Pediatric Dentistry of Garden City
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As you are sitting around your family’s Thanksgiving Day table with friends and relatives, enjoying mounds of mashed potatoes and stuffing, keep these findings in the back of your mind.
The following information has been pulled from the article For Your Teeth, Thanksgiving Dinner Is a Real Food Fight, published by the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dr. Hyun “Michael” Koo, D.D.S., Ph.D., lead the dental research and studies at the University, finding both good and bad news. He is exploring both the destructive power of S. mutans and scouring foods and natural substances to harness their ability to prevent cavities.
Peace won’t reign within the confines of the oral cavity this Thanksgiving, where Streptococcus mutans (S. mutans) and other harmful bacteria will await their own holiday feast. Your meal will enable S. mutans to launch one of its biggest assaults of the year on your tooth enamel.
While bacteria forces in your mouth will exploit your delectable in newly discovered ways, some foods common at the holiday dinner table – like cranberry and even red wine – offer new leads in the effort to stop tooth decay.
The Thanksgiving Day battle for oral health hinges on microbes like S. mutans. Most cookies, pies and the like contain mountains of sugar, but it’s not the sugar itself that causes tooth decay. Rather, S. mutans and other bacteria in our mouths – billions of individual microbes all waiting for their next snack – feast on the sugars, stick on your teeth and then churn out acid that eats away at tooth enamel.
“Natural substances offer tremendous possibilities or stopping tooth decay,” says Koo. “Our time spent in the laboratory is aimed at harnessing the potential of some of these compounds, perhaps eventually incorporating them into a toothpaste or mouth rinse to stop dental decay.”
Koo has found cranberry as a potential ally in the fight against S. mutans, which is a threat to our teeth primarily because of its ability to form plaque. What appears to us as sticky white gunk along our teeth is actually a formidable fortress of molecules known as glucans – building blocks of plaque, stacked like bricks in a wall, rife with bacteria. It’s a gunky fortress that covers the tooth and gives bacteria a safe haven to munch on sugar, thrive and churn out acid.
Koo has discovered that compounds within the cranberry disrupt enzymes known as glucosyltransferases that bacteria use to build glucans. Without its glucans, S. mutans and other bad bacteria in plaque becomes vulnerable.
Koo identified molecules known as A-type proanthocyanidins as having potential to reduce cavities dramatically. When the molecules were applied, glucan and acid production by S. mutans was reduced by up to 70 percent, and cavity formation in rats was slashed by up to 45 percent.
“Maintaining the natural balance of resident flora in the oral cavity is important for keeping opportunistic pathogens in check… These molecules don’t outright kill S. mutans. Instead, they disrupt the two most harmful actions of this pathogenic organism, acid production and glucan production.”
Some more good news, the abundant waste from the red-wine-making process – materials such as fermented seeds and skins collectively known as pomace that are cast away after grapes are pressed – contains compounds that fight S. mutans. In particular, some polyphenols can inhibit the activity of S. mutans’ crucial enzymes by as much as 85 percent and also reduce the amount of acid the bacteria produce.
Certain key proteins in S. mutans boost their activity dramatically in the presence not only of sugar but also complex carbohydrates derived from starch digestion. Once the body’s own amylase enzymes naturally present in saliva break down starches, S. mutans kicks its glucan-forming machinery into high gear.
“The new research shows how two pillars of the modern diet, starch and sugar, can work cooperatively to bring about tooth decay… A cookie, sugar covered doughnut, or a piece of pie filled with both sugar and starch provide the perfect recipe for the bacteria that destroy teeth,” says Koo.
Even when the amount of sugar was slashed in half, certain genes central to the ability of S. mutans to create its formidable glucan fortress boosted their activity five-fold in the presence of starch-derived carbohydrates. That enabled the bacteria to create plaque that is hardier, stickier, and capable of producing more acid than plaque created without significant starch present.
So, what does all of this mean? You shouldn’t simply eat more cranberry sauce or drink more wine to try and prevent cavities this Thanksgiving. Instead, indulge this holiday season and be thankful for all the yummy food that's on your plate! Just don't forget to brush your teeth and floss after meals! Use a mouth rinse, get some fluoride, and most importantly, enjoy this holiday season!
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