Can soda drinks age your teeth?

healthy_teeth

Because of my teenage acne, my dermatologist at the time truly believed that I had to go on a severe diet because the food I was eating (in her opinion) was causing my acne (forget about the fact that I was 12-14 and that my hormones were raging). One of the items she cut off the list was soft drinks. And since the age of 12, I’ve very rarely even had a sip of a soft drink.

Because soft drinks are not part of my diet, it never even occurred to me that soda drinks could actually accelerate the rate at which your teeth deteriorate and age until I read an article about the matter.

A large number of North Americans drink more soft drinks than water and so many people have associated quenching their thirst with a nice can of ice-cold soda. In recent years, the insane amount of sugar contained in soda drinks have been highlighted, but now a number of health segments are talking about another negative side of soda consumption.

The statistics are a bit startling. It seems that if you drink three or more sodas per day, you’ll have a 62 per cent increase in dental decay or/and fillings and tooth loss!

Our American neighbours have a lot to be concerned about because, according to the American Dental Association, the average American drinks over 600 servings of soda drinks per year!

Excessive amounts of soft drinks you consume will affect the health of our mouths negatively because the acidity levels found in regular and diet pop have the potential of breaking down and eating away your enamel. That’s right, the pH levels of regular and diet pops are very low (the lower the worst).The pH in our mouth is normally about 6.2 to 7.0 (slightly more acidic than water). Since it’s been reported that most popular soda drinks hover around pH levels of 2.47-3.35, you can see where the danger lies (as a comparison, battery acid is one of the lowest and worst at 1.0).

If you cannot imagine life without your daily fix of soda, you might consider drinking it through a straw to minimize the acid exposure to your teeth. Just like your skin, your teeth can be a dead giveaway to how well you are aging.