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  • RAF485: Root Canals - Not as Bad as You Think

    RAF485: Root Canals - Not as Bad as You Think
    2026/11/05
    Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis, and this is a show about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. It's all about livin' long and lovin' life. Today's topic is one a lot of people dread before they ever sit in the chair: the root canal. I'm going to tell you what it actually is, how the modern procedure works in plain English, why someone needs one, a little history, why the reputation got so scary, and what has changed in roughly the last thirty years. I'll also talk about my own root canal, which I had last week. A root canal (the treatment, not the anatomy) is endodontic therapy. Endodontics is the branch of dentistry that deals with the inside of the tooth. Inside every tooth is a soft tissue called the pulp. The pulp is made up of nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue. It sits in a chamber up in the crown of the tooth and runs down thin tunnels in the roots. Those tunnels are the root canals. When the pulp gets irreversibly inflamed or infected, that living tissue can die. Bacteria can travel out the tip of the root into the bone and create an abscess. A root canal treatment removes that diseased pulp, cleans and shapes the canal system, disinfects it, and seals it. The only alternative is extraction. Saving a restorable natural tooth is usually preferable to pulling it: you keep your bite, your neighboring teeth stay put, and you avoid the cascade of replacement options. People hear "root canal" and think you're removing the roots. You're not. The roots stay. You're cleaning the canals inside them. How does it work? Diagnosis first. Your dentist or an endodontist (a specialist in this work) looks at symptoms, tests the tooth, and takes images. That might be ordinary dental X-rays; in trickier cases it can include cone-beam CT, which gives a three-dimensional look at the roots and surrounding bone. Then anesthesia. Local anesthetic numbs the tooth and the soft tissue around it. Modern local anesthetics and supplemental techniques are a big reason the old horror stories don't match most modern visits. The American Association of Endodontists' patient messaging is blunt on this point: with today's anesthetics, the discomfort of a root canal is often similar to getting a filling, once you're numb. In my case, I was completely numb, and there was no pain whatsoever during the procedure, just a little pressure and vibration. Isolation. A thin sheet called a rubber dam goes around the tooth so saliva stays out and the field stays clean and dry. That is infection control, not theater. The cool thing about this is that you don't have a bunch of stuff trying to go down your throat. It all stays above the rubber sheet, where they suction it off. Access. The dentist makes a small opening through the chewing surface or the back of the tooth into the pulp chamber. In my case, he had to go straight down through the top because I had a crown on that tooth. I also had a root canal 10 years ago in one of my front teeth. In that case, they went in through the back of the tooth. Clean and shape. Tiny instruments remove the pulp and shape the canals so irrigants can reach the full length. Older practice leaned heavily on hand files. Modern practice often uses flexible nickel-titanium rotary or reciprocating files that follow curved canals more predictably. Irrigate. Chemical irrigants, commonly sodium hypochlorite among others, flush out bacteria, debris, and leftover tissue. Activation methods can help those irrigants work deeper into the canal system. Shaping alone does not clean everything; chemistry matters. Fill. Once the canals are cleaned and dried, they're filled, most classically with a rubber-like material called gutta-percha plus a sealer. Newer bioceramic sealers are part of the modern toolkit. The idea is a dense, biocompatible seal so bacteria don't have an open highway back in. Then a temporary filling goes on top. Because a tooth that needed a root canal is often structurally weakened by deep decay, a crack, or a big old filling, a permanent crown is frequently the final protection, especially on back teeth that take heavy bite force. Timing and materials are between you and your dentist. I already had a crown on this tooth, and the endodontist was skilled enough not to damage it during the procedure, so I didn't have to get another crown. One visit or two is common. Complex anatomy, severe infection, or a tough retreatment can take longer. Your clinician's plan wins over any podcast timeline. Today I went to my regular dentist to get a permanent filling to replace the temporary one the endodontist put in. No numbing was required, and it was a quick, easy, inexpensive visit. The reason for this two-step process is specialization in the modern dental world. An endodontist is a specialist in what he does. Your regular dentist is a specialist in tooth restoration. Why would you need a root canal? The usual ...
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    15 分
  • RAF484: 20 Years Since My First Podcast

    RAF484: 20 Years Since My First Podcast
    2026/10/29
    Welcome to Running: A FEVER. My name is Michael Davis, and this is a show about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. It's all about livin' long and lovin' life. Recently I was preparing for our upcoming 500th episode and thinking about how I got started in podcasting. And I realized that this year marks 20 years since my first podcast. It wasn't Running: A FEVER, though. The show was called Everything Money, and my idea was to give personal financial advice to people who would call in to an 800 number. Unfortunately, nobody called in, and the show ended after only six episodes. There is currently a podcast called Everything Money, but it has nothing to do with me. In this episode, I play a clip from one of those original episodes. I talked for about 20 minutes in that episode about gold, debt, and credit scores. It's interesting to hear myself say that gold was at an all-time high of over $600. It was recently over $6,000, so yes, things have changed. I had a website, everythingmoney.org, and you can still see its skeletal remains, along with a few blog posts, on the Wayback Machine (link below). That domain has changed hands a few times since then, of course. I remember being inspired by the first podcast I ever listened to, Free Talk Live, which started as, and continues to be, a syndicated radio show. I haven't listened to it in many years, but I recently looked it up, and it turns out one of its original hosts is serving a federal prison sentence in a cryptocurrency case. Anyway, that was the first time I had heard of this thing called a podcast. My other inspiration was a radio show simply called The Money Show, hosted by Harry Browne. Harry's claim to fame was writing the book How You Can Profit from the Coming Devaluation, published in 1970, which correctly predicted massive inflation and the devaluation of the U.S. dollar. People who followed his advice became very rich. Later he ran as the Libertarian Party candidate for President of the United States in 1996 and 2000. He favored a conservative strategy of investing in equal weights of gold, stocks, bonds, and cash. And Harry Browne actually died during the short run of my first podcast, in March of 2006. I thought podcasting was a cool idea. I had always loved radio. I hung out at the local rock station when I was in high school, where most of the DJs were high school students or recent graduates making minimum wage. Then in college I was a DJ and later programming director of WRNV, the student-run school radio station. So the microphone and I were already friends. YouTube was barely a year old, and I had never even looked at the site, much less published on it. Podcasting itself was in its infancy. At the time there were far fewer podcasters relative to listener demand, so I think I had plenty of listeners, even though none of them were calling my 800 number. I opened each show by playing a big chunk of a popular song. I remember using one of Elvis Costello's songs, with no idea about copyright issues. In radio, that wasn't much of a concern, because stations play those songs anyway. I'd like to say I've been podcasting for 20 years, but I really didn't do anything for the next 10 years, until I teamed up with Tom Rohr and started the Padua Podcast Network. Still, it's cool to be able to say I was one of the early hosts, back when there were only tens of thousands of podcasts and single-digit millions of listeners in the U.S. According to The Podcast Host, Spotify lists nearly 7 million podcasts today, including active and inactive ones, and Apple lists 3.1 million valid listings. Even so, fewer than 500,000 publish an episode at least every 90 days. We've come a long way. So there's a little history about your host. I hope you enjoyed this look into my podcasting past, even though it has nothing to do with fitness, diet, or medicine. You can expect more of that in the next episode. Until next time, if you've got the fever, keep it burning, and if you don't, catch the fever, and I will see you next time on Running: A FEVER. References: https://web.archive.org/web/20070922111841/http://everythingmoney.org/ https://share.google/aimode/X75GHtM2sqH2weom3 https://share.google/aimode/O0Vjpg9yONPTPCjVz Show notes and references: http://RunningAFEVER.com/484 Subscribe / follow: • Website: http://RunningAFEVER.com • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@runningafever • Apple Podcasts / Spotify: search Running: A FEVER
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    7 分
  • RAF483: GLP-1s and Muscle Loss

    RAF483: GLP-1s and Muscle Loss
    2026/10/22

    GLP-1 weight-loss shots like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound really do work, but fast weight loss takes muscle along with the fat. Michael explains what these drugs do, how much lean mass people can lose on them, and how to protect your muscle with protein and strength training.

    Show notes and references: https://RunningAFEVER.com/483
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    8 分
  • RAF482: Cataracts

    RAF482: Cataracts
    2026/10/15

    What cataracts are, how they're diagnosed, and what surgery and IOLs actually involve — plus Michael's own cataract surgery after years of steroid drops following a cornea transplant, and why clear vision matters on the trail.
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    20 分
  • RAF481 - Why I'm Sick 3 Months Out of the Year

    RAF481 - Why I'm Sick 3 Months Out of the Year
    2026/10/08

    After getting sick for weeks at a stretch a couple times a year, Michael goes through a sinus CT and an ENT visit for recurrent sinusitis. The daily regimen: NeilMed saline rinse, Flonase, and Astelin — and a reminder that long recoveries may have a fixable cause.
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    8 分
  • RAF480 - Hope for All Mankind

    RAF480 - Hope for All Mankind
    2026/10/01

    Back on the Lake Fayetteville Trail on a mid-summer day (~93°). After weeks mostly off exercise, Michael walks and talks through getting back toward flying private pilot license, FAA medicals, and sport-pilot rules that lean on a driver's license. Also: how aviation and GPS have changed since the 90s, a word on community and hope for mankind, and a one-mile day that still counts.
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    19 分
  • RAF479 - The Prostate

    RAF479 - The Prostate
    2026/09/24

    What is the prostate, what does it do, and what should men know about prostate cancer, BPH (enlarged prostate), and prostatitis? Treatments from lifestyle to meds to TURP. Full post: http://RunningAFEVER.com/479
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    7 分
  • RAF478 - Restless Leg Syndrome

    RAF478 - Restless Leg Syndrome
    2026/09/17

    Restless leg syndrome can make your legs (and sleep) miserable — crawling, creeping, electric feelings that only ease when you move. What it is, risk factors, and what actually helps. Read the full post at http://RunningAFEVER.com/478
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    7 分