Good oral health impacts positively on your physical, social, and mental wellbeing, therefore allowing you to enjoy life to the fullest. When you have good oral health, you can eat, socialize and speak free of discomfort, embarrassment, and pain. However, to maintain your oral health in good condition, you will need to be considerate about how much, and how often you normally consume certain foods. There are certain classes of food such as sugar, which can impact your mouth, teeth, and gums for longer after you have digested the food.
How dangerous is sugar to your teeth?
Your mouth is filled with all sorts of bacteria, some of which are beneficial while others are not. The harmful bacteria use sugar as food and in turn create acid which attacks and damages the enamel of the tooth, which is the hard, outer layer that protects your teeth.
The attack by these acids leads to cavities that cause holes in your teeth. If left for longer without being treated, these cavities will develop past the enamel of your teeth to the deeper layers and this could lead to serious tooth pain and also the potential loss of teeth.
The good thing is that your mouth continuously fights the acids that attack your teeth and this helps to reverse the damage. This process is known as demineralization and it’s where acids leach minerals from the enamel of your tooth. The mouth will try to restore the oral condition into a good state and this helps to repair weakened and damaged enamel. In this process, your saliva plays a very crucial role. Fluoride, which is another essential mineral, also assists in repairing the weakened and damaged enamel.Â
Excess sugar is the reason for poor oral health
If you are eating too much sugar every day, there will be little that the process of remineralization can do to help you in preventing damage to your teeth. This is why it’s important to ensure that you limit how much sugar you take since this allows your mouth to repair the damage that sugar causes while also ensuring that good oral hygiene is maintained.
How sugar causes cavities
All forms of sugar are dangerous, and this doesn’t matter if it’s honey, refined sugar, or any other form of sugar. Causing cavities is one of the ways how sweets affect mouth health. Decay takes place when plague, which is a form of bacteria, feeds on the sugar that you consume as part of your everyday diet.
After you have enjoyed a sugary meal, a lengthy process takes place inside your mouth. Sugar interacts with a plaque to produce an acid that eats away your enamel. The result is tooth decay, which also leads to tooth abscesses. If it reaches this stage, you may need to have your tooth extracted.
Conclusion
After you have eaten a meal that is sugar-rich, the bad bacteria that is available in your mouth interacts with the sugar to cause an acid that may eat away your enamel. This could go on to cause other serious oral conditions. This is the reason why you should always brush your teeth after meals. Furthermore, you should check out this dentist in hudgins so you’re on top of your dental health.
