What are dental caries, how are these affected by sugar?

Dental caries or tooth decay is a chronic disease that damage a tooth leading to a cavity. It is one of the most common, non- communicable disease worldwide. All age group of people can have tooth decay. Especially young children are at the high risk of ‘early childhood caries’ or ‘baby bottle tooth decay’.

Causes of dental caries

In most of the countries, sugars or sweetened beverages like fruit based and milk based sweetened drinks, are the primary source of free sugars. As well as the confectionary items like cakes, biscuits, sweetened cereals, sweet desserts, sucrose, honey, syrups and preserves. All these are the prime cause in the development of dental caries.

When decay causing bacteria come in contact with sugars and starches that gets in from foods and drinks. This acid may attack the tooth’s enamel leading to lose minerals. This usually occurs when you consume food or drink, sugar and starch containing edibles, very often. The repeated cycles of these acid attack will cause enamel to continue lose minerals, leading to formation of cavity by weakening enamel and destroying them.

Symptoms of dental caries

There are no specific symptoms as such. Toothache or tooth pain is one of the primary sign. Tooth sensitivity to sweets, hot or cold is a matter of concern. In case of tooth infection, abscess or pocket of pus, may cause pain, facial swelling and fever. Avoid such severe oral complications and consult a doctor immediately. Get the prescribed medications through the best medicine app in India.

Sugary sweet

Sugar is the most common household foodstuff for most of the people, though sucrose is only one of the many naturally occurring sugars used in the human diet. Naturally occurring sugar are a constituent in fruits, vegetables, grains and dairy foods. While, sweeteners are artificial or added sugar that as an ingredient provides taste as well as energy. Well, the level of energy gained by these sweeteners are categorised as ‘nutritive’ or ‘non- nutritive’. Nutritive sweeteners are usually caloric and include sugars and sugar alcohols. On the other hand, non- nutritive sweeteners offer no energy but can sweeten little volume.     

Dental caries and sugar linkage

Out of many factors that contribute in dental caries, diet plays an important role. Undoubtedly, the most hyped dietary factors in the etiology of dental caries are the sugars. Today’s diet contains an increasing range of fermentable carbohydrates, including highly processed starch- containing foods. It also contains food that have novel synthetic carbohydrates like oligo fructose, sucralose and glucose polymers. Along with these, there lies a wide range of non- cariogenic sweeteners, that happen to play a role in caries control.

The physical form of sugar ingested and frequency of its consumption is related to the prevalence of caries. Also the length of time the tooth is exposed to sugar accounts the effect on the tooth. Some study suggests that semisolid and liquid sugar containing food may be cariogenic.

Saliva plays an important role in eliminating sugars and food particles from the oral cavity. But, during hypo salivation, which is found in relation to irradiation in the head and neck area; Sjogren’s syndrome; surgery or medication; in older age with poor health, an increased caries rate is found. The rate at which sugar is cleared from saliva is affected by sugar concentration, rate of solubilisation, rate of enzymatic degradation, ability adhere to the teeth and ability to stimulate salivary flow.

Sugars in sticky foods, consumed between meals are associated with high caries activities. The usefulness of a sugar substitute has to be looked at not only from a cariological but also from a nutritional, toxicological, economic and technical point of view.

Prevention of dental caries

To prevent dental caries, oral health care doctors must persuade the patients to adopt special diet and alter their customary dietary behaviour. In case of tooth extraction and infection, prevention method is not very effective and so, medicines are prescribed which can be purchased from the best healthcare service provider in India. Health education must be provided on food manufacturers marketing techniques to reduce dental caries in the population at large. Limiting the intake of free sugars to less than 10% of total energy consumption can minimize the risk of dental caries throughout the life course by 5%.

Ending note

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), dental caries is an expensive disease to treat as it consumes nearly 5- 10% of healthcare budgets in industrialized countries. But, sugar alone might not be the sole determinate of this disease. Follow right diet and maintain every part of the body healthy and fit.