Science.

How the ingredients work, what the trials measured, and where the evidence stops.

• 10% nano-hydroxyapatite: why that concentration keeps appearing in the research
  Ten per cent is not a dose that anybody established. It is the point where three separate things met: the strength at which the best-documented raw material is sold, the concentration two influential trials happened to t
• Alencar 2019: nano-hydroxyapatite for dentine hypersensitivity, and the one stimulus where it made no difference
  The Alencar 2019 meta-analysis found that nano-hydroxyapatite relieved dentine hypersensitivity more than the treatments it was compared with on an air blast and on a touch probe, but made no difference on cold (SMD −0.1
• Bae 2015: desensitising toothpastes versus placebo across the main actives
  Bae, Kim and Myung's 2015 meta-analysis of 31 randomised trials found that toothpastes containing potassium, stannous fluoride, potassium with stannous fluoride, calcium sodium phosphosilicate or arginine each reduced de
• Dentine hypersensitivity: prevalence, who gets it and why it peaks in your late thirties
  Dentine hypersensitivity is common, and every honest answer to how common begins with the method used to count it: a systematic review of 77 cross-sectional studies found published figures running from 1.3% to 92.1%, rep
• Hall 2019: a 3% potassium nitrate rinse over eight weeks in 191 adults
  Hall and colleagues found that rinsing twice a day with a 3% potassium nitrate mouthwash, on top of brushing with an ordinary fluoride toothpaste, reduced dentine sensitivity more than the same toothpaste alone over eigh
• How desensitising toothpastes are tested: Schiff air score, tactile probe and VAS explained
  Desensitising toothpastes are tested by provoking a sensitive tooth on purpose and writing down what happens, three ways: an examiner directs a short blast of air at the exposed neck of the tooth and grades the reaction
• How nano-hydroxyapatite seals dentine tubules: the mechanism, step by step
  Nano-hydroxyapatite seals a dentine tubule by settling into the open end of the channel and onto the dentine around it, where repeated brushing builds a deposit of the same calcium phosphate mineral the tooth itself is m
• How potassium nitrate is thought to calm a sensitive tooth, and why the mechanism is still unproven
  Potassium nitrate is thought to work by raising the potassium concentration around the nerve endings inside a tooth until those endings stop passing signals on, a working model that dates from the 1970s and has never bee
• Nano-hydroxyapatite and bleaching sensitivity: the paste trial read closely, and what the other trials tested
  The nano-hydroxyapatite bleaching trials tested three different things, and none of them was a toothpaste started after a course of bleaching: a paste used straight after each bleaching application, a solution put on by
• Nano-hydroxyapatite and remineralisation: what happens to softened enamel
  Softened enamel — enamel that acid has pulled mineral out of without yet wearing it away — can take that mineral back, and nano-hydroxyapatite is one of the materials that can supply it. No toothpaste rebuilds enamel: en
• NovaMin explained: what the market leader's repair ingredient does and does not do
  NovaMin is a trade name for calcium sodium phosphosilicate, a bioactive glass that dissolves when it meets saliva and leaves calcium-phosphate mineral on exposed dentine — a reaction that has been measured in people's mo
• Potassium nitrate and hydroxyapatite in one tube: what the pooled estimate rests on, and what nobody has tested
  A toothpaste carrying potassium nitrate and hydroxyapatite together is aimed at two different parts of the same tooth — the potassium at the nerve endings inside the dentine tubule, the mineral at the open mouth of it —
• Potassium nitrate versus potassium chloride: two potassium salts, two shelves, and no trial that compared them
  Potassium nitrate and potassium chloride are two salts of the same metal, and the potassium is thought to be the working part of both: a review of the potassium literature found that toothpastes built on nitrate, on chlo
• Rod-shaped crystals and the enamel lattice: why nano-hydroxyapatite adheres so well
  Nano-hydroxyapatite adheres to enamel because it is the same mineral arriving at a surface made of itself, and that affinity is real and has been photographed rather than merely asserted. What forms is a deposit on the t
• Start two weeks before? What the evidence says about potassium nitrate before bleaching
  Potassium nitrate before bleaching has a small pooled benefit and a split record: a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis of 24 studies found a 12% lower risk of sensitivity when a potassium nitrate desensitiser was a
• The Cochrane review on potassium toothpastes: what it found, what it did not, and what has happened in the twenty years since
  The 2006 Cochrane review pooled six randomised trials of potassium toothpastes and found that the two instrument tests improved at six to eight weeks while the patients' own assessment of their sensitivity did not, and i
• The hydrodynamic theory of tooth sensitivity, explained without jargon
  The hydrodynamic theory says a sensitive tooth hurts because fluid moves inside the microscopic channels that run through dentine, and the nerve endings at the inner end of those channels read that movement as pain. Noth
• Vano 2014: 15% nano-hydroxyapatite versus fluoride and placebo in a double-blind trial
  Vano 2014 found that a fluoride-free toothpaste containing 15% nano-hydroxyapatite lowered air-blast and tactile sensitivity more than a fluoride toothpaste and a placebo at two and four weeks, in a double-blind randomis
• What happens inside a dentine tubule when you drink something cold
  Cold at the surface of exposed dentine chills the fluid sitting in the open tubules; the fluid contracts, the column is pulled outwards, and the nerve endings at the pulp end of the channel read that movement as a short,
• What nano-hydroxyapatite is, and why particle size decides what it can do
  Nano-hydroxyapatite is a manufactured copy of the calcium phosphate mineral that tooth enamel and the hard part of dentine are built from, made as crystals under 100 nm long. Particle size decides where one of those crys
• Which ingredients occlude dentine tubules, and how well? A ranked review of the SEM evidence
  Rank the published electron-microscope evidence on its own terms and hydroxyapatite comes out at the top of it: in the one in vitro study that set the three main occluding actives side by side, a 15% nano-hydroxyapatite
• Why 5% potassium nitrate: the dose the trials used, and what nobody has tested
  Five per cent is the concentration of potassium nitrate the published toothpaste trials used, from the placebo-controlled trials of the 1990s to a manufacturer-funded four-arm randomised trial published in 2026: it is th
• Why whitening makes teeth sensitive: peroxide, the pulp, and why it is not ordinary sensitivity
  Whitening makes teeth sensitive because the peroxide does not stay on the surface: it crosses the enamel and dentine to the pulp, the living tissue at the centre of the tooth, and the leading explanation, built mostly on