Easing Tooth Pain by Adding Sugar Alcohol to Dental Anesthesia.
Doctors have found that mixing dental anesthesia with mannitol, a simple sugar alcohol, greatly helps in numbing the dental-drilling pain. Mannitol apparently helps to open the membrane that protects nerve fibres under the tooth, allowing the anaesthesia to seep in. It helped reduce the pain of 40 subjects who were otherwise unfortunate enough to need three dental appointments to fix their teeth.