Eating sweets will damage your teeth but then you are probably aware of this and are fed up with your parents or dentist telling you! The fact that you are on a website that sells sweets probably indicates you are keen to buy some. So how can you limit the damage to your teeth when eating sweets or other sugary snacks?
It is important to realise that the battle ground is the surface of the teeth called enamel. There are three factors that can influence how badly damaged this enamel will be – how strong the enamel surface is, how clean the enamel surface is and how much sugar is applied to this surface.
The enamel surface can be strengthened by cleaning the teeth using a fluoride toothpaste which increases the resistance of attack from sugars. Used twice a day this has been shown to benefit the enamel and reduce tooth decay.
How clean the enamel surface is will influence tooth decay. Now here’s the science bit. The soft white deposit that builds up on your teeth if you haven’t cleaned them for a couple of days is called plaque. It is made up from old food which has been invaded by bacteria. When sugar from sweets and sugary drinks comes into contact with plaque it will be converted by the bacteria in the plaque to acid. It is this acid that will cause the teeth to decay or rot. Now the saliva in your mouth will help over a period of time to neutralise the acid but it takes a while. Eating one sweet will cause the acid to attack the teeth for about 20 minutes. If you were going to eat your bag of sweets in five minutes then the teeth would only be subjected to the acid attack once. If however you decided to eat one sweet every twenty minutes throughout the day the acid would be attacking the teeth for the whole day. This would cause much more damage. So the story here is that if you must eat sweets, eat them over a very short space of time, preferably after a meal, rinse your mouth out afterwards or alternatively chew some sugar free gum to stimulate more saliva.
The cleanliness of your teeth will dictate how much acid is produced when sweet eating – the less plaque the less opportunity for tooth decay. But don’t be fooled. No one cleans their teeth perfectly and plaque will form in those most difficult places to get at. Cleaning twice a day and using floss or some other gadget to get between the teeth will help.
Sweets can damage the teeth in other ways. Sticky sweets can remain on the teeth for much longer so increasing the acid damage not to mention pulling out fillings. Hard sweets might even break pieces off teeth if you''re not careful. We see this from time to time at the practice.
There are sweets now being made which are tooth kind and have a tooth symbol to indicate this. Sugar free sweets are an alternative should you be a sweet addict and of course sugar free gum chewed after a meal or in place of sweets will reduce the damage to teeth.
Finally it is very important to visit the dentist regularly – but then I guess you expected me to say that!
Nick Stolls BDS (Lond )Hons, LDS RCS (Eng)
