Nutrition

Good nutrition plays a big role in you and your family's dental health. Brushing and flossing help keep your teeth and gums healthy an strong, but a balanced diet will help to boost your bodies immune system, making you less vulnerable to oral disease.

What you eat and how often have been linked to your dental health. Eating starches such as crackers, bread, cookies, and candy causes bacteria in your mouth to feed on the carbohydrates, they then produce acid, that attack your teeth for 20 minutes or more. Also foods that stick to your teeth or are slow to dissolve give the acids more time to work on destroying your tooth enamel.

Starchy foods - crackers, cookies, candy

Sticky foods - chewy fruit snack, potato chips, hard candies, granola bars, soda

Try nuts, cheese, onions, or tea; these are shown to stop those bacteria from forming.

Another cavity culprit we see in our office very often is "Mountain Dew Mouth." Patients that drink beverages such as regular soda, diet soda, sports drinks, canned iced teas and juices can have a higher caries rate because of the acidity and sugar in the drinks.

Your teeth are covered in enamel which is the body's hardest substance, enamel however breaks down when in the presence of acid. Carbonic, phosphoric, malic, and citric acids are in many sodas. Many of the artificial sweeteners in diet drinks also are acidic. The following are acidic beverages starting from the worst to the least: Pepsi, Coke, Hawaiian Punch, Diet Pepsi, Ginger Ale, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, Diet Coke, Diet Dew, Sprite, Root Beer, Tea, Coffee, and then water. The best things to drink are water, milk and diluted fruit juice. Make sure to read labels and look for sugar content and other acidic ingredients.