Know About Your Tooth Enamel

Tooth enamel is the most highly mineralized and hardest substance of the body and with cementum, dental pulp and dentin is one of the four major tissues which make up the tooth. This tooth enamel is normally visible tissue and must be well supported by underlying dentin. Research says that around ninety six percent of tooth enamel consist of minerals with water and other organic material composing that completes the hundred percent. Normal color of enamel varies itself from grayish white to light yellow. If one sees the teeth edge where there is no dentin that underlying enamel, the color sometimes appears to be slightly blue tone.

The dentin color and any restorative dental material below the tooth enamel strongly affects the tooth appearance since the enamel is semi translucent. Thickness of enamel also varies over the surface of the tooth and is often seems to be thickest at the cusp up to 2.4 to 2.5mm, and appears thinnest at its borders seen clinically as cementoenamel junction.

Hydroxyapatite is the enamel’s primary mineral which is a crystalline calcium phosphate and the largest amount of minerals present in the enamel adds not only its strength but its brittleness. Generally dentin is less mineralized and will be less brittle which compensates for enamel, highly necessary as a support

Enamel does not contain collagen unlike bone and dentin but instead it has got two unique types of proteins generally called as enamelins and amelogenins. The role of these special proteins is partially understood and also it is believed that these proteins help in the enamel development as a framework support among other functions