Tooth-Saving Tips for Halloween

Nearly everyone would agree: one of the best parts of Halloween is the candy. But that doesn't mean that you need to give up on your child's oral health for the night—and neither should he or she! Halloween is a good time for parents and caregivers to educate their young goblins and ghosts about good choices for their teeth.

The Worst Candy for Your Teeth

According to Dr. Keith Libou, chief clinical officer at Delta Dental of New Jersey, not all candy is equally scary for our oral health. But there are candies you will want to avoid. Encourage your child to sort his or her Halloween candy into "better" and "worse" piles. Here are some guidelines to help you navigate:

• Sticky candies: Caramels, gummy bears, saltwater taffy, and dried fruit snacks all get stuck in teeth easily. That includes chocolates with caramel or other sticky fillings. The general rule is the stickier the candy, the worse it is for your teeth.

• Sour candies: These candies have high acid levels that can break down tooth enamel.

• Candy corn: This is laden with sugar that produces acid that eats away at teeth.

Ask your dentist if he or she has a "candy buyback" program and offer to take your trick-or-treater, along with the "worse" pile, to redeem it for cash or prizes.

The Top 5 Tooth-Friendly Candies

Dr. Libou recommends the following choices to help protect children's oral health on Halloween and whenever candy is offered. Put these candies in the "better" pile.

• Sugar-free gum: Studies have shown that chewing sugar-free gum after meals and snacks can help rinse off and neutralize the acids released by the bacteria in plaque, which are harmful to tooth enamel. Both the act of chewing and the flavor of the artificial sweeteners in the gum stimulate ten times the normal rate of saliva flow, which washes away food particles, helping to keep your teeth clean.

• Sugar-free Lollipops: Sugar-free lollipops also stimulate saliva production, which flushes away bacteria from teeth, tongue and gums. Some varieties include ingredients like licorice root, which has been shown to significantly reduce the bacteria that cause tooth decay.

• Chocolate: Chocolate melts quickly and doesn't generally stick to teeth; however, avoid chocolates with caramel or sticky fillings, which can be harmful to teeth. As an added bonus, the calcium in chocolate may be beneficial, and dark chocolate in particular has antioxidants that can be good for the heart.

• Peanut Butter Cups: These treats are similar to chocolate in that they disappear fast.

• Powdery candy: The texture of powdery candy allows it to dissolve quickly, so that it doesn't stay on teeth and produce acids and bacteria that can cause cavities.

Drink Water and Brush Afterward

Encourage children to drink a glass of water after eating candy, as it helps flush away food debris and can dilute the sugar acids. Also, remind them to brush and floss their teeth after they eat sweets.

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Do DIY Teeth Whitening Methods Really Work?

Brushing your teeth with a strawberry and baking-soda mixture  — which "The Dr. Oz Show" and YouTube videos have touted as a natural, cheap, easy, do-it-yourself way to brighten teeth — does not actually whiten teeth, and may even weaken them, new research shows.

In the past, lemons had also been advocated as tooth-whitening agents. However, researchers very soon discovered that the high concentration of citric acid in lemons made their juice acidic enough to potentially erode teeth.

"Strawberries also contain a high concentration of citric acid, with trace amounts of malic acid, depending on the ripeness and storage conditions," said lead study author So Ran Kwon, a tooth-whitening researcher at the University of Iowa. "However, I assume that malic acid is not well-known to the public, so that created some kind of a myth that it is different from citric acid, possibly working better and being safer."

The question of whether this strawberry and baking-soda concoction was effective came up during the 2012 annual meeting of the American Association for Dental Research in Tampa, Florida. 

"Although we had a group of international and national researchers present, no one had a definite answer," Kwon told Live Science. "This prompted me to look more into those DIY natural whitening approaches."

To see if this strawberry and baking-soda strategy might work, Kwon first rubbed a mixture of baking soda and California-grown organic strawberries on 20 recently extracted human molars for 5 minutes, and then brushed the teeth gently. She repeated this procedure three times daily for 10 days, much like the recommendations given by those trying this homemade recipe.

The experiments found that teeth brushed with the strawberry and baking soda formula showed no real whitening, based on two well-known color-measurement tests, and an examination with a scientific instrument that detects colors known as a spectrophotometer. The mixture only removed superficial debris from the teeth.

The scientists also experimented with three other groups of human molars, which they subjected to other teeth-whitening remedies — over-the-counter whitening strips, prescription tooth-whitening products and a procedure mimicking professional teeth whitening at a dentist. All of these methods produced discernible whitening, the researchers found. They detailed their findings online Oct. 3 in the journal Operative Dentistry.

The main reason the strawberry and baking-soda recipe failed to work is that the mixture lacks the chemicals hydrogen peroxide and carbamide peroxide, which are key ingredients in tooth-whitening products, according to the American Dental Association.

"The only benefit of the do-it-yourself method — strawberries and baking soda — is, while it seems to make your teeth look whiter, they look whiter because you're just removing plaque accumulation on your teeth," Kwon said in a statement. "You really want something that penetrates into your teeth and breaks down the stain molecules. If you don't have that, you get just the superficial, and not the whitening from the inside, which was what you really want."

In addition, the strawberry and baking-soda formula had a major downside: It reduced the surface hardness of teeth by up to 10 percent, due to the erosive effect of the citric acid in the fruit. Kwon reported these findings in June in the journal Odontology.

"It was very interesting and rewarding to find some information and evidence to share with the lay public on the efficacy and potential adverse effects associated with do-it-yourself strawberry whitening," Kwon said.

As to whether there might be any other homemade recipes that could brighten teeth, Kwon noted that tooth whitening is the result of chemical agents "breaking down stain molecules deep within the tooth structure, so that the tooth lightens up from within. This procedure takes time.

"There may be natural ingredients that brighten teeth, but the application time would have to be definitely prolonged to see any whitening," she added. "I could further explore this as my next project."

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Pulling Teeth to Treat Mental Illness

There's a scene in the finale of The Knick, the Cinemax show about an early-1900s New York hospital, where one of the doctors, Everett Gallinger, enters a room in a mental asylum to which his wife, Eleanor, had recently been committed. He sees something that's possibly even worse than whatever imagery might be conjured by the phrase "early 20th-century insane asylum."

Earlier in the season, the couple's baby daughter died. After Gallinger hastily brought home an abandoned orphan girl to replace her, Eleanor, depressed and seemingly dissociated, drowned the child in an ice bath.

As Gallinger enters the room, Eleanor turns to her husband. Her face is swollen. Her hair is matted. Her mouth is open, black, and vacuous. Her teeth have been pulled by her doctor, Henry Cotton, in order to cure her of "madness." Cotton believes “all mental disorders stem from disease and infection polluting the brain." If the teeth don't fix it, he tells Gallinger, he's next going to remove her tonsils, then her adenoids, and possibly her colon.

It's even creepier that Cotton, played by John "I'm a PC" Hodgman, was a real person, as Wired points out. As medical director of the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum in Trenton between 1907 and 1930, he routinely practiced what he called "surgical bacteriology," the extracting of potentially diseased parts of the head and body, based on the observation that people who run high fevers sometimes suffer hallucinations.

This "focal infection therapy" seemed so scientific and promising that Cotton and his assistants yanked more than 11,000 teeth. He also removed those of his wife and children as a precautionary measure. When patients who lost their molars and incisors didn't recover, Cotton saw it as a sign he hadn't gone far enough: He'd remove their spleens, stomachs, and colons, too.

Unfortunately, this was before antibiotics, so many of his patients died on the operating table. Still, Cotton was lauded as a leader in his field by medical journals and his peers at the time. Occasionally allegations would surface that he was abusing his patients, but he always seemed to placate critics. Once, he escaped scorn by replacing all his male nurses with female ones, according to a 1910 New York Times story. "Men are naturally too rough with the patients," the article's author wrote. "[Cotton] believes the presence of women nurses is restful to the diseased mind."

Eventually, Cotton got the sense he was losing his own mind. He removed several of his teeth in an attempt to cure himself and kept on working. Cotton died of a heart attack in 1933.

Cotton's experiments were unethical and awful, but they weren't that illogical if you consider the knowledge that was available at the time. This was before surgeons operated with gloves on, before doctors knew that people shouldn't stand in front of X-ray machines for 45 minutes, and before people knew about blood types or heroin addiction or that eugenics is not a thing.

If you had no idea about neurotransmitters or lobes, it makes a weird sort of sense that micro-infections in the head would be the true cause of schizophrenia. To quote the tagline from my Knick screeners, "Modern medicine had to start somewhere."

We've come a long way, but as a health writer, it's also a reminder of how little we still know about the brain. Certainly, science has progressed to the point where patients aren't subjected to painful and permanent procedures without their consent, and we obviously now know the basic mechanisms behind mental illness. But we still don't know, say, the very best way to prevent schizophrenia or to treat addiction. It was just a few years ago that a major study found that antidepressants are basically useless for mild depression.

To some extent, the brain remains a bit of a black box, as puzzling to modern-day psychiatrists as it was to turn-of-the-century charlatans. The difference is, most doctors today have the humility to admit what they don't know.


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Oral health and diabetes

Patients with diabetes are more vulnerable to a number of serious oral health problems. These include dental decay, gum disease, dry mouth, poor healing, sensory issues in the oro-facial area and dental infections. Poor dental and gum health in diabetic patients have been shown to have an adverse effect on diabetic control. Patients with diabetes require regular attendance to maintain their dental health and to help protect their general wellbeing.

It is well documented that patients with diabetes suffer from more gum problems than the rest of the population. There is also a well established link between poor glycaemic control and severe gum disease. Bleeding and sore gums are some of the obvious signs however, it is important for all of us and especially those with diabetes to have our gum health checked by a dental professional regularly. Regular cleaning and assistance with keeping teeth and gums clean is necessary for routine maintenance.

The relationship between diabetes and the development of dental decay is unclear. Some types of diets recommended for diabetes can make patients more to prone to new decay if they involve frequent exposure to sugars but this is not always the case. Some patients with diabetes develop problems with their salivary glands and this can lead to dry mouth and dry mouth is a common cause of dental decay.

Oral mucosal lesions such as lichen planus (a painful condition affecting the skin on the inside of the mouth), mouth ulcers and infections such as thrush are more likely to develop in patients with diabetes. Sometimes diabetes is detected when a socket doesn't heal properly after an extraction. More unusual sensory problems associated with diabetes include burning mouth syndrome, taste disturbance and altered sensation in the mouth.

The development of an acute infection in the head and neck area is a serious event for a diabetes patient. Firstly a sore mouth can affect food intake and interfere with glycaemic control. Secondly the infection can negatively affect glycaemic control and lastly the stress of an emergency dental visit can affect glucose uptake. These are all compelling reasons why diabetic patients require a proactive preventive approach and this starts with regular maintenance and oral health checks.

If you or your child have been diagnosed with diabetes to let your dentist know so that you can work together to keep on top of looking after your oral health. Acute dental problems are undesirable and the best way to prevent acute problems is by attending for regular and frequent dental visits. Your dentist will let you know how often it is appropriate for you to attend based on your individual level of risk.


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Dental health important to complete health

October is National Dental Hygiene Month. It’s a chance to remind people that dental hygiene is “more than a cleaning” but a critical part of dental wellness and overall wellness too.

Today’s dental hygienists are on the forefront of ensuring not only their patient’s dental wellness, but offering insight and monitoring indictors of their patient’s overall health as well.

Statistics show that 20 million Americans will see a dentist this year, but will not see a primary health care provider. A generally healthy person who may or may not see their doctor annually may actually spend more time – twice a year – with a dentist and hygienist, than with any other health care provider.

Though a visit to the dentist will never replace a medical examination, often a hygienist may note changes in dental health that may be an indicator of a more serious health problem.

Severe pocketing of the gums may indicate a concern about diabetes; unmanaged periodontal disease may aggravate a heart condition, or lesions in the mouth may spark a concern about oral cancer.

Dr. Nicole Gallman, a dentist with First Choice Dental’s Sun Prairie office notes the important relationship between patients and their hygienists.

“An important aspect beyond semi-annual hygiene visits is the opportunity they present to start a conversation about health,” Gallman said.

“If one of our hygienists or dentists notices a change in a patient’s oral or dental health that may be linked to other health changes or concerns, we will always recommend they follow-up with a visit to their medical provider,” Gallman added.

Dental offices such as First Choice Dental may offer the following wellness and preventive measures beyond teeth cleanings.

What should you ask for?

The following are suggested services to ask for or expect when selecting a dentist and hygienist:

• Update x-rays as needed;

• Develop complete health history that assesses early risk factors for diabetes, heart health, and other systemic health issues;

• Clean teeth to help ensure optimal dental health, avoid tooth decay and remove bacteria that can worsen decay;

• Take blood pressure if indicated by patient’s health history;

• Check for gum recession and pocketing as key changes of gum and overall health;

• Conduct exam to check for lumps or changes around the mouth as well as on throat, jaw and neck that could indicate change in health;

• Provide oral cancer screening if recommended based on patient’s health; and

• Develop a periodontal health maintenance program – can be especially important for patients with diabetes or other systemic health conditions.

Gallman says patients should remember that dental health is important to complete patient health.

“Sometimes our mouths speak volumes without saying a word,” Gallman said.

“Your dentist or hygienist can help interpret those messages and help guide you on a path to dental and overall wellness.”

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The Star

18% of London 2012 athletes ‘had poor oral health’

ELITE athletes are suffering from poor performances because they are failing to look after their teeth properly, a group of health experts have warned.

A new study has found that poor dental health may adversely affect an athlete's performance. Picture: Ian Rutherford

Simple measures such as flossing could provide the same marginal performance gains as expensive physical therapies, according to research carried out at the University College London.

In a survey of London 2012 Olympic athletes, carried out by UCL and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, 18 per cent said their oral health had a negative impact on their performance and 46.5 per cent had not been to the dentist in the past year.

Professor Ian Needleman, of UCL’s Eastman dental institute, who led the research, said more action needs to be taken to improve the oral health of both amateur and elite athletes which shows “no signs of improvement”.

“Oral health could be an easy win for athletes, as the oral conditions that can affect performance are all easily preventable,” he said in a report.

“Professional athletes and their teams spend a lot of time and money on ways to marginally improving performance, as this can make all the difference in elite sports.

“Simple strategies to prevent oral health problems can offer marginal performance gains that require little to no additional time or money.

“Things like better tooth brushing techniques and higher fluoride toothpastes could prevent the toothache and associated sleeping and training difficulties that and can make the difference between gold and silver.”Dr Mike Loosemore, a consultant at UCL’s Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health who was also England’s chief medical officer at this year’s Commonwealth Games, described the warning as “important” adding that it could have a positive effect on elite sportsmen and women.

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3 Tips for National Dental Hygiene Month

Halloween kicks off a series of holidays celebrated with delicious treats, from yummy chocolate candies to gut-busting dinners to seasonal alcoholic beverages.

While most parents will make sure their kids brush after eating their treats, National Dental Hygiene Month in October encourages a fuller approach to oral health.

“Teeth and gums are obviously key components of oral health care, but they’re just part of the whole environment inside one’s mouth,” says Dr. Bob Kross, a biochemist who’s been researching and developing oral health-care products since the 1980s. His patented Breath Appeal oral rinse, (www.breathappeal.com), destroys both the putrefying anaerobic bacteria that degrade food particles and body cells to form sulfurous bad breath malodorants as well as many of the bacteria associated with gum disease.

“The nooks and crannies in our mouths and gums are not the only places crammed with organic debris, which feed the bacteria that create biofilm, such as plaque, to protect themselves from oxygen,” Kross says. “There are also cracks on the tongue’s surface and in the other soft tissues in the mouth and pharynx where bacteria collect, further compromising dental health and creating bad breath.”

Normal oral bacteria are fine, actually even necessary, when present in proper balance with each other, but it’s a problem when putrefying and pathogenic bacteria start to take over, he says.

“The sticky candies and treats children and adults consume during this time of year can disrupt the normal balance of bacteria if good dental hygiene isn’t practiced,” says Kross, who describes how bad breath is created and how we can prevent it.

• If you develop bad breath don’t simply try to mask it with mints. Anaerobic bacteria can also lead to painful and potentially serious conditions such as gingivitis and periodontitis, so it’s best to attack the problem at the root. Maintaining the proper balance or oral bacteria will not only keep your breath fresh, it will help you maintain good oral health.

• Add tongue scraping and an oxidizing daily rinse to your oral hygiene. Brushing and flossing reach about 25 percent of your mouth, and that’s why you should add tongue scraping and rinsing to your daily routine. That white stuff you might see on your tongue is a collection of food particles and other organic matter, which can putrefy and create oral malodorants. Oxygen inhibits the growth of the responsible anaerobic bacteria, so scraping off the film and using an oxidizing mouthwash will counter that problem.

• Control bad breath by controlling the mouth’s bacteria. Brush at least twice a day, floss, scrape the tongue and use a non-alcoholic rinse that has oxidizing properties. Individuals suffering from bad breath will experience optimum relief only by using alcohol-free, oxidizing oral hygiene products.

“At least 90 percent of bad breath problems are associated with the sulfurous compounds generated by the putrefying, malodor-forming, anaerobic bacteria, which hide in oral crevices, and which degrade food particles and salivary cell fragments,” Kross says. “For a cleaner mouth and fresher breath, you’ll need oxidants to destroy a major portion of the bacteria in these low-oxygen environments, thereby removing the root cause of persistent halitosis.


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Trick or Treat: 3 Tips For Clean Teeth During National Dental Hygiene Month Part 2

(Photo : Getty)

If you develop bad breath don't simply try to mask it with mints. "Anaerobic bacteria can also lead to painful and potentially serious conditions such as gingivitis and periodontitis, so it's best to attack the problem at the root," the expert stressed.

(Photo : Getty)

Maintaining the proper balance or oral bacteria will not only keep your breath fresh, it will help you maintain good oral health.

Add tongue scraping and an oxidizing daily rinse to your oral hygiene. Brushing and flossing reach about 25% of your mouth, and that's why you should add tongue scraping and rinsing to your daily routine. 

(Photo : Getty)

"That white stuff you might see on your tongue is a collection of food particles and other organic matter, which can putrefy and create oral malodor ants," said Dr. Kross. 

"Oxygen inhibits the growth of the responsible anaerobic bacteria, so scraping off the film and using an oxidizing mouthwash will counter that problem."  

Control bad breath by controlling the mouth's bacteria. Brush at least twice a day, floss, scrape the tongue and use a non-alcoholic rinse that has oxidizing properties.  Dr. Kross says individuals suffering from bad breath will experience optimum relief only by using alcohol-free, oxidizing oral hygiene products. 

(Photo : Getty)

"At least 90% of bad breath problems are associated with the sulfurous compounds generated by the putrefying, malodor-forming, anaerobic bacteria, which hide in oral crevices, and which degrade food particles and salivary cell fragments," Kross explained. 

"For a cleaner mouth and fresher breath, you'll need oxidants to destroy a major portion of the bacteria in these low-oxygen environments, thereby removing the root cause of persistent halitosis." 

Planning on stepping your oral hygiene game up? We know we are!

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How Exercise Could Erode Teeth

Though we treat our teeth separately from our bodies, and keep dentistry and medicine in their distinct spheres, as my colleague Olga Khazan pointed out earlier this week, it turns out that teeth are part of our bodies. And as such, you could almost say it makes a certain kind of sense that other things we do to our bodies affect our teeth, too.

One of the most interesting dental correlations of recent times was noted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which, after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, released a report calling for more research on athletes’ oral health. Apparently some of the Beijing Olympians were not looking like models in a Listerine commercial. And London in 2012 wasn’t much better, according to a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine last year.

Though we treat our teeth separately from our bodies, and keep dentistry and medicine in their distinct spheres, as my colleague Olga Khazan pointed out earlier this week, it turns out that teeth are part of our bodies. And as such, you could almost say it makes a certain kind of sense that other things we do to our bodies affect our teeth, too.

One of the most interesting dental correlations of recent times was noted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which, after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, released a report calling for more research on athletes’ oral health. Apparently some of the Beijing Olympians were not looking like models in a Listerine commercial. And London in 2012 wasn’t much better, according to a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine last year.

Athletes’ BEWE scores showed that they were at a medium risk for tooth erosion, whereas the regular schmo controls were at a low risk. While athletes did have more cavities, that was associated with how much they trained. More workout hours logged per week meant a higher risk of cavities.

Everybody’s spit had pretty neutral pHs when they were just sitting around the lab, jawing on some wax. But, and this is where it gets interesting, athletes saliva had a significantly higher pH (meaning it was more basic, or alkaline) during the workout. They also produced less saliva overall.

There’s a type of protein in saliva, the researchers explain, that is thought to help prevent tooth erosion. The link between working out, saliva pH, and tooth decay, could be because the more alkaline saliva messes with that protein’s protective instincts. The researchers didn’t find any associations with sports drinks.

Triathletes (and Olympians) are a little more extreme when it comes to athleticism, of course, than your average hop-on-the-treadmill-a-couple-times-a-week Joe. It is interesting to think, though, that even if you avoid sugary drinks and brush twice a day, you could be putting your teeth at a different kind of risk when you go to the gym. But, you know, you should still go.


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