One of the great things about making and sticking to a New Year’s resolution to eat healthier is that you will reap more than declining numbers on the bathroom scale.
By eating foods that are both body and mouth friendly, you will see better results during your dental check-ups.
Certain foods, like sugary treats, and the particles they leave behind on your teeth, combined with less than recommended dental hygiene routines, contribute to the formation of dental cavities. Reducing certain foods in your diet can vastly reduce your chances of getting cavities, while also helping you look and feel better.
Your children can benefit from this New Year’s resolution, too, as cavities are the most common chronic disease faced by people age six to 19 years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1
Love to grab a hard candy from the dish on the receptionist’s desk at work every day? Are you popping throat lozenges constantly during the winter? Do your teeth a favor and skip these items or replace them with healthier alternatives. Hard foods that contain sugar, like candies, suckers, and cough drops are not good for your teeth.
To understand why, you have to understand the basics of how cavities form. When you eat a sugary hard food, like hard candy, that food dissolves slowly and saturated your mouth for several minutes at a time, giving bacteria more time to produce harmful acid.2 Since most hard candies are flavored with citric acid, your teeth get a double whammy, because acid is known to eat away at tooth enamel.
Speaking of acidic foods, they are another category of food and beverages to limit in order to keep your teeth in good shape. That squeeze of lemon or lime in your water or that glass of orange juice you consume every morning to ward off winter colds may not be the healthiest choice for your teeth.
While orange juice has no fat or cholesterol, it does contain significant amounts of the simple sugar fructose, which doctors and nutritionist warn can make orange juice as unhealthy for you as soda pop if you consume too much.3 Eating a whole orange would be a better choice than drinking orange juice according to Mayo Clinic nutritionist Jennifer K. Nelson.4
If you want to lose weight, many people have found that simply eliminating sugary beverages from their diet can produce weight loss. Sugary beverages have the same effect as sugary candy when it comes to your teeth. Sipping a sugary carbonated drink puts plaque bacteria to work in your mouth for the extended period of time it takes to drink the beverage, producing acids that attack the tooth enamel for that extended period of time.5
We’ve heard time and again that water is the healthiest beverage to consume. So, if you do have the occasional soft drink, sip water alongside that soft drink to help minimize any damage to your teeth.
While most New Year’s resolutions are forgotten way before Valentine’s Day, the people who succeed with their resolutions are those who make incremental changes over time. If you just tackle one small thing, like eliminating hard candy or a soda, you will still be accomplishing something good for your teeth and for your health.
The New Year offers healthier possibilities for both your physical and dental health and dentists strive to help their patients maintain it for the long term. Get started and schedule a dental checkup.
Our Walled Lake Dental Office has a staff that is committed the long-term oral health for each and every patient. Dr. Hechtman has over 40 years’ experience in dental care and stays current with the newest techniques by making continuing education a priority. Offering the latest technology in modern dentistry, our dental clinic in Walled Lake offers a personalized experience which includes general and restorative dentistry, dental treatments and cosmetic dentistry to meet the smile needs of the entire family. Call our office today for a Free Dental Consultation!
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1Hygiene-related Diseases: Dental Caries (Tooth Decay), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Link: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/hygiene/disease/dental_caries.html
2 Best and Worst Foods for Your Teeth, www.healthline.com, by Amanda Gardner, 9/23/2019
Link: https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20687551,00.html
3, 4 Healthy Eating: Is Your Orange Juice Helping or Hurting?
Link: https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/orange-juice-helping-hurting-5192.html
5 Top 9 Foods That Damage Your Teeth, American Dental Association, www.mouthhealty.org
Link: https://www.mouthhealthy.org/en/nutrition/food-tips/9-Foods-That-Damage-Your-Teeth