1 month in & Sugar and Tooth Decay

It's now been a month on this journey, by calendar date. I'm so glad we're doing this and am happy with how it's going, thus far. It's gotta be permanent so must keep going strong!

When I had my sugary bonanza week, one of my teeth started to hurt. It hurt for a few weeks after that. When I read further into Gillespie's first book, I found out why!

Here is the summarised info but I will quote from Gillespie frequently:

Since the 60s, they've known that SM (Streptococcus mutans) causes tooth decay. It's just one of the 200 to 300 species of bacteria inside our mouths. Rats fed table sugar (sucrose) invited their SM give them decay but pure glucose or fructose, alone, did not. They had to be combined/both present, to provide, "the perfect environment for SM to do its destructive work." Table sugar is not present in nature, as you need to process sugarcane, therefore before the 1850s, "dental cavities were not a significant medical problem...SM loves a constant supply of sucrose rather than big lumps at intervals...tooth decay is not so much dependent on the quantity consumed, but rather the frequence of consumption." This is where tooth decay differs from the other conditions caused by sugar.

He goes on to say that, "constant snacking on sugar and sugar-laden drinks provides the perfect environment for SM, but a large amount of sugar at a meal-time doesn't help it much at all, especially if you are in the h abit of cleaning your teeth after a meal. SM likes a sludge of sucrose to be present on the teeth at all times."

This presents major costs for the government in treating the symptoms of SM's activity, for the last 5 decades, especially since soft drinks have been widely drunk in that period of time. Their solution? Put flouride in the water supply, which is just a "quick-fix" solution.

We really do spend a lot of money fixing and treating the damage done by sugar, don't we!!!