With the 45th anniversary of Life of Brian happening soon enough, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum is an opener appreciated by the diminishing few and relevant in the way we so often forget the things that have come before.

It’s no provocation – simply the vantage of a vintage vignette of the impact of surprise, felt in a universal breath like something had somehow started from new again. So permanent, fast, and masterful a collaborator is social media in swiftly and constantly changing the game of things apparently appearing from nowhere, its surprising how different surprise once was.

The realm of the few has become the domain of the many. The six forums of Rome are now hundreds of thousands; all web-based and centralised, starting with Reddit and ending in Steam.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Life itself is a funny thing that happens, and when we see it that way there’s that clear and easy view where all roads lead to Rome.

The forum of freedom, Erronius, Dominia and Gymnasia had the People’s Front of Judea, Biggus Dickus and Incontinentia Buttocks so comfortable in its oh-so contentious skin, it moved all over new space as if it had always been there.

It happens throughout history of course, with the lived bits remembered most; personal proclivities the only real compass. It’s all well and good – and no doubt necessary – to broaden the breadth of broad knowledge and teeter vicariously on the edge of other lives, but in all of us, cellular memory is easily invoked, and sometimes strangely equal to the comfort of an ever-loving granddad or an all-accepting nan.

Now we seek solace in technology and its advances. It’s nano not nana fixing our woes; promising always that things just get better.

The technology that so surprised us in the shiny new millennium had been on its way to the forum since ’74.

Pocket calculators had arrived and marketed as personal computers. The Towering Inferno was raging, Nixon was washed up by Watergate, and Steve Wozniak launched Dial-A-Joke in New York where a call got you a comedian’s seven jokes on an automatic answering machine.

Even for those who know or remember that, it’s almost guaranteed that Bob Bilkiss passed them by, and Austria’s 1960s joke of the week phone service is a side-road not recognised as having ever existed.

Much like nano-HA.

It’s a funny thing that tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the human body. Bone seems the obvious answer to bet on and probably still buys schooners at the pub.

Dental enamel is 96% hydroxyapatite (HA) and more than twice that of bone; the remaining 4% comprised of magnesium, sodium, carbonate, fluoride and water. It’s funny that sour lollies beat that like rock beats scissors, yet people eat it. Giving it to kids would make that funnier still if it wasn’t just weird and bizarre.

HA is a bioavailable calcium also found in saliva as a remineralising agent and vital to the strength of organic enamel.

Nano-HA is its synthetic equivalent and it began with NASA.

Microgravity forces change upon the human body. In weightlessness, bones are no longer exposed to stress, which leads to the loss of minerals. It also happens to teeth, and NASA needed a way to replace this loss of biological rigidity.

In 1970 a Japanese company accepted the challenge and bought the rights to formulate a hydroxyapatite solution. It took Sangi Co Ltd until 1980 to successfully launch its hydroxyapatite toothpaste, Apadent, officially recognised as medical anti-cavity agent in 1993.

In 2017 that the first American nano-HA toothpaste hit the market and with the development of micron-abrasive versions, nano-HA now exists in more than 200 products across 70 countries.

Although the implementation of fluoridated water is named one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, it’s devoid of the components of hydroxyapatite – found to have superior protection properties against tooth decay.

The particle size of nano-HA gives it the ability to bond with proteins. In toothpaste, it increases surface size and bonds with plaque and bacteria. So tiny is its structure it also fills and repairs micro damage on the surface of tooth enamel.

An alternative for those sceptical of the safety of fluoride, clinical studies validate its efficacy, and microdiagraphic images show deeper levels of remineralisation.

In dentistry, nano-HA is now moving to bone regeneration.

With its chemical similarity to bone, it’s a grafting material that helps reconstruct the damage of periodontal disease, and increase the ridge thickness in alveolar atrophy.

The application of nanoscience and its technologies is becoming more common, including in dentistry. Its exceptional bonding abilities and efficiency with bacteria, fungi and viruses means in most cases it has improved treatment methods, although it doesn’t come without risk.

The long-term safety of nanomaterials is still being researched with concerns of toxicity and migration within the body. It faces regulatory obstacles, and the balance of clinical use and cost still has to be resolved. Currently, there’s a lack of in vitro trials, and being able to reach the necessary scale of mass production is relatively complicated.

Nano-HA is an opportunity to find the road to minimally invasive treatments, personalised therapies and the marvel of regenerative dentistry.

In the meantime as it happens, minimally invasive treatments and personalised therapies all lead back to regular appointments with your dentist.

That’s the funny thing about it. 

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