image source, Getty Images
-
- Author, José Lemos and Jaqueline Abraches
- Author title, The conversation
Between Halloween candy and Christmas cookies, the end of the year is often full of opportunities to consume sugar. But what happens in your mouth in the first few minutes and hours after eating candy?
While you probably know that eating too much sugar can cause tooth decay, or damage to your teeth, you may not be as familiar with how bacteria use that sugar to form a sticky film called plaque on your teeth as soon as you take your first bite of candy.
We are a team of microbiologists who study how oral bacteria cause tooth decay.
And in this note, we’ll tell you what happens in your mouth when the sugar passes your lips and how you can protect your teeth.
A sour descent
Within seconds of your first bite or sip of something sugary, the bacteria living in your mouth begin to use that sugar to grow and multiply.
When converting these sugars into energy, these bacteria produce large amounts of acids.
As a result, just a minute or two after consuming foods or drinks high in sugar, the acid levels in your mouth rise to levels that can dissolve tooth enamel – the minerals that make up the surface of your teeth.
Fortunately, saliva comes to the rescue before these acids can begin to attack the tooth surface. Washes away sugar residue and neutralizes acids in your mouth.
Your mouth is also home to other bacteria that compete with cavity-causing bacteria for resources and space, defending you and restoring acidity to a level that won’t harm your teeth.
However, frequent consumption of sweets and sugary drinks can overfeed harmful bacteria to such an extent that neither saliva nor beneficial bacteria can counteract them.
image source, Getty Images
An attack on tooth enamel
The bacteria that cause tooth decay also use dietary sugars to form a sticky layer called biofilm that acts as a fortress on the teeth.
Biofilms are very difficult to remove without mechanical force, such as routine tooth brushing or cleaning in the dentist’s office.
In addition, biofilms represent a physical barrier so that saliva can no longer fulfill its acid neutralizing function.
To make matters worse, the bacteria that cause tooth decay can survive in these acidic conditions, while the beneficial bacteria that fight them cannot survive.
In these protected fortresses, cavity-causing bacteria continue to multiply, keeping acid levels in the mouth high and causing further loss of tooth minerals until tooth decay becomes visible or painful.
How to protect your teeth:
image source, Getty Images
Before you reach for your next sugary bite, there are a few things you can do to keep cavity-causing bacteria away and protect your teeth:
- Reduce your sugar consumption and try to avoid sugary foods or drinks during meals. In this way, the increased production of saliva when you eat helps excrete sugars and neutralize acids in your mouth.
- Avoid sweets and sugary drinks throughout the day, especially those that contain table sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Continuously exposing your mouth to sugar will keep acid levels elevated for extended periods of time.
- Remember to brush regularly, especially after meals, to remove as much plaque as possible. Flossing daily also helps remove plaque from places your toothbrush can’t reach.
The original text was published in English in The Conversation. You can read it Here.
Subscribe here Subscribe to our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download and activate the latest version.
About The Author
