The original desensitizers: strontium and potassium salts.

Many patients complain of teeth that are painful when exposed to a variety of harmless thermal and tactile stimuli. Sensitive tooth necks and root surfaces frequently are the unintentional by-products of aggressive oral hygiene practices and periodontal treatment. Dentists and the afflicted patients have resorted to many remedies for this common form of dental pain. In the past, many of these purported treatments were based on a fragmentary knowledge of the anatomic substrate and physiological processes underlying dentin sensitivity. Much progress has been made identifying dentin permeability and intradental nerve excitability as physiological parameters that can be modified by desensitizing agents. In this paper, rather than provide a comprehensive or critical review of desensitizing treatment, I will discuss the rationale and some of the history behind two early and popular classes of dentifrice-applied desensitizing agents; strontium and potassium salts.

Differentiation between occupational and dietary-related intake of barium in the skeleton.

On the basis of the reconstruction of general nutritional patterns by trace element data on historic populations, an examination on occupational Ba intakes in the skeleton was carried out for a historical metallurgy population. The concentrations of the trace elements Ba, Sr, and Pb as well as the matrix element Ca were determined by AAS analysis. Their correlations within the population were analysed statistically. Evidence of a correlation between Ba and Sr concentrations and the lack of a correlation between Ba and Pb concentrations is interpreted as evidence for a probably solely dietary-related Ba intake in the skeleton. Ba intake from working in ore smelting plants is therefore unlikely or at least insignificant. These conclusions are supported by analysis results of modern food items from the catchment area of the historical population. A sufficient Ba supply through rye was determined, thereby explaining the concentration of Ba in the bone material of the historic population.

[Quantitative nutritional reconstruction by trace element data]. / Quantitative Ernährungsrekonstruktion durch Spurenelementdaten.

Cemeteries without grave goods permit conclusions on the social structure of the underlying population by morphologic skeleton characteristics alone only very restrictedly; though, this social structure may manifest itself in varied nutritional habits, which mirror for their part in the trace element spectra of the skeletal material. A proportional interrelation between Sr-Ca-ratio in food and Sr-Ca-ratio in bone exists, the proportionality factor (observed ratio = OR) being known; the same goes for Ba. This linearity is not given any longer concerning the interrelation between nutritional habits, i.e. the shares of the single food stuffs, and the trace element concentrations of the food and by that of the bone. This makes the use of statistic procedures (cluster analysis) upon the initial trace element data unreliable, so reconstruction of the actual nutrition is necessary. Suitable equation systems do not only supply the wanted individual nutritional habits, but also indicate the metabolism of other trace elements.

Elementary Scots. The discovery of Strontium.

The element Strontium takes its name from the village of Strontian in Argyll. It was in ore samples taken from lead mines near the village that Strontium was first identified as a new element in 1970. A radioactive form of the element has reached medical prominence through its use in the palliation of pain in patients with painful skeletal metastases.