Hi everyone!
Welcome to another exciting blog with me, doctor Shervin from Artistic Dental Studio.
Today I am going to give you some dietary advice and talk about 5 foods you need to avoid if you want to have a healthy smile. Let’s dive in:
Firstly, you need to avoid carbohydrates as much as possible. Carbohydrates or sweets have different types and all of them are harmful to your teeth, but sticky ones in particular like raisins, dates etc; could specifically cause damage. Besides having sugar, they stick to teeth and as you may know from previous blogs, they provide bacteria with substrate to convert to acid and acid could dissolve the tooth and begin the process of tooth decay. But what is really important is the frequency of consumption. Some people may eat a whole cake in one sitting but once a week only. This is not a concern. It certainly has some health implications, but in terms of dental decay it is not that important. On the other hand, some people snack relatively frequently on carbohydrates throughout the day. That is a major problem. Even a single date, one midmorning and one mid-afternoon is all you need to get dental decay relatively fast.
The second group of foods that could cause problems are fizzy drinks. These are the drinks like Coke, Fanta, and soda water. Soda water in particular is something that people usually don’t think could be harmful to the teeth, but in fact, anything sparkling could harm the teeth. One need to cut down on them as much as possible.
The third ones are acidic foods. Lemon juice, different types of fruit juices, and different types and sports drinks are all acidic and could cause the teeth to dissolve.
The fourth group are super hard and crunchy foods like Lollies, Minti’s, candy, and so on and so forth. They create tiny cracks on teeth. As you may know, enamel, which is covering the outer surface of the teeth is the hardest material in the body and overtime munching on such foods could cause hairline cracks on the surface of it. Naturally, cracks have propensity to go further down and besides creating weak spots on the tooth which could easily get decayed, a part of the tooth could snap off.
The last group are alcoholic beverages. Normally a drunk person is not a person does not brush and floss frequently and correctly. Also, alcohol causes dry mouth. This is the main problem. It could convert to acid as well by bacteria, but the main effect is creating a dry mouth and once there is dry mouth, the protective role of saliva is diminished. Therefore, the incidence of decay increases.
There are three things I need to let you know that you can do in order to minimize the effect of these harmful foods:
Number one: Drink plenty of water. Sipping on water during the day helps with clearing the food debris, brings up the PH of oral environment and therefore, reduces the chance of tooth decay.
Number two: Chew sugar-free chewing gums, specially after meals if you have no access to brush or floss. It causes more saliva production, and because saliva is a strong buffering agent, it neutralizes the acid produced by bacteria. This could slow down or halt the decay process.
Number 3: Snack on healthier foods instead of carbohydrates like cheese and nuts. They are much healthier and calcium ions in cheese it could help reverting back the early lesions of decay to a normal tooth. So, as you can see, cheese is not causing decay, it is healing it!
The last thing I wanted to talk about is something that many of us do wrong. In the morning, some of us like to have some kind of fruit juice, like orange juice or whatever with breakfast. The problem begins when one brushes after breakfast. There is already some acid (orange juice) on teeth, and brushing causes substantial damage. The best way to prevent this is to try to do brushing before breakfast, or if you want to do brushing after breakfast, just have a simple water gargle first, wait for a few minutes, then brush. This is much safer.
Okay, thank you very much for sticking with us!
Bye!
