Are you afraid to go to the dentist? [View All]

[Kadie]

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Is the Spa Doc In?
Doctors benefit as much as the pampered patients at new dental, dermatological and gynecological spas
Katherine Seligman

Sunday, October 23, 2005

There are people who loathe going to the dentist, but Peggy Gill isn't one of them. On a recent visit, she reclined in a chair that could deliver a vibrating massage and listened to classical music in a lavender-scented room, her shoes off, a small dental bib secured around her neck. In the most unusual touch, her hands were encased in what looked like industrial oven mitts.

"I always get my hands dipped first," she said, draping them on the armrests before the dental hygienist arrived to scrape the plaque on her teeth. She was referring to the complimentary hand massage offered at the dentist's office, whose owner believes he's the first in Northern California to combine the word dental with the term spa.

The Cosmetic Dental Spa in Pleasant Hill provides routine and cosmetic dental services: X-rays, teeth cleaning, fillings, veneers, whitening. But it also offers full body massage and, coming soon, body waxing and facials.

"When they start the waxing, I'll do that," said Gill, who first came to Dr. Ricardo Perez for veneers to repair damage from years of teeth grinding but keeps making the drive from Antioch for her regular cleanings. And the extras. She knows to head first for the container of warm paraffin, where she dips her hands the requisite three times, puts on plastic gloves and the mitts. Only then, as Gill's fingers marinate, does the hygienist start chiseling. Soon the aesthetician arrives, applying massage oil and kneading Gill's hands and arms. Gill sighs.

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/23/CMG9TET4GR1.DTL



Patients get pampered at new dental, dermatological and gynecological spas. Photo illustration by davidwaldorf.com