How to prevent dental tooth decay
Dental tooth decay is a pandemic disease that has been ongoing for at least 300 years. Can it be stopped?
Isn’t it amazing that the disease of dental tooth decay has been recognized for several thousand years and is these days a pandemic disease? We have all heard the word pandemic this year to describe swine flu (h1N1). Decay in teeth has been described as being pandemic for at least 3oo years or more. It is a disease that shows no sign of abating let alone being cured. In today’s world it is a disease that seems to be increasing. All the factors that are increasing the incidence of Type 2 Diabetes are also driving tooth decay. It costs us money and causes considerable misery from the very young to the elderly. And it keeps dentists working! Until tooth decay is under control, proceeding with any cosmetic dentistry may be futile.
So what drives tooth decay and why after thousands of years is there no cure?
Tooth decay is caused by bacteria that live in our mouths and LOVE acid. Many of the foods we eat and drink keep our mouths in an acid state. We do have good bacteria in our mouths, and they like the alkaline environment but they don’t get a chance to be in charge because the bad “bugs “rule.
Yes tooth decay is preventable
Dentistry can now provide a simple test that gives a measure of the bad bacteria we have. This test can be carried out in just a few minutes in the dental surgery from a scraping of plaque from the teeth. A program of special mouthwashes only available from dentists can then be prescribed to change the bacteria from the acid loving “bad bugs” to the alkaline loving “good bugs “. Also cutting down on foods that create acid in our mouth is very important.
Getting a tooth decay prevention program into schools
In Australia there have been several programs that have been put into place in some schools with screening to measure the bad bacteria and then the program of mouthwashes, then further screening to measure the level of bad bacteria. The results have been stunning in schools where tooth decay was epidemic to now virtually none. What a pity our New Zealand Government can’t put such a program into our schools here. It is cheaper to prevent the disease than treat the affects of the disease.
source: squidoo.com
