Easy Health Tip #26: Gum Is Good
December 12, 2006 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Drink, Easy Health Tips, Food and Drink, How To, Misc., Prevention, Treatment
Chew sugarless gum after you eat or drink. It’s the next best thing to brushing your teeth!
Basically, saliva is good. Chewing gum keeps the saliva flowing after you eat, which helps to buffer your teeth against the bacteria ready to take over once a meal is finished. Keeping that flow going after eating helps reduce the formation of cavities. (Up to 10%, warning: .pdf)
Then there’s Trident (no affiliation), which is sugar-free and contains Xylitol. Xylitol is excellent stuff for your teeth.
Wikipedia:
Xylitol is a “Toothfriendly” sugar substitute. In addition to not encouraging tooth decay (by replacing dietary sugars), xylitol may actively aid in repairing minor cavities caused by dental caries. Recent research[3] confirms a plaque-reducing effect and suggests that the compound, having some chemical properties similar to sucrose, attracts and then “starves” harmful micro-organisms, allowing the mouth to remineralize damaged teeth with less interruption. (However, this same effect also interferes with yeast micro-organisms and others, so xylitol is inappropriate for making bread, for instance.) Dental pioneers such as Dr. Ellie Phillips have championed the use of xylitol as a preventive dental treatment, although most traditional dentists in the United States are still hesitant to recommend it to their patients, or are ignorant of the proven benefits.
So chew some gum! It’s fun and it (mostly) tastes good.
Hi, the amount of Xylitol in Trident is useless as a preventive in treating cavities. It is necessary to chew 4 to 12 grams of Xylitol daily.
Trident has next-to-nothing in it; Epic, Spry, Zellies, Xlichew are all gums that have sufficient Xylitol in them to be preventive. And the flavor lasts about 5 minutes and that is how long dentists tell you to chew the gum.
http://www.epicdental.com; http://www.zellies.com; http://www.xlear.com are all excellent sites to read about the excellent benefits of Xylitol!