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"TRACING THE JOURNEY OF A PIONEER - by Andy Knight"
I was 13 years old when my dad started training me as an orthodontic lab technician in Provo, Utah. In the early 1980s, Dad took me to a dental convention in Las Vegas and one of the presentations was by a Dr. Robert Ricketts about the treatment of TMJ using orthodontic appliances.
One day in '84 or '85, Dad took me to a dental convention in Las Vegas. One of the presentations we attended was by a Dr. Robert Ricketts about the treatment of TMJ using orthodontic appliances.
Specifically his "Rickett's Splint" which was made of a tooth shade acrylic on the lower teeth, with a central fossa and cuspid disclusion and protrusion... terms which meant nothing to me at that age.
But then Dr. Ricketts introduced David Gergen, a young man who he called "the finest lab technician he had ever encountered."
"Young Man?" this kid was barely older than ME!. and looked like he might still be in high school also. But after the presentation, and seeing that the convention was full of "grown ups" I approached this David, just to meet him, and maybe pick up some tips to become a better tech myself.
"It Required a High Level of Skill And Dexterity. This Effected Itʼs Widespread Adoption As Only Master Technicianʼs Like David Gergen has the Required Training and Expertise"
He said he had been mentored by Dr. Ricketts. He had never set out to become an orthodontic lab technician. He had his sights on being an NFL player, or a track star, or maybe a dentist.
But as I think back now, perhaps it was destiny that landed him at a technician bench. and that has probably allowed him to have a greater impact on the world than any of those other careers.
That afternoon there was a "hands-on" session where David was demonstrating how to make a Rickett's Splint, start to finish: matching the tooth shade, and every step along the way.
He also showed how to make the "Cricket," a pediatric appliance, for the general expansion and rotation of teeth. Dr. Ricketts said that a properly made Cricket could straighten the teeth completely, and no other appliance would be necessary. But he said the Cricket was difficult to make and hard for the doctor to manage because it required a high level of skill and dexterity. This affected its widespread adoption as only master technicians like David Gergen had the required training and expertise.
In 1986, Columbus Dental held a national competition in which David won Best Orthodontic Technician. It included $10,000 worth of dental supplies and a tour of an acrylic manufacturing facility. At the facility Gergen, saw all sorts of applications for acrylic—including cosmetic uses for Hollywood.
SOON WE WERE CREATING RETAINERS WITH RAINBOWS AND GALAXIES AND DOZENS OF CUSTOM, MULTI-COLORED DESIGNS. THE KIDS LOVE THEM. THEY WERE EXCITED TO WEAR THEM. IT TOOK A CREATIVE MIND LIKE DAVID GERGEN TO INTRODUCE THE IDEA.
He wondered about getting various colors for retainers, but the tour guide asked, "Why would anyone want colored acrylic in their mouth?" But David thought, "You have no imagination" and pressed forward to innovate colored appliances into the retainer industry.
One day David called me and told me all about this, and suggested that my Dad's lab order some colored acrylics. While Dad was hesitant, I was excited about it. I asked if we could make an "asteroids" retainer, since I loved the asteroids arcade game.
Two weeks later, an asteroids retainer appeared at Dad's lab: Black, with glitter for stars, and grey asteroids, and a tiny triangle space ship, and even the four laser bolts firing towards an asteroid.
Seeing how excited "teenage me" was about this retainer, Dad ordered a starter kit. Soon we were creating retainers with rainbows and galaxies and dozens of custom, multi-colored designs. The kids love them. They were excited to wear them. It took a creative mind like David Gergen's to introduce the idea.
1986 was a busy year for David. Working with Dr. Ricketts, Dave created what he would soon patent as "the Occlusal Corrector 5" which was a 3-way saggital with a posterior occlusal plane. This appliance was the crown jewel with which he won the Columbus Dental "Best Technician" award.
Next, David and Dr. Ricketts developed the Modified Spring Aligner. Yes, that one, with the reset teeth and the Spring activated bow wire.
Another funny story: A few years later I was at another Dental show in Las Vegas, and I saw the Modified Spring being demoed at one of the booths. I said "That looks like the retainer my friend Dave Gergen created!"
The man at the booth, Dave Allesee, said "we bought the rights from him for $16,000 back in '86. He should have taken my offer of royalties rather than the straight up cash!" Allesee also stated, "Gergen has a gift to simplify a problem, then create a simple solution."
Working with Dr. Harold Gelb, David helped modify the ubiquitous Gelb Splint. David also thought to use a modified Bionator to open the bite, and move the mandible forward to open the airway for a person who snores. And thus "The Bionator for Sleep," the first sleep apnea appliance, was born.
And while the Bionator for sleep was effective, working with Dr. Ricketts and Dr. Mead that same year, David pioneered work on the original Snore Guard, which was essentially an upper and lower night guard fused together in an open bite to allow for better breathing. And While the Bionator for Sleep was merely an adaptation of an existing appliance, the Snore Guard was the first patented, original Sleep Apnea appliance.
Unsatisfied with the limitations of the Snore Guard, which was a highly popular device, Gergen and Ricketts began working on a much improved design based on the Herbst appliance and soon created a removable Sleep Herbst which, while still opening the airway, allowed for lateral, as well as forward motion, for much greater comfort and durability.
(On a personal note, at the 2011 ASBA seminar in Salt Lake City, after spending a mostly sleepless night in a hotel in the room next to mine, David made me a Sleep Herbst. I had previously had a Snore Guard that I did not often use. It was uncomfortable and I would often find it somewhere in my bed or on the floor in the morning. If I managed to keep it in my mouth through the night, my jaw would be achy in the morning. However, the Sleep Herbst, with its range of motion, did away with the ache and discomfort, and I was able to use it with no problem. As much as I loved it, my wife loved it even more. But I digress.)
GERGEN HAS A GIFT TO SIMPLIFY A PROBLEM, THEN CREATE A SIMPLE SOLUTION
In 1991, after placing over 100 Sleep Herbst Appliances, Dr. Ricketts began to express the term, "Dave, this dog will hunt.” Which required collaboration with other experts such as Dr. Paul Serrano, another Orthodontists based out of Phoenix, AZ.
Working with Dr. Serrano, Gergen developed several more appliances: The Serrano Sleeper, the first pediatric sleep appliance—which could be made with, or without, gear or a Schwartz screw. Then there was the Serrano Wrap, with soldered Crozat clasps on the 6's that wrapped around the 7's but had no acrylic on the 7's so that the occlusion could settle. And the Serrano Fixed, which was a lower 3x3 with an invisible loading tray and a titanium wire that could be light cured into place. Unlike stainless steel, the titanium wire would not bend. Dr. Ricketts maintained that if you can hold the lower, the case won't relapse.
The Serrano Retractor was similar to the Modified Spring Aligner. David made one for the daughter of one of the founders of Microsoft, who was so happy about the success of her treatment that Dave and Dr. Serrano were given half of an island in the Bahamas, near the island of Coco Kay as a thank you.
In 1993 I was going to DeVry Institute of Technology and fortuitously found that David’s lab was less than a mile from both my school and house. I decided to show up on his doorstep, as it were, and asked if I could work for him. It turns out that my "middle of nowhere" hometown skills were not quite to the level of Gergen's standards, so he gave me a delivery job with his Lab as I unlearned and relearned how to make appliances. We became friends and have remained so over the decades. He has been an inspiration to me, a hero, and even saved my life (more on that later). The technician skills he taught me served me well, as years later I returned to my father's lab in Provo.
As the years passed, Dave began to realize that the Sleep Herbst was missing out on its potential. He also realized that sleep apnea was a much more dangerous condition that the current healthcare industry recognized. Dave realized that sleep apnea was causing obesity, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, and even death. Research would eventually show that sleep apnea was shortening lifespans by an average of 10 years.
But what was the medical community doing about sleep apnea?
CPAP. About 1/2 of users don't like CPAP, or can't even use it. As a result, they don't use it, which exacerbates comorbidities. Dave knew what he had to do: get the Sleep Herbst accepted by and approved by insurance and Medicare.
This turned into a "life's quest" for David. It was a journey that would take years, money, and effort—including testifying before the U.S. Congress.
Dave's started with the process with Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Once Blue Cross/Blue Shield began approving the Sleep Herbst treatment for Sleep Apnea, other insurance companies followed, and finally people who suffered from sleep apnea could get oral appliance treatment paid for by their insurance.
Next up was how to validate the Herbst. Dave began work with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN as well and Medical and Dental Associations to get the data and research that would be needed to prove the effectiveness of the Sleep Herbst.
Moving up to a national level, in Washing ton DC, he was able to guide through the murky waters of the political world in order to get before the right committees and agencies and eventually before congress.
With data and evidence in hand, along with the likes of Doctors Ed Spiegel and Elliot Alfer, David testified before congress several times. Finally, after many years of effort and expense, Dental Sleep Apnea treatment was finally approved by the FDA, Medicare, and the VA in 2006.
This is a large part of the reason that in 2006 that David won Arizona's Businessman Of The Year award. This has remained one of David's proudest achievements.
After Dave had won the war to get the aforementioned approvals, PDAC began its own private study on 80 sleep appliances for breakagerates. By 2012 PDAC had examined over 400 labs that made sleep appliances and ultimately invalidated all but two labs: Gergen's, and one other in California (there lab's technicians had been trained by David).
Of all the sleep apnea appliances, the Gergen's Sleep Herbst remained as FDA approved.
These years, however, were not solely dedicated to sleep dentistry.
Dave had always been passionate about football and community service. In 1994, Dave began coaching for a Pop Warner football team known as the Conquerors. And through the year 2000 Dave led the Conquerors to championship after championship; including two National Championships for the years 1999 and 2000. During those 6 years, the Conquerors only lost 5 games. They were the only Arizona team to ever win a Pop Warner National Championship, and David was awarded a Governor's plaque.
By 2003, Dave had built such a distinguished reputation that students would transfer to whichever school he was coaching, eager for the opportunity to play under his guidance.
Leveraging his track record of success, Dave’s next venture was a coaching role at Central High School, a school in a socioeconomically challenged urban area. It didn’t take long for Dave to notice that the students at Central High were, to put it mildly, lacking proper nutrition. At his own expense, he started providing his players with protein-rich breakfast foods. He also arranged for grocery stores to donate vegetables and recruited volunteers to prepare muscle-building protein shakes for the team.
YOU JUST CANʼT PUT A PRICE ON A GOOD NIGHTʼS SLEEP. AND LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST ʻGOOD NIGHTʼS SLEEPʼ IʼVE HAD IN A VERY LONG TIME. I WAS DREAMING LIKE CRAZY IN FULL COLOR
-DEREK KENNARD-
David arrived at Central High where the team was languishing after a 29-game losing streak. He found that the seniors on the team had bad attitudes, were defiant, and unwilling to take coaching—so he cut them all. With a team of sophomores, juniors, and two new seniors who had just transferred in, he brought the refreshed team to win their first game in years against Casa Grande: 19-6. The game was televised probably due to David's coaching notoriety. Central High would continue to finish the season with a 5-4 record. And the following season they would make state playoffs after 9-1 season.
In 2006, David moved to a new coaching position with North Canyon helping them win a State Championship after an undefeated season.
A few years later, David's dream of being in the NFL finally came to pass... just not the way he had dreamed as a high school athlete.
In 1989 David's Lab began making the sports mouthguards for Arizona State University. Eventually this came to the attention of Mike Haynes, former cornerback for ASU, the LA Raiders, and New England Patriots. Haynes is an NFL Hall of Famer who thought that it would be an excellent idea for Gergen's lab to make the mouthguards for the NFL.
Over time, Dave's success with Pop Warner and high school football got him invited to a coaching clinic to help teach coaches how to be better coaches for their Pop Warner and high school teams. Dave was the only high school/Pop Warner coach there. All the rest of the coaches were former NFL players. Here Dave met Derek Kennard, who looked like he had not slept in such a long time he had forgotten how to dream.
Derek mentioned he had sleep apnea, but he could not treat it with CPAP and his doctor had not been able to find an effective treatment in 8 years. Derek’s brother had just died from an apnea-related heart attack, and he really needed to do something about it. Hollywood could not have scripted a better coincidence. Dave said, "It just so happens that I have spent half of my life developing the solution to your problem."
The two of them proceeded immediately to the dental office of a friend to get an impression of Derek’s mouth. That night David stayed up late to build a Sleep Herbst for Derek, who was able to use it the very next night. The morning after that Derek was emotional as he reported to David, "You just can't put a price on a good night's sleep. And last night was the first 'good night's sleep' I've had in a very long time. and I was dreaming like crazy in full color."
Kennard was so impressed with the success of his Sleep Device that he brought more NFL friends to Dave for help with their apnea.
Mike Haynes, NFL HALL OF FAME, PATRIOTS/RAIDERS, [Cornerback], Derek Kennard, COWBOYS/ CARDINALS, [Center & Guard] and Roy Green, CARDINALS/EAGLES, [Wide Receiver & Cornerback] formed the Pro Player Health Alliance to treat other athletes as well as use the star power of these athletes to raise awareness about sleep apnea as a “silent killer” (there is nothing silent about it!).
For several years, together with Dr. Archie Roberts, Dr. Rudi Ferrate, Dr. Harry Sugg, Roy Green, and Eric Dickerson, David ran sleep apnea screenings. While doing good, it wasn’t really taking off; that is until 2012 when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell wanted to do screenings for the players at the Superbowl. He contacted Mike Haynes to “get it done” and Haynes replied, “I know just the man.”
Haynes contacted David who assembled his team and they converged in Indianapolis during the Superbowl festivities. Now David had run a successful Superbowl screening.
In 2013 Andre Collins, executive director of the NFL Players Association listened to David about getting a sleep treatment program for the players and former players of the NFL. Big men like those men are especially prone to sleep apnea, and Collins was eager to bring David on as his personal sleep apnea director at NFLPA.
In 2018 Steve Keim General Manager of the Arizona Cardinals hired David to became the sleep apnea director for the franchise.
As Dave's friend and sometimes sidekick, I have gotten to meet a number of pro football players. Many of my friends would kill to be in my shoes at even just one of these occasions where I have been honored to meet Tony Dorset, Derek Kennard, Erik Dickerson, Preston Pearson, Michael Urban, Roy Green, Andre Collins, Charles Barkley, and others.
Yes that’s right, you might recognize the last name although he is not an NFL player. David treated Charles Barkley and they have become good friends, and often fly in Barkley's jet to Las Vegas during Boxing Fight weekends.
Dave was now very much on the national stage and recognized as an expert of treating sleep apnea. Next up was an outreach from the American Sleep and Breathing Academy which at the time was only for MDs and Sleep Technologists, but had decided they wanted to add a dental division too their Academy. Who better to bring on than David Gergen! However, Dave was busy with the NFL and at first declined. However, when Dr. Steve Carstensen was ousted from the presidency of AADSM, Dave reconsidered and told the ASBA that he would come on as executive director of the ASBA dental division if they would bring on Dr. Carstensen as President, which they did.
Shortly after David took the position, the ASBA held its annual meeting at Fort McDowell, an Indian casino near Phoenix, Arizona.
During the annual meeting, David was appointed as the CEO of ASBA and is now working on making sleep dentistry a specialty, just like orthodontics or endodontics.
In 2016, Dr. David Singh approached David. David's patent on the Occlusal Corrector had long since expired, and Dr. Singh had modified the appliance with his own unique spring design to create his famous DNA appliance. Dr. Singh was forming a new company called VIVOS and wanted Dave to work with VIVOS and to produce the DNA appliances. With Dave's involvement, VIVOS was able to launch an IPO and become a publicly traded stock.
By this time, David was busier than ever. He was actively involved in his own Gergen's Orthodontic Lab, Gergen's Sleep Lab, the NFL, Vivos, and ASBA.
The NFL endeavor has been a great success. It has made many dentists quite popular and profi table in their areas. It has also been instrumental in the saving many former Athletes lives.
Around this time, Dave Berg owned Arrowhead Health. Dave Berg came up with an idea to have negotiated fees to reduce the cost of healthcare. He formed a company called Redirect Health to realize this vision. In the process, he teamed up with Dave Gergen who immediately called up some of the NFL greats: Eric Dickerson, Roy Green, Mike Haynes, and Andre Collins to promote the new company and to try to get it adopted by the NFL.
The efforts to make Redirect Health the Official Healthcare Provider for the retired players of the NFL were almost complete, but then tragedy struck. In November of 2020, David traveled to Texas to assist his colleague, Dr. Harry Sugg, who had broken his hip, in setting up a sleep facility at Methodist Hospital.
When Dave came back to Phoenix, he started to feel unwell. Three times he went to the hospital suspecting Covid, but each time they said he did not have Covid. A few nights later, David could not sleep, he was feverish, and sweaty. Finally a friend called 911 and the paramedics arrived. Dave was carried out on his bedsheets and driven straight off to the hospital.
It turns out that David had two variants of Covid, and now suffers what they call “Long Covid” and his recovery has been challenging. On top of this he also sustained a knee injury, but is now well on the way to recovery.
These days, I am currently in Phoenix training with David's G-Force business.
David continues to press to make sleep dentistry a specialty. As of the time of this writing, David is in good health, And back to fully active.
I feel very blessed to be David’s friend throughout the decades. Together we have shared many of life’s big moments. For me he’s not just a friend, but more like a brother. Through his mentorship I have become a better technician, businessman, and a better man. I look forward to many more years and many more adventures.