Despite the constant negative press that soft drinks receive in the media, Americans are hard-pressed to stop consuming their favorite sugary beverages. Every restaurant offers at least five different soft drink options, and every cafeteria or business has at least one vending machine that offers up to ten or more different sodas, sometimes for less than a dollar. Even convenience stores in America have prominent soft drink fountains, some even offering cups that can hold nearly a liter of sweet syrupy soda at a single time. It also comes in convenient plastic bottles ranging in size, along with the classic pop cans that can be found at retailers almost everywhere. Needless to say, soft drinks are an American favorite, and they are available nearly everywhere.

About 48% of people in the US drink soda daily, averaging about 2.6 glasses a day, adding up to a whopping 45 gallons of soda a year. Young adults are the leading consumers of soda, with 56% of the total numbers being from people aged 18-34 years old. These numbers, while they may be shocking, should not be that big of a surprise; after all, soda is responsible for the largest source of sugar in the American diet for children and adolescents.

Acidity of Soda

Besides the most apparent health concerns associated with consuming large amounts of sugar like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, drinking soda can also be harmful to oral health. Along with containing a lot of sugar, soft drinks are also flooding the mouth and teeth with a lot of acidities, which can dissolve tooth enamel and cause irreparable damage.

The two most common acids used in soft drinks are citric acid and phosphoric acid. Citric acid is found in citrus-flavored soft drinks like Sprite, Crush, and Mountain Dew. Phosphoric acid is found in darker sodas like colas and is the more harmful acid of the two. Acidity is measured on the pH scale, where a pH of 7.00 is considered neutral. Any value trending towards 0 becomes more acidic, while amounts larger than 7.00 become more basic.

While it’s unrealistic to expect adults and children to forego soda altogether, it’s good to figure out which soft drinks are the worst for tooth health, as not all pop is created equal!

The Culprits from Bad to Worse:

5. Diet Colas (Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Dr. Pepper)

While diet sodas may have no sugar to harm the teeth, many of them still contain very high acidity that will wreck tooth enamel over an extended period of time. Diet Pepsi and Diet Dr. Pepper lead the way with the most acidity at 3.031 and 3.169, respectfully.

4. Clear Diet Sodas (Diet 7Up, Diet Mt.Dew)

Just like their cola counterparts, clear diet sodas, while seeming like the healthier choice, still pack an acidic punch. Diet Mountain Dew leads with 3.365 while Diet 7Up weighs in slightly below at 3.706, making it the least harmful of classic sodas of the bunch, but still very acidic.

3. Lemon Soda Teas (Lemon Brisk, Lemon Nestea)

Often a deceivingly “healthy” seeming choice at the vending machines, these tea-inspired soft drinks are still packing an acidity marker of 1.868 (Brisk) and 2.969 (Nestea). Along with sugar, the lemon-flavored additives crack the acidity factor even higher and are far from the least damaging option on the list.

*Ginger Ale deserves and honorable mention in this group, showing similar acidity levels at 2.82*

2. Cherry Colas (Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke)

Somewhat surprisingly, cherry-flavored soft drinks actually pack more acidity than their citrus-flavored equivalents, both diet and regular. Cherry Coke is nearly at the top of the list as the worst offender with 2.522, with Dr. Pepper close by at 2.899.

1. Classic Cola (RC Cola, Coke, Pepsi)

Quite possibly the most iconic soft drinks, colas, are also the worst overall. The full sugar versions supply the highest acidity rates with RC Cola being the champion at 2.387, the very front runner of all options tested.

More Soda Facts

• Compared to other sugar beverage options like fruit juice, soft drinks have ten times the erosive potential within just three minutes after drinking.
• While it appears the worst offenders are citrus, and fruit-flavored dark colas, the light-colored soft drinks, teas, and ginger ale are all particularly harmful for tooth enamel.
• Teeth that come into contact regularly with soft drinks can lose up to 5% of their density and enamel weight over time.
• For perspective, battery acid rates at 1.0 on the pH scale, while Cola is not too far away at 2.387!
• Root Beer surprisingly has the least acidity of all other soft drink options. This is likely due to the fact that it doesn’t contain citric or phosphoric acids and is often non-carbonated.
• While juice and sports drinks also contain acidity, cola drinks reduce enamel hardness at a higher rate while also targeting the teeth’s dentin.
• While dark colas, including diet and fruit-flavored varieties, are at the top of the acidity chart and contain harmful phosphoric acid, non-cola soft drinks still cause two to five times the amount of damage.
• Iced tea soft drinks damage tooth enamel 30 times more than brewed tea or coffee.

When it comes to soft drinks, there really isn’t a lesser evil. It helps to swish water through the mouth while consuming these beverages to help reduce lasting damage, but ideally, they should not be a regular addition to daily meals. People may believe that non-cola soft drinks are less detrimental to teeth due to their lack of coloring, potentially avoiding staining. Still, they are equally as harmful to enamel, sometimes even more so when consumed in higher quantities.

Overall, avoiding soft drinks and giving them to children only as a treat can be difficult, especially when they are so readily available. An important factor in discouraging heavy soda consumption among children is to educate them on the unhealthy aspects of these beverages while also encouraging healthier options such as water or milk, or any drink that doesn’t contain such high amounts of sugar and acidity.

High-definition television, photography, and media have skewed the public’s perceptions of what natural teeth look like in the western world, particularly in America. In addition to higher detailed images of teeth, there’s also the influence of photo manipulation software that has allowed designers of ads and pop culture media to alter and “perfect” human features, like making teeth appear impossibly white, straight, and flawless.

[Read more…]

Chewing gum was once a sweet treat akin to candy, but modern science and technology have turned this sticky substance into much more over the past few decades. With the help of sugar-free sweeteners like xylitol and sorbitol, gum is now enjoyed more often, and it has even taken on some important roles in the oral health department. Many parents are apprehensive about allowing their children to chew gum regularly, but more and more we are learning that it can actually have overall positive effects, permitting that their child is old enough to chew responsibly. Breaking down the claims of gum chewing’s benefits makes it clear that it can safely become a post-meal practice or any time the mouth needs freshening.

[Read more…]

With childhood obesity and food allergies and sensitivities on a consistent rise among American children, parents are becoming more and more aware of how they feed their children and how often. Sometimes there is more to a child’s diet than merely monitoring and influencing positive choices and habits. Unfortunately, health professionals are seeing eating disorders develop in children even under the age of 12, which is most commonly seen as a prepubescent time when the body is changing. Understanding the cause of eating disorders among children is a complicated task, and even the most skilled and experienced experts cannot offer definitive reasoning or explanation as to why and how they tend to develop other than a collection of hypotheses. What we do know, however, is how certain eating disorders in children and young adults can affect dental health, and the signs to look for in order to prevent major oral hygiene issues in a parent’s and child’s future.

[Read more…]

Dental anxiety among children is quite common but can be especially frustrating for new parents, or parents of multiple children while managing proper dental hygiene throughout childhood. The fear of seeing a medical professional of any kind is entirely normal, just like fearing monsters under the bed and closet before bedtime. Many children quickly grow out of this fear after a few harmless and straightforward visits to the dentist, while others may manifest this fear into something more. Children unable to cope with their fear of the dentist can potentially develop deep-rooted anxiety that can make regular dental visits an ordeal for both parent and child. Rest assured, pediatric dentists are trained to deal with situations like these and have the tools to help parents and children deal with dental anxiety and eventually overcome it, in some cases.

[Read more…]

Across the entire country, people are facing an unprecedented amount of uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, affecting millions of families. While most essential businesses closed down for several weeks, many are now back up and running, especially medical facilities. A patient’s health and safety is always the main concern for any medical provider, dentists included. Despite the precautions of staying at home and social distancing as much as possible, oral health should not suffer on the sidelines.

[Read more…]

As a parent, you are responsible for instilling good habits into your children, helping them grow into healthy and responsible adults. While it sounds simple, the task is not always easy when dealing with little humans whose brains are still developing and can’t always grasp logic and reason. However, mouth health is absolutely not something that should ever be compromised as dental health is a major part of a person’s overall well-being. That means that many parents are facing dental-related challenges at home from the time their children are tiny toddlers to tumultuous teenagers. While the scary stigma surrounding visiting the dentist is something that hygienists are still trying to tackle even with modern day advancements making checkups and procedures painless and comfortable, there are preventative measures you can take to ensure your children will have adequate long-term mouth health.

[Read more…]

Dentistry has made great efforts to improve the previously “scary” reputations that many dentists undeservingly get. Many parents today can think back to times where going to the dentist was one of their greatest fears, and many of the devices used by hygienists looked like archaic torture devices. Thankfully, with the aid of scientific developments, going to the dentist has become much less intimidating and painful than it was some 30 years ago. Even so, many kids still begin to fear the dentist at an early age, even if they haven’t yet had a bad experience or extensive dental work done. Just like adults, children relay information to one another, and many times these irrational fears of the dentist can come from stories they hear from other children or the portrayal of dentists as scary in children’s books and cartoons. This, of course, makes your job as a parent much more difficult, especially because going to the dentist is an important event in early childhood and can prevent major problems down the line.

[Read more…]

Many of us don’t give too much thought to our bite patterns, especially if we were lucky enough to have good dental genes that have been passed down from our parents. However, some of us were the kids who had to have more than one round of braces and even the dreaded headgear that came along with extensive bite issues that we developed as children. Since the 1990s, orthodontics have greatly advanced, but no parent wants their child to experience the pain and discomfort that can come with bite issues and extensive braces, expanders, and other mechanisms that are used to correct irregular bite patterns. While it’s not always possible to prevent bite misalignment, there are steps to take to ensure you are monitoring your child’s jaw and bite development as they are growing in order to take action early on, if it’s needed.

The best course of action to keep track of how your infant’s bite is developing is to schedule their first dental visit with a pediatric dentist by their first birthday and an orthodontist visit by the age of 6 years old. This is the best time to stop any misalignment in its tracks and take early precautions to correct any bad habits. As baby teeth give way to adult teeth, you want to monitor their growth carefully making sure they are coming in straight and correctly next to surrounding teeth without any excessive gaps or crowding. The upper teeth should come down ever so slightly over the lower teeth when jaws are shut.

These are the most common abnormalities to look for in your child’s bite:

Underbite

Ideally, the front teeth should close on top of the bottom teeth, ever so slightly overlapping when the jaw is shut. With an underbite, however, the opposite occurs, and the bottom jaw sticks out slightly more than the top. This is also called a Class III malocclusion or prognathism. This kind of condition is hereditary for the most part, and children with one parent who has an underbite are likely to show symptoms early. Thumb sucking during infant and toddler stages can also play a major role in causing underbites. The thrusting motion used for thumb and pacifier sucking can cause major strain in the teeth and jaw muscles and should be treated as soon as possible.

Overbite

An overbite happens when the upper front teeth overlap the lower front teeth, but in a more exaggerated fashion than what is natural. To some degree, everyone has a bit of an overbite, excluding people with underbites. The bigger issue with this bite misalignment is that it causes unhealthy wear and tear on the teeth and can cause major jaw pain and lead to conditions like TMJ. Overbites are generally measured regarding percentages, making the ideal rage from 5-25%. Treating an overbite above that range can become tricky, so it’s essential to keep an eye out for this abnormality in your children starting at the age of six.

Open Bite

When the upper and lower teeth to not connect when the jaws are closed, there is a type of malocclusion called an “open bite.” There are a handful of reasons an open bite may occur bit the most common two are thumb sucking and “thrusting” of the tongue. Thrusting is caused by an involuntary action of pushing the tongue outwards while speaking and swallowing. There are ways in which this habit can be stopped with various kinds of devices that can be temporarily installed in the mouth. This is much easier to treat when a child is still young, and much more difficult to handle later on in adult life. TMJ, or temporomandibular joint disorder, is another issue closely associated with an open bite. The combination of tongue thrusting and a skeletal genetic issue can cause a lot of strain on the jaw, causing it to be malformed and reposition improperly.

Crossbite

Sometimes teeth don’t fix quite perfectly over each other, sometimes straying to one side more than the other. This is often most prominent in childhood, but it does not usually correct itself as other alignment issues may. If left untreated, the effects of a crossbite can cause major health issues later on in life, so it’s important to make sure you are monitoring any signs in your toddler of this malalignment in your child’s mouth development. There are several treatment options including palatal or maxillary expanders, removable expanders, surgically assisted rapid expanders, and standard braces that are used in combination with expansion to help fix the crossbite and straighten teeth.

Spacing Problems

Adult teeth should come in next to each other without too much crowding or gaps that are too wide. However, it’s not uncommon for these things to occur, causing many children to eventually seek the aid of braces to correct these flaws. Most of the time, these spacing problems are a result of a discrepancy between the size of the jaw and teeth but can be corrected, even if it calls for removing several teeth to create more room to solve a crowding issue. There are various kinds of bite issues that can occur in both lower and upper teeth, the best way to resolve these matters is to seek an orthodontic professional to make an early assessment as adult teeth begin to come in.

Abnormal Eruptions

Certain protrusions may occur in which the upper teeth in the jaw come in outward facing, or retrusion where the lower teeth appear to be too far back. These issues can be dealt with early on in childhood and mostly occur due to primary teeth being out of position or lost prematurely.

Beautiful and straight teeth are not just important for aesthetic purposes. Bite issues calling for orthodontic intervention can also be a health hazard that can develop into painful and debilitating conditions later on that could require surgery if left unattended. Genetics play a big role in your child’s bite pattern, so if you have struggled with orthodontic issues in your own life, pay especially close attention to your kid’s teeth as they grow in and develop in their formative years.

 

Sources:

https://www.lovellorthodontics.com/blog/post/be-on-the-lookout-for-these-common-bite-problems-in-children.html

https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=malocclusion-90-P01860

http://www.childrensdentalnh.com/blog/post/reduce-future-bite-problems-with-these-innovative-techniques.html

Parenting can sometimes feel like a never-ending uphill battle, especially when you are trying to guide young developing minds to become self-sufficient little humans who can take care of their own teeth. Sometimes kids will rebel, or they don’t understand the importance of brushing their teeth before bed after a day of snacking and drinking fruit juice. Trying to appeal to toddlers rationally with explanations doesn’t always seem to do the trick, so what else does a parent have in their arsenal? Lead by example. Children are like little sponges that observe and often imitate things they see. If your child sees you taking good care of your teeth, it’s the first and most important step in helping them develop good oral habits, but it certainly doesn’t end there. There are several other tips and tricks to keep in mind when raising your kids and teaching them good oral hygiene.

[Read more…]