Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Burnout to Balance: A Dentist's Journey to Wellbeing w/ Dr. Peter Dinh
What does “biohacking” have to do with dentistry? For Dr. Peter Dinh, figuring out the root cause of his low energy and burnout changed the way he felt in his body and in his practice.
In our conversation, he shares how functional medicine helped him heal hidden issues like leaky gut and low dopamine, improve his mental and physical health, and show up better for his team, his family, and himself. We also talk about the stress of practice ownership and how biohacking can help you treat common problems like anxiety, apathy, and trouble sleeping — making it possible to lead without burnout and build a healthier, happier practice.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- The hidden health effects of practice ownership
- Underlying causes of fatigue, mood imbalance, and burnout
- Healing through functional medicine
- Reframing work, stress, and success
- Unexpected benefits of biohacking
- How personal healing makes you a better leader
- Balancing practice ownership and personal health
Connect with Dr. Peter Dinh:
Website: https://www.guthormoneclinic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gut_hormone/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheGutHormoneClinic
Email: dinhpeterdds@gmail.com
Text us your feedback! (please note: we cannot respond through this channel))
The 2025-2026 DPH Mastermind is now taking applications! Make this the year you decided to create the practice you've always dreamed about!
Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DentalPracticeHeroes.com to learn more.
You know we talk a lot about practice growth on this show, but today we're going to lean into personal development, because it's so easy to feel drained and stuck and just disconnected from our work or our team and, honestly, from ourselves. This is exactly where today's guest, dr Peter Dinh, found himself. Not too long ago, he started looking at why is his energy so low, why does work feel so heavy, and what was really behind his burnout. And what he found not only helped him feel better, but it completely changed how he leads and works in his practice. He's going to share all that with you today so that you can get to the bottom of what might be causing you burnout, so you can fix it and change your life. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair. I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started. Hey, welcome back to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast. I'm your host. Dr Paul Etcheson Got a very interesting guest on and man, we got a cool topic today.
Speaker 1:We're going to be talking about health and functional medicine and just being the best person that you can be, because we always want to be the best right. That's why we're listening to podcasts. I got a multi-practice owner, a 2014 VCU graduate. He is a health coach. He's working with a functional medicine practice, does all sorts of biohacking stuff. Just happy to interview you today. Welcome to the podcast, dr Peter Dinh. What's happening, peter? How's it going? Man? Thanks for having me. Yeah, dude, I'm excited. I love this biohacking stuff and the more I read about it, the cooler it is. How did you get into not one, but two practices?
Speaker 2:It started in 2017 for me, and so bought my first practice in 2017. Had a lot of struggles at the beginning. I had a lot of guilt going into day to day practice, just like I felt like I wasn't doing enough and I just felt like I was avoiding a lot of the hard work and I couldn't put my finger on it. I always had things like focus issues. Apparently, there's a lot of cool things that you can measure to figure out why that is, and so I just kept hitting a wall and trying to grow my practice, and so my go-to was how do I level up myself to grow my practice? And so I got into the biohacking stuff. I woke up at four o'clock, did all the things that you read about cold showers, journaling, meditation, you name it smoothies. So I found out that my low energy and high guilt was reduced when I did all these things. My plan was if I optimize myself, my team is happier, they work harder and the practice grows that way, and so, over time, I bought the second practice. I was like, oh, buying 10 offices in 10 years, sell it, roll it up Like that's the game plan, right? But I guess it kind of fits, let's just do this. And so I bought that practice and just I would run into the willpower issue. I would avoid like looking at my numbers, I would avoid having difficult conversations and that started to build over time and it was challenging to manage my team. And so fast forward to the future, I met a person named Alistair, someone that we share a mutual friendship with and gave me a lot of insights and advice about how to optimize myself. So that kind of started the journey of it all.
Speaker 2:I realized that the journey of 10 practices in 10 years was not necessarily my dream goal. So I created a lot of time. I hired a bunch of associates, got myself out of the dental chair and for about a year and a half two years I worked one day a week and obviously during those times I didn't make a ton of money but I had a lot of time and so I really looked inwardly. I did lots of walks to really try to find out what I enjoyed Freed up. My wife did lots of walks to really try to find out what I enjoyed Freed up. My wife my wife is an internal medicine doctor and because I had freedom, I helped her start her own journey of learning about functional medicine, where we find the root causes of diseases, and so, obviously, as she gained her mastery of or learning, rather, the beginning of her journey, I was one of her first guinea pigs.
Speaker 2:So we did a bunch of testing and we found out that I was missing a portion of the gene that allows you to recycle dopamine efficiently. We found out that the species of bacteria that was in my gut that I was lacking didn't allow me to produce dopamine very efficiently. We found out I had leaky gut, had some mild allergies, and so as we started to dial in deeper and solve some of these issues, like yeast overgrowth, for example, it just got easier. It just got way easier. I was able to control myself a lot more. When I came home from work, I wouldn't feel burnt out. I would look forward to seeing my family versus wanting to avoid them. So that's kind of like the start of it all of me getting into this whole field.
Speaker 1:But take me back to the time when you there's something wrong, something's missing. I mean, you mentioned feeling guilty at your practice.
Speaker 2:I come from a heritage in the Asian culture, the Vietnamese heritage of you gotta get age, you gotta work hard, and so I always had this sense of guilt of not doing enough. And part of that also stemmed from my academic journey. If you want to go back even further, I got rejected to 39 dental schools. Every academic test that I took I had to take three times, so that basically created a lot of trauma for me in a way.
Speaker 2:This idea that you can work at your 100% and it's still not enough, like that was, reminded, ingrained in me in high school and while in dental school I was failing the first few classes. So I was studying every second of the day and I still was not able to pass some of the classes at the beginning. And so this idea that you can do everything in your power to try to get to your goal, it's not enough. And so this idea that you can do everything in your power to try to get to your goal, it's not enough. And so, just like inception, that idea was planted within me during practice ownership You're not doing enough.
Speaker 2:Like you cannot fail, like the stakes are high, you have a family to take care of. Everyone's saying oh, if you're going to business ownership, you're going to be a cold hearted capitalist, you're not going to care about family, you shouldn't own a business. So there's a lot of things riding on it, you know, and so that guilt kind of stuck with me. And over time you learn as an entrepreneur that you get disconnected from your feelings a little bit. You kind of go down a path where there wasn't a lot of purpose for me. I was disconnected to purpose, and so that's the root of it at all. And then you combine it with low dopamine, low serotonin. You don't have the positive reinforcement loop of like, oh, I won this game, I feel good, let me keep going on that journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I could totally relate to that. I feel like I did that for so many years and for me it was like this workaholism and people are like man, how did you put so much time in your practice and I tell them, it just came easy. I was drawn to it Like I was getting those dopamine hits, but at the same time I was like completely neglecting like all the relationships in my life, you know, and when I had time for those relationships, I would be drawn back to the practice because it was like it was my comfort zone and it was like what got me up in the morning. Do you remember when you made this transition and you started pulling yourself out or started adding associates?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it was. I'm going on this journey and some of my friends would ask me why are you doing all this? I'm doing this to create this ideal utopia of infinite money and infinite time, right? And one of my friends asked me what's stopping you from doing that? Now, it was really that question of like you chose to go on this journey to buy 10 offices in 10 years. You're not enjoying the journey, you don't know why you feel obligated to do so and the goal that you want. This time factorair.
Speaker 2:And he was just trying to connect me to feelings, connect me to what I do truly enjoy, and that there exists another option of enjoying the journey, even though you know we kind of get into this like, ah, we're going to sacrifice ourselves, go through the grind, it doesn't matter about the journey, let's just, it matters about the end point. And so I just wanted to experiment, I wanted to see what that was like, and so, as I got into it more and more, the dental practice slowly became not only like an asset that I'm working on, but it became I reframed it for myself, unintentionally, really as like this dojo of a place where I can learn leadership, how to take care of myself to the highest degree, to do public speaking where I can learn numbers. And once I reframed it like that for myself, things just got easier. I got started to enjoy things more.
Speaker 1:It's amazing man. I love that, and it's such a good mindset shift for so many dentists that are just feeling like they're grinding all day and wondering why it's not coming easy to them. When I was in dental school, I did really good in undergrad and it came fairly easy to them. When I was in dental school, I did really good in undergrad and it came fairly easy to me. But when I got to dental school, I was going home studying morning till night and I was barely pulling C's and D's. It was as good as I could do and there was so much identity crisis wrapped into that. Maybe I'm not good enough to be here. I'd never framed it as like, hey, I'm learning to struggle, I'm learning to be resilient. Now talk about. What is your practice life like now? Because I want to talk about the biohacking and all the stuff that you found out as you started to work on yourself. But what does it look like now at the practice for you? How involved are you?
Speaker 2:We recently expanded one of the practices from 5 Ops to 12 Ops. Now I'm at two to three days a week, kind of want to ramp it up. We made large investments to kind of get to that next level of practice ownership, to have a little bit more associates, to move away from risk. You know, with the new associate they take on a lot of the fillings. You start doing the complex stuff. But now as we're ramping up I do about two, three days a week and I'm looking to probably scale back to one day a week as I make the transition over to the functional medicine practice a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I just love the biohacking stuff. I love solving those problems because we're finding out there's so many people that tolerate their health condition and I was one of those people and I didn't know what was possible, how I could feel things like autoimmune diseases. Conventional medicine doesn't have an answer for it, and so we typically fix low energy, sleep issues, anxiety in a mood imbalance and then gut problems and I had all of those things and so solving those problems only leveled up my own life, but it really resonates with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and these are issues that everybody's going through. So talk to me about how do you guys make the assessment, what is this process and what kind of things are you looking for? Enlighten me on this new type of medicine, yeah.
Speaker 2:So my wife owns the Helamed Functional Medicine Practice, so she's been very fortunate to be able to work from home and basically send all the testing to people's homes. So, for example, if you have low energy, right, there's different kinds of possibilities that you have low energy. Do you break down proteins correctly? And we don't really look at these things. How efficient do you break down your fats? Is it your interpretation of energy that is a little bit off? Aka, you feel like you have low energy but really you just have low dopamine. You can't get yourself to do the things that are hard, and so there are different tests that test for that. So, basically, stool testing, urine tests, blood tests help us find these things, the normal tests that test for that. So, basically, stool testing, urine tests, blood tests, help us find these things, the normal tests that we all know about. They're so outdated. There's super new tests out there and we're just not taking advantage of it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I was in one of Faustine's masterminds. Faustine, my wife, one of her masterminds and I was blown away that, in the cohort of their organization of functional medicine doctors, 70% of people that report higher than normal anxiety is due to yeast overgrowth. And I was like wait, I must have heard this wrong. I'm not a numbers guy, but I know numbers enough to be like 70% is an absurdly high number, and so if we believe that to be true, or if it's possible that that is true, the way we're practicing medicine as a country is very incorrect.
Speaker 2:A lot of it is diet and nutrition, and so philosophically, in the functional medicine world, there's two ways to at least from my lens there's two ways you solve disease. One you optimize the body's healing potential, or you find out the root causes of disease, and so with these tests you basically get a lot of the biochemical reactions that go through the body. So, for instance, if you're not able to connect to fulfillment, you don't feel happiness a lot, you always feel like you're crashing. You're looking at the metabolites of serotonin. So once you have the guide map, it's kind of a clear cut pathway to how to help yourself, and so a lot of it's diet.
Speaker 1:Give me an example of something that you were experiencing and what you found out and how you treated it and how you feel now.
Speaker 2:So we did the oats test. For me it's called organic acids test. Before that I shared with you that I had focus issues right. I didn't know at the time. I also my operating system was that of obligation. I didn't operate under desire, right. If I wanted to do something, it was really hard to get the thing done right. But if, like, things were hitting the fan and I had to get it done, I got it done and that's just the way I assumed my normal function and so I went through the testing. One of the tests was the Oates test.
Speaker 2:We found out that I had yeast overgrowth. I had leaky gut. There's a test that allows you to measure that by measuring the zonulin levels. Zonulin is a component of the inner lining of the gut and so if you're shedding a lot of inner lining of the gut Test shows high. That's not good. You have leaky gut. Okay, I was tired, but I didn't know I was tired. I only know that now because I have more energy.
Speaker 2:Then I also had dysbiosis, which is I had a lot of bat bacteria and I was like missing like nine of the 12 or something like that Good gut bacteria in my gut, and so some of the gut bacteria recycles things like your neurotransmitters or estrogen, like, imagine if you didn't have that and you're a woman, for example. Like how much would that affect you? And so, within that process, I took a number of supplements. I went on a kill protocol to kill the yeast. In order to kill the yeast for me, we went under a high concentration of garlic extract and a high concentration of oregano extract, because those are natural killers. And so philosophically at least, the way my wife likes to practice functional medicine, she recommends things that the body naturally breaks down.
Speaker 2:Once the kill protocol was done, I immediately noticed after three weeks that and it sounds like really woo-woo-y stuff, but color's more vibrant I started to have a better connection. It's going to sound weird. Hopefully I'm not crazy. I had a better connection to my inner voice, so self-awareness started to tick up. I noticed that when I got home. Wow, I really look forward to seeing my family now and I can just see them and be fine. I used to. Whenever I have social events, it's very stimulating for me. I'm actually like an introvert. I noticed that I could have a social event and then the next day I could be very productive, and so things like that were what showed up for me, and so it was like a sixth sense kind of turned on. I started to enjoy my hobbies a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I started to drop bad habits. It's almost like my emotions didn't have memories in a way. It's kind of hard to explain. If you don't have a strong connection to your emotions, you don't remember the bad things that keep coming up for you. So like negative habits, right, like bad habits, if you're really connected to it, you realize, okay, if I drink that drink, I'll feel crummy the next day. If I feel crummy the next day, I won't be productive, I can't take care of my family, right. For me that entire loop was non-existent, and so now that I had more self-awareness, stronger connection to fulfillment, I'd be like huh, if I drink that drink, I know that feeling of feeling bad. I don't want that feeling of feeling bad. Therefore I'm not going to do that thing because it feels bad. So that's what I mean by my emotions didn't have memories in a way, like that was. It's all kind of trippy.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's a lot of to behavior, that it's like we all have free will.
Speaker 1:You know, and I think most people would agree that we have free will, but I think there's so much physiologically happening that really kind of distracts from that free will.
Speaker 1:But I will tell you, as somebody who was a very heavy drinker for a very long time is around man, maybe four or five years ago I got to a point where I realized I was just getting really blackout a lot and when I slowed it down I was like I got to do something. I didn't completely abstain, I did for a little bit. It took so many years to build up and once I got out of that, I felt so good that when it came down to time to go out drinking with friends, instead of having 16, 20 drinks, I'd have like four at max because I didn't want to feel that the next day. And it's almost like I had to go through that to realize that. But that's what I'm almost hearing you saying is that these things that you know are going to make you feel bad, you don't want to do them anymore and you start taking your health and more priority, which I think is such a cool thing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean, being a dentist and being an entrepreneur is so hard and I really feel for the dentists that are out there that don't have the space to process these things. Our neural pathways, we're addicted to our past self, you know, and you need, almost like a violent act to have change, to have emotional memory in a way.
Speaker 1:Well, talk about how you were kind of frustrated with your practice life. Can you explain to like how much was just making the organizational changes at the office versus how much was making changes in your health that led you to this outlook and where you're at today?
Speaker 2:I go back to the original core. There's a quote that I live by and it's the one that is response able is responsible. It's something that my mentor has shared with me, and so, as I walk through the practice, I noticed that I have the luxury of really working on myself and having a lot of self-awareness and knowing how I come off and knowing how the practice moves, based on me being the bottleneck. And as I start to develop that sense of feeling good, I start to really pay attention to how others feel good, like what were my last three interactions with every single team member. And then, as I was reflected, I'm like, especially at the beginning, a lot of them were just like criticism. A lot of them was like this needs to be better. You know, some sort of management conversation to optimize something.
Speaker 2:And as I was seeking feeling good, or wanting to feel good about my day-to-day, and as I was going through that journey, I was thinking about my team members how can I make them feel good day to day?
Speaker 2:We started working on positives every single day and you start to realize, like in our morning huddles, where it's like you're supposed to share a positive, some people will share negatives, and it's like, huh, that's an interesting observation, and so focusing on that allowed me to ask more questions, to help people own their problems more.
Speaker 2:Create an environment where they want to do the work, versus they're doing it because I told them to do it, because if I tell them to do it, they're only going to do the things that I tell them to do, versus solve problems that I didn't even say. So, creating a true business and becoming a true leader that goes on the journey with my team and allows them to have their wins and I celebrate their wins and they can feel pride and get connected to pride. So for me, it was very much like the feelings side of things, and once I focused on that, I didn't have to do as much. The practice naturally got better. You know, people solved their own problems without coming to me, and so I started to enjoy the whole thing more.
Speaker 1:It's intentionality. I mean, it's like you're getting very intentional about creating the experience that you want and I think we could all learn a little bit from that. But is there anything that you look back like early in your career, like from right when you graduated, when you first entered into practice ownership, that you kind of look back at now and you're just like I just can't believe I did that.
Speaker 2:I guess just the idea of like grinding it out I think I was just so hardcore in like, if you want to be successful, by your own definition you have to sacrifice and you have to suffer. You're not supposed to enjoy. And I think, as entrepreneurs, when you sacrifice, if you really think about what you're sacrificing, you realize that that sacrifice is truly not worth it. And for me it was health. For me it was that fulfillment. But now that I'm a little bit older now and I have just a little bit more gray hairs, I just see that if you extrapolate your life out into the future, to the 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, whatever right Health starts to become the most important investment.
Speaker 2:And that sacrifice especially seeing patients and other entrepreneurs sacrifice their health it's like wow, that guy didn't sleep for like three months and something's wrong. You know like when are we going to address these things? And so, being hyper connected to that and then looking back at those days that I made the sacrifice, I just think there's a better way. Try to follow the fulfillment pathway. You can go through the process even faster and enjoy the process. I think you could waste a lot of time going down the wrong path, your own journey, whatever that means. So climb the right mountain, follow your heart, follow, follow what feels good.
Speaker 1:That's great advice man Don't ignore it. I love it. So if people want to learn more about, like, how can I get tested, how do I find out if my gut biome is all good, like talk about that, where the listeners can reach out to you there and find out, get some help in that regard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find us at guthormonecliniccom and send us a message through that platform, my us a message through that platform. My email is dinhpeterdds at gmailcom. You can email me. I have a YouTube channel. I have the Instagram channel too, if you want to look me up.
Speaker 1:Awesome, That'll all be in the show notes listeners. So, dude Peter, thanks so much for coming on. Man, I think you've got so much wisdom and it's been beneficial for me to hear your story. I mean, honestly, I can relate to so much of what you're saying and I've never went down this functional medicine hole before, or at least not with myself and I'm interested to see what I find. But I think you've got just a wealth of wisdom and I think you've talked to a lot of dentists today that are thinking well, man, maybe I need to do some things a little bit differently now. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast, man. Appreciate it, You're welcome.
