Health’s Blog

by Aimee Amodio 

The food you eat helps build a strong, healthy body — that includes your teeth! Adding a few simple things to your diet can help your choppers stay strong and healthy.

• Watch when you eat your carbs. Carbohydrates break down into sugars, which can be converted to plaque in the mouth. Plaque is the primary cause of gum disease and cavities! If you snack on carbs like chips, cookies, and crackers, foods can get caught between teeth and under the gum line, making it easy for bacteria to get to work. If you eat your carbs at mealtimes, you’ll be producing more saliva and washing food particles away.
• Behold! The power of cheese. Enzymes in cheese can help neutralizing acids and sugars that come from sodas and other sugary snacks. Follow your sugary drinks and snacks with a piece of cheese to help reduce your risk of cavities.
• Make sure you get your vitamin C. Folks who don’t get enough vitamin C in their diet are 25% more likely to end up with gum disease than people who ate enough — according to a study from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Be sure you get plenty of vitamin C: 180mg daily or more. Read the rest of this entry »

by Aimee Amodio

You can help keep your teeth healthy from the inside out — certain diet choices can help keep your choppers strong and shiny. Here are some tips to help protect your mouth against decay, disease, and more!

• Sugar isn’t the only thing that’s bad for your teeth — carbs can be just as damaging. After all, carbohydrates break down into simple sugars in your body. In your mouth, sugars are converted into plaque.
• That doesn’t mean you have to give up carbs! Just try to eat them only at mealtimes. Carbs are kind of sticky, so they tend to adhere between teeth or below the gum line. Eating your carbs at mealtime will give your mouth a chance to clean the carbs away. The more you eat, the more saliva you produce. Spit helps wash food particles away.
• Make sure you get plenty of vitamin C in your diet. Vitamin C helps hold all your cells together — from your skin to your gums. If you get less than 60 milligrams of vitamin C daily, you are 25% more likely to have gum disease than folks who get 180 milligrams or more every day. As a measure, one eight ounce glass of OJ contains 80 milligrams of vitamin C or more.
• Make sure you eat plenty of calcium in your diet. The majority of the calcium in your body lives in your bones and your teeth. 800 milligrams of calcium every day (for the average guy) will help reduce your risk of developing gum disease. Women under fifty probably need more — around 1000 milligrams daily. Women over fifty should get 1200 milligrams daily. Read the rest of this entry »

by Aimee Amodio

Are you ready for candy that actually helps cut tooth decay? It could be coming to a store near you within the next few years.

Researchers from the Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine developed a compound called CaviStat. CaviStat is a fluoride-free compound that mimics the way human saliva neutralizes acids in the mouth.

The researchers put CaviStat to the test in the form of BasicMints — a chewy candy designed to stick to the teeth and help prevent cavities in the back teeth. The mints were recently tested in Venezuela.

The study involved two hundred children between the ages of ten and eleven — children who were getting their adult molars but still had some baby teeth left. Ninety percent of cavities in children appear on the biting surfaces of the back teeth; the study hoped to show that BasicMints have a good chance of cutting back on cavities.

Sugarless gum helps fight cavities by increasing saliva flow in the mouth. BasicMints actively neutralize the acids that erode tooth enamel.

Half the children added BasicMints to their morning and evening tooth care routine: brushing with a fluoride toothpaste. The other half used plain sugarless mints. The results were striking — after just a year, the children who used BasicMints had more than sixty percent fewer cavities than the sugarless mint group!

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