Soda and Aggressive Behavior

Soda – not just about bad teeth.

Five-year-olds who drank at least four servings of soda daily had double the risk of aggressive behaviors compared with children who did not drink any soda, according to a study on the website of the Journal of Pediatrics. Researchers noted that regular soda intake also was associated with social withdrawal and attention problems.

Now think about the energy drinks with their high levels of caffeine! In addition to the sugar.

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Dental Health affects School Performance and Self-esteem

A recent nationwide study published in Pediatrics demonstrated a significant correlation
with reductions in school performance and psychosocial well-being. Children with dental problems were more likely to have problems at school and to miss school, and were less likely to do all required homework. Dental problems were associated with shyness, unhappiness, feeling of worthlessness, and reduced friendliness. The effects of dental problems on unhappiness and feeling of worthlessness were largest for adolescents between 15 and 17 years.

Conclusion
Preventing and treating dental problems and improving dental health may benefit child academic achievement and cognitive and psychosocial development.

A reminder to start early.  The first tooth deserves a dental home.  If you are going to prevent tooth decay, you have to start before the decay starts.

Winning With Smiles Children's Dentistry

Don't Toss Toothbrush after Strep Throat

It is commonly recommended that you toss out your toothbrush if you have strep throat and are being treated with antibiotics. The idea was that you don't want to re-infect yourself with the strep after your antibiotics are finished. It turns out the strep is pretty fragile outside the body and dies quickly as the toothbrush dries.

This brings me to what I routinely recommend.  Have as many, or more, toothbrushes as the number of times you brush your teeth daily. Shake out the water after rinsing them and give them a full 24 hours to dry. Rotate through a sequence of your brushes. There are lots of bacteria in your mouth and they thrive in moisture. Allowing your toothbrush to dry will kill most of them.  Though there are not a lot of studies on this subject, it was nice to see this study presented at the Pediatric Academic Society's annual meeting regarding a very important pathological bacteria that dies quickly on a dry toothbrush.

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Fluoride -- Count the Ways

Something new!  The American Chemical Society recently published the results of a study showing that fluoride in the environment, like in your saliva because you drink fluoridated water, reduces the stickiness of streptococcus mutans.  Strep mutans is one of the major cavity causing bacteria in our mouths. It's stickiness allows it to stick to teeth and allow other cavity causing bugs to stick to it.  This conglomeration of bacteria, a bio-film, creates and concentrates the acids that dissolve holes in our teeth, cavities. This stickiness reduction becomes one more way fluoride resists cavity formation.

Other ways include reducing the bacteria's ability to create the acids that dissolve teeth. Also as a salt (sodium-fluoride or calcium-fluoride) in solution in your saliva, the fluoride will exchange with the hydroxide in the tooth enamel crystal (hydroxyapatite to fluorapatite) making it about 100x more difficult to dissolve with acid.

Fluoride is ubiquitous in nature, 2 parts per million in sea water and naturally occurring in fresh water in widely varying levels. At 1 part per million in drinking water it is an excellent preventer of cavities. If you live in a non-fluoridated area, the simplest way to maximize your fluoride benefit, without risking too much fluoride is to simply 'spit your toothpaste after brushing and don't rinse afterward.' The lingering bit on your teeth will have a longer time to interact with the enamel of your teeth as well as the germs themselves.

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