Unrelated but equally interesting things I learnt at a conference this weekend

  1. Dame Katherine Grainger OBE is Britain’s most decorated female Olympian. Talking about how the expectations you set yourself can affect how you feel about your achievements, she described herself as “ecstatic” at her first silver medal, “I could not have been happier if you had given me gold” but, just eight years later in Beijing, winning silver felt like “an absolute disaster. I might as well have come last.”
  2. Good news for teeth – the trend towards development of new materials and techniques which mean a lot less destruction of healthy tooth tissue continues rapidly.
  3. 3. If you want the Managing Director of Denplan to agree to an interview for your Facebook page ask them after they’ve had a few glasses of wine (but don’t do the interview then, that would be a bad idea).
  4. Many of us suffer from Nomophobia – fear of not having a mobile phone.
  5. We think of teeth as ‘white’ but to properly recreate the appearance of a natural tooth using ‘white filling’ you need to include shades of blue and brown and the contour of the filling is more important than the colour.
  6. Women use both sides of the brain equally whereas men use the left side more (responsible for logic, science and maths).
  7. Our subconscious is formed by the age of 7.
  8. 75% of the victims of the Asian tsunami in 2005 were identified by dental records.
  9. Bite mark analysis is sometimes used in criminal courts as evidence but it can be difficult to interpret.
  10. A business with a Facebook page should be posting at least every week.
  11. If we say to a patient “this won’t hurt” they will actually experience more pain. This is because the subconscious recognises the word ‘hurt’ but not ‘won’t’.
  12. Dentists go in for fancy dress in a big way (who knew?).