Diet Secrets for Your Teeth! Beyond the Sugar Story
Sugar Isn’t the Only Enemy.
Breaking News!! Sugar is bad, vegetables are good. We promise though...we have some more specific answers for you than just this.
The health of your mouth doesn’t ALWAYS coincide with how well you brush and floss. It also has a LOT to do with what foods you put into it. We’ll tell you some interesting stories that’ll prove this in a bit.
When our bodies aren’t healthy, our mouths aren’t healthy either.
There is one diet that has proven itself time and time again.
We’ve seen so many patients over the years on so many different diets. Many of those patients believe that they’re eating “healthy.”
Still, as we look around their mouths, the puffy, bleeding gums prove otherwise. The cavities tell a different story.
What we’ve come to find is that the closer your diet looks like the Mediterranean diet or a vegetarian diet, the better off you’ll be. Your body. Your mind. Your teeth.
We have also observed, time and time again, that the higher protein diets seem to cause MUCH more tartar, much more gum inflammation, and bleeding... ESPECIALLY when it comes to protein shakes, bars, and red meats.
Lean meats and vegetable proteins don’t seem to have the same effect. As always, the occasional red meat protein is fine, but lots of it, on a consistent basis, is not so fine.
Diets have come and gone, but the Mediterranean and Vegetarian LIFESTYLE eating habits seem to hold the most faithful health benefits, time and time again. Fruits and vegetables, beans, rice, lean meats, little to no processed sugar, or junk food...that’s the ticket.
Of course! You can cheat now and then! It won’t hurt. The keyword here is “habits.” Always is.
What are your eating “HABITS”? What does your diet consist of MOST of the time? Be honest and try to improve them if need be.
So...what about eating often and snacking?
The more often you eat, the better off your body is. The “eat every three hours” rule is very good for us.
BUT, this is not necessarily the best routine for your teeth, so we have to add a little extra step.
Every time we eat, we change the ph level of our mouths, making the whole environment more acidic. This acidic environment is what encourages cavities to grow. They thrive, actually.
Picture sipping on that soda or that sugar-filled coffee drink for HOURS throughout the day?
How about chewing gum all the time that is NOT sugarless?
This is soooo bad for your teeth because your mouth stays acidic that whole… ENTIRE… time. Cavities are going to grow. It’s almost inevitable.
So the secret is if you’re going to drink a soft drink or another sugary substance, drink it FAST and get it over with. Don’t sip on it for long periods of time.
The next secret is to be sure to, at least, swish your mouth out well with water after eating or drinking each time. This will bring the ph level in your mouth back to a healthier level, closer to neutral.
Ideally, brushing after eating would be best, but we are realists here at SODA. We want you to know the SECRETS, which will be easier to attain and more helpful for you.
Did you also know that an infected mouth can hurt the health of your body?
Bleeding gums (gum disease) and inflammation mean that there is a chronic infection in your mouth.
Your body has to continually try and fight this infection off, day in and day out, just like any other infection. It puts extra stress on your body.
Your infected mouth also holds a lot of plaque...you know, that white smooshy stuff that you can scrape off your teeth with your fingernail? That stuff.
If you bleed when you are brushing and flossing, that plaque can and WILL get into your bloodstream. It then proceeds to travel throughout your body. It can reach any organ that it desires or get stuck in any vessel along the way.
EVERYONE’S main goal should be to brush and floss WITHOUT ANY bleeding occurring.
Every person can accomplish this. We promise.
If you ever see bleeding at home when you are brushing or flossing, this just means floss and brush MORE! Not harder, just more.
Twice a day, at least for brushing. Once a day for flossing (or at least Monday/Wednesday/Friday).
“My gums just bleed,” “I’ve always been a bleeder,” “I just get cavities,” “I’ve always had soft teeth,” are no excuses. It just means that you have some genetic predispositions and that you, unfortunately, need to work a little harder at it than others.
You can do it, though. You can do it! It doesn’t take that much more effort. Click our links to learn the correct way to brush and floss and to get the cleanest mouth possible.
Okay, as promised, here are some stories to help motivate you to switch to that healthier diet:
Story number 1
I’m reading my next patient’s chart, as I always do, before calling him back to get his teeth cleaned.
He’s a man in his late 50’s. Last records show that he had very poor oral hygiene and that his previous dental cleaning was not much to be desired. Bleeding everywhere. Puffy gums throughout. LARGE ledges of tartar/calculus everywhere. Disease all around.
And then, to top it all off, it had been three years since that last cleaning. “Oh great, THIS is going to be hard,” is every hygienist’s next thought.
So, back he comes. His checkup x-rays are taken, and he opens his mouth for me to do my first “look around”...to see what “fun” we may be in for...
Much to my amazement, his mouth looked immaculate! Very minimal tartar that I could see above the gumline. No plaque. No cavities. No bleeding as I checked around his gums.
I proceed to do his cleaning, thinking for sure that it was all just hiding under his gums. I knew the fun was about to begin at any moment...But...nothing!!!! His mouth was immaculate!
So I began to question him about his health and what he had been doing the past three years to keep everything so clean. Here were his answers:
He had a quadruple bypass heart surgery done during those 3 years.
He was now on a strict, vegan diet to keep that plaque from clogging his heart again.
He only brushed his teeth once a day.
He flossed.....NEVER!
So what does that tell you? His diet was the sole contributing factor to his immaculate mouth. Fascinating right?
Story number 2
She’s a young woman in her mid 40’s. She has always been consistent with having her teeth cleaned every 6 months.
She SWEARS that she brushes and flosses daily as instructed, and her previous cleanings have proven that to be true. Reading her chart, she’d never had much in the way of tartar buildup, plaque, or bleeding gums during her cleanings.
She’d recently become active at the gym, and her muscular body tone looked great. She even won a one-armed pull-up contest!
But her teeth...
As I cleaned them, I found MASSIVE ledges of tartar stuck all over...RINGS of it under her gumlines and in between.
I like to call these chunks of tartar “barnacles,” to give my patients a visual of what’s going on.
She had “barnacles” growing and attaching everywhere! Her gums were bleeding throughout as well...I was essentially her little scuba diver in there to clean it all up.
So my questioning began. Here were her answers:
She was eating a VERY high protein diet, much like Keto or Atkins.
She ate LOTS of protein bars and drank LOTS of protein shakes.
She ate little to no carbohydrates.
She still tried to brush and floss like she always had
It sounds like a healthy diet, but her mouth was not showing us a healthy situation.
If your gums are infected, and your teeth are growing barnacles, how sexy are you really going to look doing those one-armed pull-ups at the end of the day?!
Bad breath is one main symptom that goes along with gingivitis and gum disease, too, so you know those workout partners can smell that.....
The moral of the story… just to try and focus on what works for the health of your WHOLE body, not just your muscles.
These stories aren’t just one-time happenings.
Once I made these discoveries and took the mental notes, I began to connect the dots. I began to pinpoint patient after patient, how each was eating, and why their teeth and gums were making changes in one direction or another.
Drastic changes in a patient’s mouth almost always lead to diet or stress changes in life.
So...it’s important to make yourself important.
It’s ALL connected. It really is!
The patients who try to eat healthy and “do their homework” by brushing and flossing their teeth have little to no dental problems throughout their ENTIRE lives. That could be you!
These patients just come in every six months for “social hour” and light cleanings to remove the bits of plaque and tartar that they have missed. No one is perfect.
These checkups give patients peace of mind. They leave knowing that all is still okay and what they are doing is working.
Surely that is your dental dream, right!?
Well, the dream can truly be yours. The dental world is not rocket science. Brush, floss, mouthwash, see your honest dentist regularly, eat healthy, and it will all get sooooo much better. All is never lost. Sometimes you just need to catch back up if you’ve fallen behind.
Though it would be best if we did, we’ll never claim to know it all, all of the time. NO ONE knows it all! We do claim honesty, though, and we sincerely want to help as many people as we can! Our patients have maintained beautifully, following our conservative recommendations :)
So, thanks so much for reading and letting us spill our SODA! Remember to take the time to find your HONEST DENTIST, and be sure to browse around our links and follow us on social media for answers to more of your exciting dental questions, like:
