You don't have to brush all your teeth - just the ones you want to keep

This is an old English filling machine...

Fillings could soon be a thing of the past, as scientists develop a way to make decayed teeth regenerate and "heal". The technique involves implanting crystals into cavities. Once perfected, it will eliminate the need for fillings. Instead, enamel and dentin - the materials that make teeth so strong - will be regrown from the crystals, which are contained in a calcium solution. The key will be to spot the decay early enough for dentists to get teeth to grow healthy tooth-matter.

Professor Sally Marshall, who is leading the research at the University of California at San Francisco, said: "What we're hoping to have happen is to catch decaying teeth early and remineralise them." The ability to use the body's own building materials would be a boon to dentists, who have been fixing cavities with metal fillings since the 1840s. Acids, like those produced by bacteria or sugary foods, demineralise the enamel coating of the teeth, allowing bacteria to break through to the dentin inside. This turns the dentin mushy and useless, causing a cavity.

Professor Marshall's work focuses on regrowing the dentin using the calcium solution. She has already been able to use it to remineralise some parts of test teeth and is confident it will soon be possible to repair entire teeth.

Until then, Dentaprime can take silver fillings out and put white ones in!

Babilonical confusion

Years ago, when sticking it into a family album, I made up the perfect oneliner for a photo like this.

Water Wasser Eauk!

(Water, Wasser and Eau means water in English, German and French. Together with the k, in Dutch it says: There was also water.)

Funny, how the same word in one language can mean something entirely different in another. The photo shows Loch Katrine in the Trossachs, Scotland. The word loch is Gaelic and means body of water. In German, however, it means hole.

Harry Belafonte used to sing: "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza" and his singing partner would tell him to fix it.

That is what we also do at the Dentaprime dental clinic in Bulgaria: fixing holes. We have plastic fillings, composite fillings, inlays and onlays and they have only one surface, two surfaces or more....

"Open wider." requested the dentist, as he began his examination of the patient. "Oh dear!" he said startled. "You've got the biggest cavity I've ever seen - the biggest cavity I've ever seen." "OK Doc !" replied the patient. "I'm scared enough without you saying something like that twice." "I didn't !" said the dentist. "That was the echo."