Thank you to everyone for your continued patronage over the past year. We here at BEYOND™ have thoroughly enjoyed working with each and every one of you and we look forward to continuing our work together in 2008.

Have a wonderful, safe holiday season with your families and friends.

-From all of us at BEYOND™ Dental & Health

Thank you to all of our faithful readers! If you are receiving The BEYOND™ Messenger this month it is because you actively decided to receive a copy from us. We’ve switched over to a new server-based service that ensures timely delivery and safeguards our mailing list.

This new service also ensures that you don’t receive any spam emails or viruses. Please tell all of your clients and colleagues to subscribe to The BEYOND™ Messenger so that they can continue receiving our monthly newsletters full of useful information!

To subscribe, please fill out the online form here. Just copy and paste this line into an email to your clients so that they too can sign up and receive the newsletter.

We are also working on expanding our language offerings and The BEYOND™ Messenger is currently available in Spanish, Arabic, and German with Polish coming out this month! If you want to receive The BEYOND™ Messenger in one of these languages, just resubmit the sign-up form and select your language preference.

We look forward to providing you with informative and interesting news about our company and the aesthetic dental industry in 2008!

We are adding a new section to our website that will help interested customers locate the dentist nearest to them who offers the BEYOND™ whitening treatment. This new section is already live on our website and can be found here. To post your contact information on our site, fill out of the form on that page and we will put your information live on the website within 1-2 business days.

For distributors, you can view other BEYOND™ distributors around the world here and fill out the same form on that page.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@beyonddent.com.

We cannot stress enough the importance of storing our BEYOND™ whitening gel correctly. All of our 35% hydrogen peroxide whitening gels must be stored in the refrigerator upon receipt and until they are used with a patient. This is especially important for dealers and dentists in warmer climates, but it also applies to everyone. The gel syringes must be stored at a continuous temperature of around 5°C. For the BEYOND™ II Single-Patient and Five-Patient Kits, the syringes of 35% hydrogen peroxide are packaged outside of the kit for easy storage in the refrigerator. The new Max5 and Max10 kits have the gel syringes packaged inside of the kit, so you can just put the whole kit in the fridge.

If the gel syringes are not stored properly, the hydrogen peroxide in the gel will begin to break down and render the gel ineffective. This will directly affect whitening results.

How can you tell if your whitening gel syringes have already gone bad and the hydrogen peroxide has begun breaking down?

The whitening gel syringes are all sealed in individual vacuum-sealed foil wrappers. If the foil wrapper is no longer tightly vacuum-sealed, then the gel has already begun breaking down and will no longer be effective for the whitening treatment. Other signs that the gel has begun to break down include: Loss of viscosity (a runny, liquid consistency), the syringe is leaking, and/or the plunger in the back has begun to be pushed outwards.

Picture of good syringe:

Picture of damaged syringe:

If you receive damaged syringes, please contact your BEYOND™ products dealer to order replacements. Save the defective syringes and replacements will be sent to you promptly. Do not attempt to perform the whitening treatment with these gels as you may see reduced results, or no whitening results at all.

The BEYOND™ system is designed to minimize sensitivity during and after the treatment. However some patients may still have some sensitivity from the treatment. What can you do to prepare them for this and what can you recommend to help them?

Tooth sensitivity occurs when the whitening gel travels too far into the teeth during the treatment and irritates the nerves in the teeth. This is a temporary side effect, and no permanent damage is caused, but for some patients it can be extremely unpleasant and painful. Since we want to make the BEYOND™ treatment as comfortable as possible, there are several ways that you can assess a patient’s likelihood of developing sensitivity during and after the treatment and there are several recommendations that you can make on how to alleviate the sensitivity after the treatment.

The most important point is to warn the patient beforehand that they may experience sensitivity from the treatment. Patients respond better to an unpleasant situation if they are aware of the possibility of it happening and are therefore not surprised. When you are doing the pre-treatment examination, keep an eye out for several red flags. These are white spots on the teeth, cracks or chips in the tooth enamel, visible cavities, or deep grooves in the enamel surface. Any of these may increase the chance of the patient experiencing sensitivity because the integrity of the enamel has been compromised and the gel will be able to travel faster into the tooth.

If the patient tells you beforehand that they are especially prone to tooth sensitivity, then you will want to use the jar of post-treatment fluoride included with the BEYOND™ II Single-Patient Treatment Kit. Just apply it for one minute following the final whitening cycle and use dry suction to remove it. If a patient complains of sensitivity during or immediately following the treatment, you will also want to apply the fluoride to their teeth.

They can also take an over-the-counter analgesic (i.e. Ibuprofen or Tylenol). Instruct the patient to avoid any extremely hot or cold foods for the next 24 hours.

To ask Dr. Jenny a question, please send an email addressed to her to info@beyonddent.com.

Q: We have a potential client who suffers from vitiligo. Are we able to perform the BEYOND™ treatment and if so is there any further advise?

A: From my understanding of vitiligo, there is a potential risk of the hydrogen peroxide in the whitening gel aggravating the patient's condition further. My recommendation is to err on the side of caution and recommend to the patient that he or she talk with his or her treating physician before undergoing the BEYOND™ treatment.

Q: I have one patient who claimed that ten days after the whitening procedure her teeth discolored and rebounded to the old color. What could have happened? According to her, she did everything that was recommended for the post-treatment procedure. Her initial color was A3 and after the treatment was A1 (on the VITA scale).

A: For your patient who saw her teeth rebound in color after a few weeks, this is a result of the types of stains in her teeth and the structure of her tooth enamel. You mentioned that she started out as A3 - this means that she has thinner tooth enamel and is therefore a harder whitening case. During the initial treatment, the whitening gel only whitened the surface enamel of her teeth and the deeper, harder-to-remove stains found inside the tooth were not whitened. Therefore once the color settled, the darker stains still inside of her teeth became visible again through her thinner enamel. For patients where this occurs, you will need to do a follow-up treatment on them. This will ensure the best results. I would recommend that you also start with an 8-minute application of the powder and liquid manual mix formula. You will need to warn them that they may have increased sensitivity during this treatment, because you are following up the first treatment so quickly. However this sensitivity is transient and will pass in about 24 hours. You can have her come back for a follow-up session of one to two, eight minute treatments in about one week after her initial treatment.