Life’s experiences are the result of imprints, influences and environment. Neural pathways, early childhood, family dynamics … that sort of stuff, and a whole load of it. So will sensitive people with sensitive teeth need sensitive toothpaste more than macho meatheads?
All of it has its basis in genetics. Sensitivity is spelled out in nucleotides: letters, the chemical bases of DNA; the word, a three-letter codon from 64 possible combinations.
The late US neuroscientist James Fallon (1947-2023) injected more intrigue in genetics and orbital cortex activity than one would ever have thought possible. Particularly when it’s not attached or related in any way to Counter-Strike 2 or any digital storefront. Later documentaries and programs brought the extraordinary findings of his 2005 research into the view of everyone who’d never considered themselves remotely curious about the workings of the mind of a serial killer.
What would have likely piqued more interest at the time, was confirmation of any clinical co-operation between empathy for the complications of attachment in Austin’s Sense And Sensibility and the need for sensitive toothpaste.
What did transpire couldn’t have happened at a better time. Or to a better man. Someone acutely aware that power, and the manipulation of others were personal motivators, and who already recognised his insufferably competitive nature.
That it happened at all, is the script that would have earned a soft consider in its coverage report.
Fallon was running research on Alzheimer’s at UC Irvine that included PET scans of himself and all his family members. At the same time he was also studying the brain images of multiple murderers, looking for any associations between cerebral electromagnetic activity and the psychological constructs of morality, empathy and self-control.
As he came to the bottom of a pile of scans, he observed the low activity in certain areas of the frontal and temporal lobes that were clear identifiers of a psychopath.
What shocked him about the neurological map he held in his hand was that it belonged to a member of his family.
Breaking the blinding and compromising the research seemed much less important than discovering the identity of the potential killer within kith and kin.
It was him.
Fallon didn’t keep this astounding information to himself. Likely in keeping with the disinhibition and risk-taking of psychopathy, he instead wrote a book, hit the TED Talk circuit, and agreed to take part in documentaries discussing the scans. Genetic profiling he’d had done further deepened the abyss into which he stared: seven murderers showed up in his lineage, including Lizzie Borden.
A once self-proclaimed genetic determinist, Fallon’s perspective underwent drastic reassessment upon discovering that he had the brain activity (or lack thereof) of a psychopath, as well as the DNA to prove it. Yet there he was – a successful scientist with stable relationships and a non-violent history.
He believes his loving and supportive childhood sublimated the aggression and other potentially destructive behaviours across a range of symptoms too ill-defined to make it into the internationally accepted American Psychiatric Association publication for the diagnosis and treatment of psychological disturbances. Used not only by researchers and health professionals, but policymakers and the legal system as well, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been the reference bible since 1952.
Not all psychopaths slay people by killing them. Free-solo rock climber Alex Honnold does it with incredible feats of hard-wired fearlessness.
Like scaling 915 metres of vertical granite wall in just under 4 hours. Without a harness. Or a rope. Or any protective gear at all. Just fearlessness and finger grip; and certainly more than he had in 2004. He slipped and fell 120 metres down the icy face of Mount Tallac then, which unlike him, suffered no severe facial abrasions. Among the concusssion, broken hands and fractured ribs, Honnold chipped several teeth. Whether he used a nano-hyddroxyapatite toothpaste for the pain is unknown. What is known, as a biocompatible mineral, n-HAp does more than simply mask nerve pain signals. It treats the structural cause of tooth sensitivity by filling and sealing the microscopic dentin tubules and remineralising tooth surface defects.
Like Fallon and Honnold, many psychopaths live useful and fulfilled lives, conscious of free will, and the considerations that go with it. Social behaviour is kept within the bounds of propriety despite the challenges of never feeling true empathy and traits are funnelled into constructive, rather than destructive pursuits.
Along with the genetics of insensitivity, are the genetics of sensitivity.
Even filmmakers are acutely aware of the level of sensitivity we’ve reached over the last few decades and how intensely touchy an audience can be.
Tom Cruise’s latest offering Digger died at the box office. Could it be down to animal and pet screen-death sensitivity? Animatronic or not, Maggie the cat doesn’t do well. Offending the sensibilities of audiences unhardened by the ’70s and ’80s when nobody dressed their furry companions up, or ordered special food in for them even for Christmas, has become too much.
So much so, months before the release of the dog movie Heart of the Beast the producer took to X with an assurance that at no point in the film does the canine heart of the beast stop.
Seems that even throbbing heartthrob Brad Pitt was no compromise for the pain possibility of watching the death of a dog in cinematic wonder. Whilst no dog lovers were left emotionally bereft, no cinemaphile escaped the savage pre-start: an ending under such tweet-ruination.
It used to be that it was just a movie.
You got over it. You had a life to live, the very voltage of exchanges between people packed with daily inconveniences and limited time frames. Technology rather swiftly removed those two things, regularly replacing them with other drawbacks and nuisances, all the while making it sound like we’re winning. Plenty goes unnoticed. In our increasingly digital world so much is imagined, rather than experienced. An inflated rendition of life being lived; when lots of it actually isn’t.
Add to that mix the heritability of multiple sensitivity genetic factors. Throw in a relentlessly and rapidly-changing planet. What arrives and remains, is squawkingly pink and screamingly unrobust.
The way a person perceives and processes information and life events is essentially six degrees of separation from genetic assignment, and individual competencies.
Tooth sensitivity too, is DNA shaped – although again, not exclusively – and there’s no reason to dismiss the possibility of a correlation between the two. If nothing else, the stress of perpetual emotional rawness is enough to have anyone clench their jaw, grind their teeth, wear down fillings, and crack the enamel. Tension and anxiety can result in receding gums and gum disease. Inappropriate use of whitening agents is in there as well, because when you’re in the whirl of a world of overwhelm, just Amazon-brighten up those teeth!
Even more interesting than the genetics of sensitivity, is the chemical process of the agonising discomfort that accompanies dentin hypersensitivity.
A tooth without pain is the biological process of maintaining a slightly negative voltage potential between the inner and outer cellular walls of tooth nerve cells (-70 mV) by regulating the flow of potassium and sodium ions.
When these cells need to signal pain, the potassium inside flows out, and sodium flows in. This shift in charge distribution depolarises the cell and produces the searing sensation of pain.
Pain signalling stops when nerves are flooded with potassium ions, which is how all toothpastes for sensitive teeth work. The one basic ingredient of potassium nitrate stops the transition of torment with sodium no longer able to flow into the cell. The reason desensitising toothpastes take about two weeks to work is the time it takes for potassium to be absorbed by the dentinal tubules and reach the pulp chamber. Temperature, pressure, and pain sensations are all transmitted from here – now from synapses overloaded with potassium and protectively sealed.
No wonder it feels decidedly better. Nay, healed..!
Sensitive toothpastes fix tooth sensitivity in the same way 120 kilometres of scaffolding fixed Windsor Castle when it went up in flames in 1992. It’s important to understand it as a symptom – the cause of which can only be properly determined under physical examination by a skilled dentist.
In a brutal, brutal world there’s no shame in sensitive people with sensitive teeth needing sensitive toothpaste. Just don’t let your sensitive New Age self keep pasting over a potentially serious oral issue. Buy the toothpaste, book the appointment.
Surely you’re not too sensitive for that.
