If you ask the average person the last time they thought about saliva, you’d just get a funny look (unless one of their kids or pets has a drooling problem!). If you ask a dentist or hygienist, they’d say 5 minutes ago, 25 times today, 100 times a week. The fact is, according to Directa Dental’s website, humans usually secrete about 0.25-0.35 ml/minute, and when stimulated—by food, the thought of food, and dental treatment, human salivary glands produce 1-3 ml/minute.
I decided to Google that, and found an interesting website on the subject, where I learned that saliva is actually mostly recycled! I did not realize that when we swallow, which we do potentially 600 times a day or as many as 4 times a minute (according to another interesting website) we reabsorb our saliva; the flow rate is about 30ml of saliva an hour (unless we are sleeping or eating); and that amounts to about a “wine bottle full,” or between 2-4 pints of spit every day of our lives, culminating in roughly 53 European-size bathtubs-full in a lifetime. 
Yikes!
Sometimes when I go to the dentist, it’s like a Pavlov experiment, depending on what’s being done and where in the mouth. And sometimes the suctioning from the saliva injector can be uncomfortable or even ineffective.
Directa Dental came up with a solution for that. DryDent Sublingual is the only super-absorbent product designed to be used under the tongue to collect saliva produced by the sublingual and submandibular glands. It’s made of a soft material that is comfortable for patients, especially when they need to swallow, and appears to reduce swallowing reflexes related to tissue irritation. Saliva ejectors can be used over top of DryDent Sublingual, which protects the soft tissue from the suctioning. They can also be used with x-ray holders to improve that experience for patients sensitive to the hard or sharp edges of digital sensors and film packets.
Available in two sizes for optimal anatomic adaptation, one big DryDent Sublingual used in combination with two DryDent Parotids can absorb about 16 ml of saliva in 30 minutes. With a dry oral environment being critical to the successful outcome of a variety of dental treatments, this is an easy way to double your efforts to protect the field of operation from moisture contamination. For more information, click here.
DryDent Sublingual received the Highly Commended Status as the 2nd best innovation at the UK’s prestigious Clinical Innovations Conference in May 2016.