Bridging the gap between oral health and mental health

Andrew Lee is a survivor. He’ll be the first to say it. What he doesn’t say about himself is revealed when you dig deeper, that he’s a resilient, persistent and inspirational person and entrepreneur who has taken a painful episode from his life and spun that into small business success.

Lee’s is a long story that requires the connecting of a lot of dots to get from where he started to where he is now. A proud Asian-American and a member of the LGBTQ community, Lee traces the origins of Otis Dental back to a hate crime he suffered in 2008.

“Returning from dinner with friends in San Francisco after volunteering at an HIV/AIDS walk, and still wearing my staff T-shirt, I was attacked by two people who just didn’t like who I was,” he recalls. “I’ve gotten more comfortable talking about it over the years. I call myself a survivor instead of a victim because it was important for my mental health to tell myself I had survived this.”

In time, the physical injuries healed, but the mental pain remained. Lee would suffer from years of stress and depression that would ultimately result in a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) seven years later. In the years between, Lee was unconsciously processing his stress and anxiety by grinding his teeth and clenching his jaw while he slept. Being a registered dental hygienist, he knew it could lead to serious oral health problems if it wasn’t addressed.

A changed man, for the better

The clinical term for teeth grinding is bruxism, which was something Lee saw first-hand in many patients he worked with. At the time there were two options to protect teeth from bruxism’s wear and physical pain: over-the-counter night guards that were inexpensive and cheaply made, or a custom-molded night guard sourced through a dentist, which can be prohibitively expensive.

“I tried several over-the-counter brands, but they were one-size-fits-all and too bulky. After tossing and turning all night I would wake up the next morning with the guard somewhere in my bed or on the floor,” Lee says. “And not just that, because they were made of such poor-quality materials, I chewed right through them. All of that finally led me to realize something had to change.”

Lee saw an unmet need for a dental night guard product combining quality and affordability. He set off to change the market, and thus Otis Dental was born.

“When I started the company, one of the main drivers of our mission was not just to provide a quality product and service, but to create a platform of transparency around bruxism that helps the public understand what the condition is, why it's happening and what we're doing to make people’s lives better,” he says.
 Listening and learning, then growing

Lee’s initial connection with Walgreens came at the same time the Walgreens oral care team was looking to address gaps in the category that included dental guards.

“A broker had initially sent me Otis Dental’s proposal for the Otis Mail-Order Custom Night Guard Teeth Impression Kit that would be sold in select Walgreens stores and online and fulfilled by Otis, which was exactly what we were looking for because we wanted to tackle bruxism and elevate our product offerings within the category,” says Kristi Takagishi, Walgreens oral care category manager.