New twist on cavities

Wow.

I sort of forgot about this blogging thing, so it has been a while...hopefully the archives are good enough to keep the new folks entertained and educated.

One of the neatest things I've been working on lately (besides raising my new 6 month old daughter!), is the continued quest to learn more about how oral bacteria work to establish themselves in the mouth. We were all taught in dental school that certain bacteria are the problem and if you get too many of them and feed them too often you will have cavities. And once you get them, you really can't get rid of them. So I was looking for ways to tackle this certain bacteria. Sometimes it worked, other times, not as well. Turns out that more recent information has the cavity problem rooted in an unruly ecosystem.

A good analogy is one of a classroom. It is not the child in the classroom causing the upset(although some are more likely than others to cause mischief), but rather, it is the environment in which the class is run. If there is no teacher, or a weak teacher, it gets out of hand quickly. So even if you get rid of all the bacteria that have been thought to cause the problems, but the system is still unruly, the "good" bacteria turn bad and can still cause cavities! It turns out the key to behaving bacteria in the mouth is the Oral pH. If you push the ecosystem with a high pH solution frequently enough, you get control and help you teeth get back in balance. If you cycle it often enough with acid drinks (yes, even diet soda) or sugar that lets the existing bacteria continue to make the acid environment they love, you stay out of balance (and keep getting cavities over and over). Unfortunately, most all the drinks we love, and most of the oral dental rinses have a low pH.

Armed with this new knowledge, we can help you avoid getting the unruly bacteria from the start with our infant dental consult by age 1, and then keep order in the "classroom" by helping the mouth keep a balanced pH environment. Pretty cool (but you still have to do your homework of eating right and brushing and flossing...only you will be like one of the smart kids where it is easier to bring home A's).