Dear Dr. Ozzy:
You and your lovely wife have great teeth… so white! What I’d like to know is: would you recommend using shop-bought whitening agents? As a smoker who drinks too much coffee, I’m badly in need of a non-celebrity solution.
Freda, Milton Keynes I hate to break it to you, Freda, but my choppers ain’t real. All my teeth are screwed in: for cleaning, they just unscrew ’em and give ’em a good polishing. They ain’t falsies—they’re implants. I started out with caps, which means they file down your teeth to posts and cement fake crowns on top of them. But then the posts rotted away, so they gave me implants, which are attached to my jaws with titanium screws. If I had my real teeth, I’d look like Herman Munster’s ugly brother. I think growing up in Britain is partly to blame—I mean, we’re not exactly renowned for our teeth, are we? Even Harley Street dentists aren’t that good. I went to a bloke who does the royals’ teeth once, and I came out of the place looking like a racehorse. But the biggest problem for me was being a drug addict: it kills all your calcium, which is what keeps your mouth healthy. Getting back to your question, though: I ain’t got a clue about whitening agents, but it can’t do any harm to give them a go, can it? As for a “non-celebrity solution,” the good news is that you don’t have to be famous to see a dentist in Beverly Hills…
You just need a ton of dough.
Doctors (Issues Regarding) Dear Dr. Ozzy:
Do you think people should be allowed to rate their doctors on the internet, like they can rate albums—or do you think the medical profession is too important to be subjected to the kind of abuse you got in 1970 for the first Black Sabbath LP?
Sally, Glasgow Honestly? I don’t know. I mean, my GP might give me a drug for something, and I might get better with no side-effects. Another person might get exactly the same treatment, and his head might swell up to ten times its normal size. So would it be fair if the guy with the massive head gave the doc a bad review? Probably not. Then again, if you were gonna have heart surgery, and the reviews told you that your surgeon’s last ten patients had croaked it on the operating table, you’d want to know that. The way I see it, though, a doctor spends years and years and serious amounts of dough to become qualified to make life or death decisions—so it ain’t fair if one person with a bee up their arse can ruin his career with a review that takes three seconds to write.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
Like you, I’ve always been a bit of a hypochondriac. However, for the past 20-odd years (since my parents died, and my newborn son needed heart surgery) I’ve had a phobia of anything to do with doctors, and I avoid them as long as the pain doesn’t become unbearable. My head tells me that I should take your advice and benefit from modern medicine, but unfortunately the coward in me is stronger. Any advice?
Christine, Germany If you’re too afraid to go to the doctor ’cos it brings back painful memories—or ’cos you’re worried that you’ll get bad news—there’s only one solution: don’t go. Simple as that. Go to the pub instead. At the end of the day, Christine, only you can make the decision. The thing is, though, if you’re afraid of getting bad news, isn’t it better to get it earlier rather than later? The only reason my wife is still alive is because she got bad news early. That meant she was able to get to her cancer before it spread any further and killed her. And, speaking for myself, if I don’t go to the doctor on a regular basis, I’ll just drive myself nuts about every little twinge and ache. It sounds to me like you’re already worrying yourself sick. So why not take a deep breath and make an appointment?
Dribble (Excessive) Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I’ve started to drool at night while asleep, meaning I wake up every morning to an unpleasantly damp pillow. Is this normal at my age (early 60s, like you), and is there a cure?
John, Essex Believe me, there are much worse ways to wake up in the morning than with a soggy pillow. If you’ve reached your early sixties and that’s the only thing you’ve got to complain about, I think you’re doing pretty well, to be honest with you. As for a cure—try blow-drying the inside of mouth dry before going to bed. Or put a raincoat over your pillow-case.
Ears (Ringing In) Dear Dr. Ozzy:
I have two boys in a metal band and they’ve been practicing in my home for the past four years. Now I have ringing in my ears. Any advice?
Grace, Miami A classic case of heavy metal-itus. I suffer from permanent tinnitus because of all the headbanging I’ve done over the years—which means I’ve now got this constant ringing in my ears, like a “WEEEE!!” noise, but louder. It’s also made me somewhat deaf (or “conveniently deaf,” as Sharon calls it). The sad thing is that there’s an easy way to prevent tinnitus, and it’s called buying a pair of earplugs. Do it now, before the damage gets worse.
Eyelids (Quivering) Dear Dr. Ozzy:
When I’m very tired, my eyelids quiver. It’s quite embarrassing—is there a way of stopping it?
Lucy, New York You’ve gotta listen to your body, man. If you stayed up all night and ended up with a headache and an upset stomach, you wouldn’t think twice about what to do: you’d go to bed. But a lot of people who only get five or six hours of shut-eye every night can’t believe it when they need half a gallon of espresso just to get out of bed the next morning. Clearly, in your case, your body is screaming at you that it wants more rest. I’m exactly the same way: I might be the Prince of Darkness, but if I don’t get my afternoon nap, I’m useless for the rest of the day. That’s why Europeans invented the siesta.
