Redefining Your Caries Risk with Nano Hydroxyapatite
A Dictionary of Better Oral Health
Sometimes, increasing your vocabulary of oral health terms gives you access to better tools to improve your oral health. Increasing your understanding of how the current materials available to you in newer oral care products work can help you make better choices for your own care. Specifically, it’s time to look at nano hydroxyapatite and learn about how this material has the potential to dramatically improve your chances of having caries free dental visits.
Caries
Caries are commonly called cavities. They are weakened spots on the enamel; as they progress, they can become openings through the tooth enamel (hard outer layer of the tooth) into the dentin (inner layer of the tooth). No one wants to deal with a cavity. No one looks forward to having a dentist drill out the damaged tooth tissue and replace it with a synthetic filling. Most of us are willing to go to great lengths to avoid cavities, but don’t necessarily feel we know the most efficient way to lower our cavity risk.
Nano Hydroxyapatite
Nano hydroxyapatite sounds extremely technical, but it’s actually pretty simple. Nano hydroxyapatite is one of the mineral forms that your body uses to build tooth enamel. It’s a naturally occurring form of calcium apatite, and it makes up the majority of bone structure in addition to tooth enamel. It happens to be the hardest material in the human body.
Demineralization
When tooth enamel loses the minerals that make it hard and a good defensive shell for the underlying tooth structures, it is demineralized. Demineralization can occur when the oral environment is acidic for too long. Demineralized enamel is soft and susceptible to dental caries.
Choosing the Right Oral Care Products
Products containing nano hydroxyapatite are newer to the dental field. You may be asking yourself if it’s worth buying products that contain nano hydroxyapatite, and studies seem to indicate that it is. Nano hydroxyapatite containing products have been shown to harden teeth better than products that contain fluoride alone.
A controlled study conducted on cow’s teeth showed nano hydroxyapatite containing products were the most successful for remineralizing enamel. A controlled study on healthy human teeth found that tooth hardness was much greater for teeth that were treated with products containing nano hydroxyapatite than fluoride alone products or not being treated with mineral products at all.
So, if dental caries are weak spots in the enamel, and nano hydroxyapatite rehardens enamel, nano hydroxyapatite oral care products are a natural fit to help avoid caries risk.