Dental Leaders Podcast

Mind Movers is back after a long break, and Rhona and Payman mark the return with Doctor Jeff Foster, an NHS GP who stumbled into men's health almost by accident, after realising male patients kept assuming he'd know the answers to questions no one in medicine was really trained to handle. Two decades on, he's co-authored national guidance on testosterone deficiency and become one of the most recognisable voices in the space.Jeff makes the case that full-body MRI scans are largely a waste of money, that blood testing from your early thirties is a far better investment, and that testosterone has been culturally hijacked into meaning something it never actually measured. Along the way, Rhona pushes him on a genuinely difficult question: the recent Cornell case and whether hormones can ever explain away a failure of consent. Jeff's answer is blunt and leaves little room for the excuse.There's also a proper back-and-forth on looks-maxing and jaw aesthetics, the strange cultural logic that paints steroid-using bodybuilders as the testosterone ideal while they quietly wreck their own fertility and bone density, and a shared frustration about how disconnected dentistry, GP medicine and mental health care still are from one another, even when a patient's symptoms are clearly sitting across all three. In This Episode00:00:40 – Introduction00:01:50 – Background in medicine00:04:35 – Common myths about men's health00:06:55 – The gender health gap00:08:05 – Why men avoid healthcare00:12:55 – Full body MRIs and over-screening00:15:00 – Blood tests and testosterone00:17:15 – Testosterone vs TRT00:20:30 – Fertility and male infertility00:27:25 – Accessing treatment00:30:20 – Testosterone, consent and masculinity00:39:15 – Looks maxing and jaw aesthetics00:43:05 – What TRT involves00:45:35 – Incel culture and role models00:57:35 – Joined-up healthcare About Jeff FosterJeff Foster is an NHS GP and one of the UK's leading voices on men's health, specialising in testosterone deficiency, hormone health and sexual health. He co-authored the UK's 2023 national guidance on testosterone deficiency in men, is medical director at Voy, a private men's health service, and hosts the Man Alive podcast.

Esther Shirin returns to Dental Leaders under a new name, having first appeared as Sharon Walsh in episode 278 to talk about losing her practice, her marriage and her children during a breakdown that led to alcohol addiction and homelessness. This conversation picks up from there: she's written a book about everything that happened since, and Payman says plainly that reading it changed how he thinks about his own life.Esther talks about the voice she heard, lying on a sofa in 2022 having been given little chance of seeing Christmas, asking her whether she wanted to live or die, and the years of addiction, a GDC suspension and eventual recovery that followed her choice. She's open about where that recovery actually came from: an elderly man she met on a park bench who'd known the Kray twins, a sister who took her in when she had nowhere else to go, and a faith practice built from pieces of Sufism, the Lord's Prayer and Alcoholics Anonymous rather than any one tradition.There's also a frank account of her seven-year case with the GDC, including a misdiagnosis by an expert witness she successfully challenged, and her view on why the current system leaves clinicians feeling judged by people who've never done the job. Later in the conversation, Esther discloses that she was abused as a child, and talks about only uncovering that history in therapy decades later, once addiction had stripped away the ways she'd learned to cope with it. In This Episode00:00:40 – Introduction00:02:50 – The name change00:05:25 – Choosing life00:15:00 – Who she is now00:19:35 – Money and gratitude00:25:15 – People who saved her life00:35:35 – Learning to respond, not react00:39:35 – The GDC process00:49:10 – Returning to dentistry00:53:50 – Yoga and recovery01:02:40 – A three-week gut detox01:10:50 – Fluoride and alternative oral care01:17:05 – Public speaking and teaching01:21:10 – Childhood abuse and therapy01:26:40 – The book and what's next About Esther ShirinEsther Shirin is a dentist who first appeared on Dental Leaders as Sharon Walsh in episode 278, discussing the breakdown that led to addiction, homelessness and the loss of her practice. She has since written a memoir, The Naked Soul of a Dentist, and is now rebuilding her career after a GDC suspension, alongside work as a qualified yoga teacher and public speaker on mental health and addiction.

Rana Al-Falaki opens by telling Payman what she's still struggling with, even now: the gap between how put-together she looks from the outside and how much she still has to fight to let people see the rest of it. She joins him as a specialist periodontist and laser research pioneer who built two award-winning practices, sold them, and then rebuilt her entire career as a performance coach after her body forced the issue.The backstory is a lot. Her mother died of breast cancer when Rana was 24, a death she now ties directly to a lifetime of people-pleasing and swallowed stress. In her mid-twenties she moved in with a man who became physically and emotionally abusive, a relationship she couldn't find the strength to leave for years. By her late thirties, buried under a GDC complaint, a divorce and the demands of running two practices, her body gave out: a diagnosis of POTS, a condition that had already left other sufferers unable to walk, arrived at almost the same time as a quiet choice about which label she was going to wear.There's real clinical substance threaded through all of it too. Rana explains how she talked her way into becoming one of the first periodontists in the UK using erbium lasers for bone regeneration, entirely on instinct and with no studies to back her up, and how she eventually got the research published against a field she describes as deeply resistant to new ideas. She's just as direct about what it actually takes to build a referral practice patients and dentists both trust, and why building Breathe, a free wellbeing platform for the dental profession, became personal after a friend who introduced her to lasers died from an infection that followed a drinking spiral after his own GDC complaint. In This Episode00:00:50 – Introduction00:02:40 – What she still struggles with00:05:00 – Spirituality and belief00:15:00 – Why she became a dentist00:21:30 – Losing her mother00:34:30 – Grief, addiction and abuse00:43:00 – Pitfalls of high performers00:50:40 – Burnout and chronic illness00:57:30 – Getting into lasers01:12:20 – Building a referral practice01:17:40 – Marriage and divorce01:24:45 – The Nail It coaching system01:32:40 – Launching Breathe01:35:55 – Blackbox thinking01:41:25 – Favourite lectures01:46:15 – Fantasy dinner party About Rana Al-FalakiRana Al-Falaki is a specialist periodontist and laser research pioneer who built and later sold two award-winning periodontal practices in London. She is now a leadership and performance coach, the creator of the Nail It coaching system, and co-founder of Breathe, a free wellbeing platform for the dental profession.

Raid Ali arrived in Cardiff in 1998 because a friend told him it was cheaper than London, and never really left. He joins Payman as a specialist implantologist and founder of Restore Dental Group, a five-practice business built from the three practices he and two business partners bought from their old boss, having qualified in Baghdad in 1996 and sat his exams in the UK with no family connection to dentistry at all.He talks openly about ranking fourteenth in the whole of Iraq in his final school exams during wartime, about teaching himself English from scratch after arriving (he remembers struggling just to buy bread), and about the early advice from Chris Barrow that changed how he ran his business: stick to dentistry, delegate everything else. There's a genuinely candid account of his own clinical mistakes too, including an implant placed without enough restorative space, and six stressful months defending a legal claim over a mentee's work he wasn't even liable for.Raid also gets into the detail that's shaped his implant career: why he still refers every zygomatic case elsewhere despite being trained to do them, the French physiologist whose PRF technique changed how he thinks about healing, and why he now considers soft tissue, not implant design, the single most important factor in long-term success. In This Episode00:00:50 – Introduction00:01:50 – Arriving in Cardiff00:03:50 – Growing up in Baghdad00:13:45 – Choosing dentistry00:19:30 – Moving to the UK00:21:00 – Sitting the exams00:25:35 – First impressions of UK dentistry00:28:35 – Buying his first practice00:35:40 – Getting into implants00:38:55 – Mentors who changed his thinking00:50:00 – Advice for new implantologists01:04:00 – Growing to five practices01:12:35 – Blackbox thinking01:24:35 – What grinds his gears01:38:40 – Fantasy dinner party About Raid AliRaid Ali is a specialist implantologist and founder of Restore Dental Group, a five-practice business based in Cardiff. Originally from Baghdad, he qualified in Iraq before moving to the UK in 1998, and now sits on the board of the Association of Dental Implantology, teaches an 18-day implant diploma, and co-founded the Iraqi Dental Community.

Jameel Gardee joins Payman to reflect on more than three decades in dentistry, from qualifying in Glasgow to undertaking advanced restorative training at Boston University and building a private practice centred on digital dentistry.He looks back on the people and experiences that shaped his career, why American dentistry changed his outlook, and how his approach to restorative treatment has evolved. The conversation also explores the pressures facing younger dentists, the value of mentorship and why becoming an excellent clinician takes more than technical ability.Much of the discussion centres on the shift from analogue to digital dentistry. Jameel breaks down the workflows behind modern smile design, from facial scanning and treatment planning to guided preparations, 3D printing and restorative materials. But there's a distinction he keeps coming back to: owning the latest technology means very little if you don't know how to bring it all together.The conversation also takes a more personal turn as Jameel reflects on difficult patients, clinical mistakes and the emotional weight of complaints. With AI and robotics changing the profession, he considers what the next generation of dentists will need to learn and why human connection may become more valuable than ever.Expect honest reflections on clinical excellence, digital workflows, patient trust, innovation, mentorship and the changing relationship between technology and the people delivering care.In This Episode00:00:50 – From Glasgow to Boston00:05:05 – American dentistry and clinical philosophy00:09:05 – Mentorship and younger dentists00:21:25 – Funding further education00:24:35 – Private practice and patient trust00:31:20 – Empowering the dental team00:34:05 – Discovering digital dentistry00:38:00 – Workflows over equipment00:41:25 – The digital first visit00:44:25 – Facially driven treatment planning00:51:30 – Mock-ups and smile design00:53:50 – Guided restorative dentistry00:57:45 – 3D printing and zirconia01:04:25 – Research versus clinical experience01:10:00 – Technology and patient communication01:16:10 – Robotics and the future01:21:40 – Blackbox thinking01:29:15 – Learning and clinical development01:31:20 – Fantasy dinner party01:35:45 – Life outside dentistryAbout Jameel GardeeJameel Gardee is a Glasgow-based dentist and educator known for his work in digital dentistry, aesthetic restorations and smile design. After qualifying from the University of Glasgow in 1995, he undertook advanced restorative and aesthetic training at Boston University.He has since built a career combining private clinical practice with digital education, helping dentists and their teams adopt modern treatment planning and restorative workflows. Through his work with Avant Garde Dentistry, he continues to champion the use of technology to make complex dentistry more predictable and accessible.