Would you like never to get another cavity? It is possible. In fact, if you follow just a few rules, you are almost guaranteed never to get another cavity. Here is how it works:
Everybody has bugs in their mouths. Decay happens when certain of these bugs turn sugar into acid. This acid decays teeth. Saliva, on the other hand, is the tooth protector. Saliva neutralises the acid produced by the bugs. It takes two hours however after having anything with sugar, for your teeth to stop dissolving.
So, your teeth are dissolving for two hours after you have anything with sugar. If you have three meals a day and nothing between, your teeth dissolve for six hours a day. Teeth are designed to cope with that. Every snack between meals (and that includes fruit) adds an extra two hours to your dissolving time.
Now if you count how many times you have a meal or a snack, including drinks, in a particular day and then multiply that with two hours, that is the number of hours your teeth are decaying that day. Don’t let that figure come any higher than 8.
What if I have a sweet tooth? you ask. Well not all is lost. If you bundle up all your snacks and include them with the three major meals, you reduce the rotting time. No more tooth decay! If you have to have something between meals vegetables, cheese and non sweetened drinks like milk are fine, as are nuts.
Remember, it pretty much doesn’t matter what you have with breakfast, lunch and dinner from a tooth point of view. It is the snacking between meals that does all the damage.
REALLY BAD FOODS
- Soft drinks – Coke is the worst one but they are all bad.
- Cordials
- Sports drinks
- Fruit juice
- Lollies
- Cough lollies
- Dried fruit
- Sugared coffee and tea
