What soft drinks can do to your teeth
IN A new series, we bring you fascinating pictures shared by doctors — and the stories behind them.
ATOOTH left overnight in a glass of cola won’t disappear, despite what other children in the playground told you. But just what sugary drinks can do to teeth is graphically illustrated in the pictures here.
The one on the left shows the staining caused by cola after two weeks; on the right, it’s the destructive effect of an energy drink on tooth enamel, which left it literally crumbling — the small, pink pieces on the tooth root are actually lumps of enamel.
The cola staining is likely due to the caramel colouring. With the energy drink, the extremely acidic nature of the liquid is to blame.
These images are from Figure 1, a website where doctors share medical images and canvass their colleagues’ opinions. The teeth were posted by Dr Tom Bierman, a dentist at the San Diego Dental Studio in the U.S.
He had recently read a book, Rust: The Longest War by Jonathan Waldman, which claims that one in seven new energy drinks are too corrosive to put in aluminium cans.
‘I thought: “If that’s what these things do to a can, what on earth are they doing to our teeth?!” ’ he told Good Health. And so he set up this unique experiment.
Dr Bierman, 34, used his own wisdom teeth — extracted during his early 20s and brought home by his parents while he was too sedated to notice.
One tooth went into a bottle of a popular energy drink, another into cola, a third in diet cola and the fourth into water as the control.
After a fortnight, the cola tooth was stained nearly black. The diet cola tooth ‘didn’t do too much, but it was definitely stained’.
However, it was the effects of the energy drink that really shocked Dr Bierman: the pale pink and rust coloured areas you can see are the staining from the drink.
‘The rust colour seems to be where the tooth was more yellow to begin with,’ he says. And then there are those alarming lumps of enamel that have come off the tooth.
Enamel is the hard coating that protects the dentine underneath. When enamel is worn away — acidic drinks are a common culprit — the dentine is exposed, which can cause pain and sensitivity and raises the risk of decay.
‘The enamel on this tooth was crumbling away — it had been a lot more destructive to the enamel than the cola tooth,’ says Dr Bierman. ‘Even more concerning is that this was the sugar-free version of the energy drink: it’s very potent stuff.’
But don’t assume cola is better — as Dr Bierman explains, under the staining, the cola tooth would also have suffered erosion.
And while he recognises the experiment wasn’t the same as consuming the drinks regularly, he says the damage can be the same in the long run if consumed daily or almost every day.
Another dentist commenting online agreed: ‘Over a long time, the results are the same or worse. I had a 28-year-old male with teeth decayed almost to the gum line and in terrible pain, thanks to daily consumption of energy drinks and fizzy, sugary drinks.’
The risk from these drinks may be greater if you suffer from a dry mouth ( for example, due to medication for conditions such as depression, high blood pressure, allergies, colds, flu, obesity and acne), as there’s less saliva to wash away the acid or sugar.
Glass of water, anyone?