“How to stop tooth decay?” Tooth decay is perhaps the most common disease of humanity, as they affect 35% of the world’s population. The average number of decayed, missing and filled teeth is rated more than two by the age of 12. In the US, the dental health of older people may also be in a state of deterioration, with a quarter of the elderly missing all their teeth. And about one hundred billion dollars of all this is due to sugar. Sugar consumption is considered to be the sole cause of caries. Although it is often considered a condition by many factors, other factors, bacteria, plaque, saliva, toothbrushing, Toothbrush cleaning just seems to have a mitigating effect. All other factors simply change the speed at which sugar causes caries. Without sugar, the causal chain is broken and the disease does not occur. We may not even need all this if we can just get rid of the added sugar.
Studies dating back decades show that in countries, where sugar consumption is very low, caries are almost non-existent. And new analyzes show the lifelong burden of caries increases with increasing sugar intake from scratch. The most comprehensive national data are from Japan, before, during and after World War II, where the incidence of caries keeps track of sugar intake per capita, while reducing it by about 8% of total calories up to 0.1% – less than one teaspoon per week – before recovering to about 14%. Such studies show that caries continue to occur even when sugar intake is only 2-3% of the calorie intake. Given that the higher prevalence of the disease in adults does not occur, if sugar intake is limited to less than 3% of total calories, a public health measure is recommended to limit sugar intake to below 3%. This leads to the suggestion of labels with lights like a traffic light mark all over 2.5% added sugars as “high”.
This would make even cereals with a relatively low sugar content, like Cheerios, foods with ‘red light’. The recommended ceiling of 3% on the total daily intake of added sugars, which would not allow even one average serving for children at one of the 10 most famous breakfast cereals that is actively targeted at them. Obviously, the soda is out of the table. One can eat the ration for two days in advance. American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry adopted a more pragmatic goal, recommending sugar intake stay below 5% for children and adolescents, which is in line with the conditional recommendations of World Health Organization for Children and Adults. This is where sugar consumption fell in Iraq when sanctioned, and this reduced the frequency of caries by only a few years. Of course, sanctions may have reduced other things, such as the lives of children …
although this was obviously false news as a result of government manipulation. Anyway, if we were really interested in minimizing the disease, the ideal goal would be to reduce the free sugar intake to zero, meaning added sugar. This is not about sugar, which is naturally contained in breast milk or sugars in fruits. But when it comes to added sugar, there doesn’t seem to be a threshold for sugar intake that has no adverse effects, exponential increase in caries in sugar intake, which starts at even 1%. Yes, maybe we can get rid of caries if there was no sugar in our food, as one Kellogg-funded researcher writes, “this ideal is impractical.” Dictatorial use of foods that are good for dental health can cause nutritional restraint, which is not acceptable to all persons. Instead of recommending a “draconian” reduction in sugar intake, the sugar industry replied: attention will be better focused on fluoride toothpastes. This is the perfect metaphor for medicine’s approach to lifestyle-related diseases in general: why treat the cause and treat the consequences? For example, why eat healthy to prevent and treat heart disease, when we have all these statins and stents?
Read More: Oil Pulling for Teeth Whitening and Bad Breath Tested
