I’m having this burning question about teeth…
I’m wondering now that I’m consuming more sugar, what are the effects of sugary things on teeth?
I remember this urban myth that if you dropped a baby’s tooth into a glass of Coca-Cola, overnight the tooth would dissolve away and be completely gone.
I wondered if this was so. So I started to research it.
My teeth are in pretty good shape. The last time I was at the dentist, I didn’t have any deep pockets or gingivitis, and I didn’t need anything more than a routine cleaning. And I would like to keep it that way.
So our first stop on this investigation is the study which is not a study done with real teeth and real people in real malice. It was done with what’s called in vitro.
They analyzed various drinks including Gatorade, Starbucks from Pacino, two types of Coca-Cola, and red bull.
They believe that they have a good model for what kinds of drinks cause erosion of teeth, and which do not.
They discovered that the buffering capacity of the drink has more to do with eroding away her teeth, then how acid it is.
I won’t get too technical as to what buffering capacity means, except that it means that some of the things you think are really bad are not that bad, and some things that don’t seem bad are bad.
Red Bull had the highest mean buffering capacity (indicating the strongest potential for erosion of enamel), followed by Gatorade, Coca-Cola Classic, Diet Coke, and Starbucks Frappucino
So I’m not sure what to make of that, but it may have some validity.
I think it’s a good idea to wash your mouth out after you drink something that could be acid or sweet, including orange juice, apple juice, Coca-Cola, or for that matter red bull.
Now the next study was done with rats, and real teeth, and Coca-Cola. And I think that studies very interesting as to what it says about avoiding dental erosion, as they call it.
Notice that one of the researchers was a fourth-year dental student.
First of all, this is really important. We’ve all been told and infinitum that sugar causes tooth decay.
But it really doesn’t.
As the study showed,
acid-containing beverages can cause enamel erosion… and not the sucrose content
Previous studies involve giving rats huge amounts of Coca-Cola all the time.
In this study, they gave rats Coca-Cola with their drink, but they did not give them outrageous amounts. And as they report:
we found no caries.
As you no doubt know, caries is the dental official word for cavities.
So these rats that were given Coca-Cola with their drinking water did not get any cavities.
What they found was that erosion of teeth, or what we might call tooth decay, result from the acid in the drinks, rather than the sugar in the drinks.
And he found that by giving the rats extra calcium, the rats mostly avoided erosion of their teeth.
Researchers use calcium lactate because they report that calcium lactate doesn’t taste bad.
And they suggest that if software makers added calcium lactate to their soft drinks, the drinks would not produce erosion of teeth.
I think that the supposed “fact” that sugary liquids cause tooth decay may not be exactly true.
Most sugary drinks are very acidic, such as orange juice, apple juice, or Coca-Cola.
And acidic liquids cause erosion of the teeth, which resembles tooth decay, but is not caused by bacteria, but rather by the chemical effect of the acid in the liquid.
And it seems that it is possible that consuming extra calcium may counter that effect. The study doesn’t say, because they never tested, whether it’s necessary to give the calcium in the liquid Coca-Cola, or simply to supplement the calcium intake of the person drinking the soda.
And I’m not using Coca-Cola as an example because I’m encouraging you to drink Coca-Cola. It’s just that most fruit juice drinks, like Coca-Cola, are very acidic, and will cause erosion of teeth.
Perhaps additional calcium can counter that problem, even if you never sip from another Coke ever again.
Citations
The potential effects of pH and buffering capacity on dental erosion
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/18050578
Effect of calcium lactate in erosion and S. mutans in rats when added to Coca-Cola®
http://www.aapd.org/assets/1/25/Beiraghi-11-04.pdf
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