So recently, I made the conscious decision that I was going to drink less soda while at work. Mostly, it was because I just wanted to cut down on sugar and caffeine, but I just absolutely loved the mouthfeel of carbonated drinks. So I switched to naturally flavored tonic waters, like lemon and lime. It's been a good transition so far and I'm actually cutting back on consumption of those too. Next time I go shopping, I'll find something else to put in the refrigerator at work. This has an added bonus, and I'll tell you why.
We all hear about how bad soda is for us. "It's full of sugar and makes you fat!" "You'll rot your teeth!" "Dahhbetus (in your best Wilfred Brimley impression)" and a slew of other info from places like Quittingsoda.com. The sugar intake was what made me originally want to slough off sodas, and to be honest I could never get over the taste of artificial sweeteners. The word "chloro-sugar" makes my spine shiver. But today I saw a tweet that led me to a paper released in Langmuir in April on how fluoride ions in drinking water led to a decrease of bacterial adhesion on the surface of teeth. The authors note, however, that the prevailing wisdom of the times suggested that the fluoride ions integrated into the tooth enamel itself, strengthening it against mineral erosion was incorrect. The authors write,
"The cariostatic impact of fluoride treatment is often traced back to a decreased demineralization of the teeth: in comparison to hydroxyapatitie (HAP), fluoroapatite (FAP) exhibits a higher resistance to acids, leading to a lower demineralization (demineralization of HAP and FAP starts at pH 5.5 and 4.6, respectively)."
This means that the FAP is a better protection against acid attack than is HAP. They also note later in the article that original estimates on how thick the FAP layer forms was off by about 100times, 10nm as opposed to 1000nm. This thickness change made scientists question exactly what was going on. The conclusion of the paper states,
"AFM with bacterial probes revealed that fluoride treatment of HAP substrates reduces the adhesion of [tested bacteria] by a factor of two."
Let's look back at the pH dependency of the demineralization in acid. 5.5 and 4.6. That's all well and good, but what is the pH of a regular soda? QuittingSoda has a handy little chart showing that the tested pH of sodas all hang below 4.1- with most being below 3! So with every sip of soda you're actaully washing away the tooth enamel. A shuddering thought to say the least. So I'll save my teeth the trouble, and get on that transition for their sake. After all, I like my smile as it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDxWH0meJM (DiaBEATus Remix)
http://quittingsoda.com/post/the-acidity-ph-of-soda-pop
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la4008558
No comments:
Post a Comment