There is much confusion surrounding our love affair with all things sweet. One question many ask is whether sugarless or sugar-free foods and beverages are always safe for your teeth.
An interesting overview of dental caries, titled "Epidemiology of Dental Disease" from the University of Illinois, explains how cavity rates have changed drastically over the years. This research is not entirely new as Dr. Weston Price discovered in the 1930’s that there are traditional populations who have lived free from cavities and tooth decay for generations. However, this University paper is another resource that highlights the role of diet and nutrition in dental health.
If you have perused this site or, even better, read Ramiel Nagel’s Cure Tooth Decay, you know that refined sugar is bad for your teeth not because it “sticks” to them as conventional dentistry would have you believe, but through changes in blood chemistry.
Most people are usually quite surprised when they are told that antibiotics prescribed by doctors for infections are not selective in the species of bacteria they kill. Antibiotics kill all species of bacteria in your entire digestive tract, and those colonies of bacteria never fully recover after a round of antibiotics have been prescribed. In other words, antibiotics are to your intestinal microbiota what a hurricane is to a coastal village. They wipe out everything in their path, causing irreversible destruction.
Bob is a 37-year-old man with some health complications. He has Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and is overweight. His daily food consumption generally consists of boxed and packaged foods and artificial sweeteners. These types of foods are often considered normal in today’s "civilized" countries; however, they may play a key role in the dental problems that plague many people like Bob. In order to understand this, we should break down at least one of Bob’s meals, and explore the problems with the foods he is and is not consuming. We can use Bob’s breakfast choices to do this.
A study published in Public Health Nutrition investigated the relationship between a person's diet and the prevalence of dental caries. The researchers noted that nutrition is important during the development of the teeth, and the types of foods that are consumed can attribute to higher rates of tooth decay and caries. The researchers found that when sugar consumption is high, there is a greater prevalence of dental caries.
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