to hear your comments on it. Do you have these braces or Invisalign as an adult? How are you dealing with it? Do you like the results? I’d like to know if you like the results. You can comment on YouTube to this video below. You can comment on the blog at http://RunningAFEVER.com/380. I’d love to hear your response. You can email me at mail@runningafever.com. YouTube comment is probably the best way. If you’re on YouTube, don’t forget to like and subscribe. Along with your comments, those are very much appreciated.

So take care. If you’ve got the fever, keep it. If you don’t, catch the fever. And I’ll talk to you next time on Running: A FEVER.