The Cosmetic Dentistry Blog

Does chewing gum hurt your teeth? I mean chewing gum a lot, not just after meals.
Jessica from Pennsylvania

Jessica,
We used to think, in dentistry, that chewing gum was bad for your teeth, especially if it had sugar in it. But it cleans your teeth, and it stimulates the flow of saliva, which is very healthy for your teeth. It helps combat tooth decay, and is a good substitute for toothbrushing if you don’t have a brush with you.

As long as you chew it for long enough that the sugar is gone, it doesn’t reallly hurt your teeth.

However, if you have TMJ problems (temporo-mandibular joint disorder), you could be overworking your jaw muscles and they could become sore or go into spasms. But if your jaw muscles aren’t bothering you, then I wouldn’t worry about that.

Dr. Hall

Other links:
Which is the best toothbrush?
Which is the best toothpaste?

Dr. Hall,
I just started at a new dentist. They used a laser to detect tooth decay. While they didn’t find any actual cavities, they found some four areas that could be cavities in the future. I am a little confused. They want to give me fillings where there are no actual cavities. Does this seem normal, and will it seal in decay? I feel a little bit like they were trying to sell me something that I don’t need? Thank you!
- Melanie in Indiana

Dear Melanie,
I don’t think your new dental office is trying to sell you something you don’t need, but I do think they need some help with their communication skills. I think it would be helpful for you to tell them how confusing their explanation was, so that they can explain this better to the next patient.

The new laser that is used to detect tooth decay is called DIAGNOdent. It detects actual decay, not areas that will in the future become decay. There may be someone in your dentist’s office who is confused about that, because the decay detected by DIAGNOdent doesn’t appear to be decay yet, since it is decay under the surface. But DIAGNOdent is very helpful because it enables the dentist to find and fill cavities when they are smaller and thus they can intercept problems before they become bigger and more expensive.

The way decay grows on a tooth makes it hard to detect when it is small. First, acids from decay-producing bacteria start to work on the enamel in a spot and they make it porous. This early change in the enamel often isn’t visible. Then the decay begins to grow just underneath the enamel in the dentin of your tooth. When the decay has grown enough, the enamel begins to cave in, and you have a full-fledged cavity that is visible to the dentist. What the DIAGNOdent does is it detects this decay under the surface before the enamel caves in. With the new bonding technology that is used with white fillings, the filling can be made quite small and unobtrusive.

And, besides being cheaper, smaller fillings tend to last much longer than large fillings, and they don’t weaken the tooth as much.

 I’m assuming, in this answer, that your dentist is interpreting the results of the DIAGNOdent properly. If the results aren’t interpreted properly, you can get a false positive – an impression that there is decay when there is simply debris, say, clogging the pit of the chewing surface of a tooth. But when the clinician is properly trained, the results of this instrument are highly reliable and most helpful.
- Dr. Hall

Related links:
Laser tooth whitening
Ask Dr. Hall a question

First off Dr. Hall your site is amazing and has been extremely informative.

This question is about my children. They are 6 and 4 and I brush their teeth morning & night, along with flossing nightly, and taking fluoride. Our 6 year old has had 4 cavities, while our 4 year old has had 11 Both children’s diets maintain very little sugar. Is the frequency of cavities a prelude to what is to come with their adult teeth? I am hoping not, I want so badly for my children to have beautiful healthy teeth. Is there any more that I could be doing to help them out?
- Kerri from California

Dear Kerri,
Sounds like you’re trying to be very diligent with caring for the teeth of your children.

Let me go over the risk factors for tooth decay. With the brushing, flossing, and the sugar consumption, you’re hitting a couple of the risk factors, but you’re missing the most important one.

1. The number one risk factor is frequency of eating carbohydrates. It’s not just sugar. Carbohydrates are changed into sugar by salivary enzymes, so any carbohydrate can cause decay. And it’s not the amount, it’s the frequency. If they’re snacking all day long, you’re going to get lots of decay, and brushing the living daylights out of your teeth won’t stop it.

2. Brushing and flossing help a lot, but they only help prevent smooth surface decay. They have practically no effect on pit and fissure decay, or decay in protected areas. So a prevention routine of brushing and flossing will reduce the number of cavities, but can’t eliminate decay.

3. A lack of fluoride makes teeth more susceptible to decay.

4. Watch the types of food consumed. Sticky foods that stay stuck to teeth after eating, such as raisins, potato chips, caramels, are particularly bad. Non-sticky foods such as fresh fruits, chocolate, soups, any drinks, are better. But if any food is consumed often enough, it’s just the same as if it were sticky. Sugar-containing soft drinks, when consumed just at mealtime, have practically no effect on tooth decay no matter how much you drink. Sipped constantly throughout the day, however, they can cause rampant decay.

I hope this is helpful.
- Dr. Hall

Related links:
Best toothbrush
Acid reflux and tooth decay
Tooth whitening and fillings

Dr. Hall -
I saw your note to the effect that weightlifting will not affect tooth decay. But let me ask the question a different way. I have been lifting weights (squats) for a few months now and am beginning to get up to moderately sizeable weights. I am doing this to preserve/increase bone mass to avoid osteo problems ten or twenty years from now.

If I am building extra bone as a result of this exercise, the raw materials must come from somewhere. Obviously, preferably diet. But is it possible that it may take some calcium from the teeth to build the extra bone mass?

I have just found I have problems with two teeth after not having any material problems for some years. It just seems like a curious coincidence, that it has occurred a few months after starting some fairly serious weights exercises.
- Rodney in Ontario

Rodney,

Your body can’t extract calcium or anything else from your teeth. Once they’re formed, they’re done. Your body can and does take calcium from bones when they fall into disuse, but not teeth.

It’s conceivable that, if your diet isn’t providing enough calcium to build up these bones that your saliva could be deficient in calcium, and if that’s the case, you’re weakening one of your defenses against tooth decay. There is a constant repair process that goes on where your teeth have little acid attacks every day and your saliva provides the repair every day to rebuild the site of the attack.
- Dr. Hall
Related pages in the www.mynewsmile.com web site:
Bone loss from gum disease
What to look for in dental floss and flossing
Soft teeth
Supersmile toothpaste

Dr. Hall,
I noticed that someone I had kissed had a tooth that looked like it was decaying. Can I get sick from kissing that person if they had a decayed tooth in their mouth? This is a serious question not a joke, thank you so much.
- Jamie from California

Jamie,
Tooth decay isn’t contagious. The decayed tooth won’t hurt you at all, no matter how much you kissed this person.

Everyone has the same tooth decay bacteria (lactobacillus) in their mouth. The way the bacteria cause you trouble is when you feed them often or don’t clean them off daily. So brush, floss, don’t snack all day long, and you’ll be fine.

For more information, read our page about tooth decay. Also read about the myth of soft teeth.
- Dr. Hall

Thank you Dr. Hall I feel much better now, I hope he gets his teeth fixed soon.
- Jamie

Dr. Hall,
When I weightlift, I feel a lot of pressure on my jaw and my molar teeth. I recently had a molar pulled because of a huge cavity far below the gumline, and am starting to feel similar pains in the molar on the other side. Is there anything I can do to protect my teeth and jaw while I do these sorts of strenuous exercises? Or am I doomed to lose all my molars?
Alan in Alberta

Alan,
While weightlifting can cause pressure on your teeth, and possibly even pain, it won’t cause tooth decay. So no, you aren’t doomed to lose your molars from weightlifting.

I’d suggest taking a look at your eating habits. Do you snack frequently or drink soda frequently? My guess is that’s what you’re doing.

If you eat or drink anything with carbohydrates in it frequently, there is no way to brush your teeth or floss enough to counteract the acid attacks that you are experiencing on your teeth. If you limit yourself to your regular three meals and maybe a couple of snacks, and then brush your teeth at the gumline, you should pretty well eliminate almost all tooth decay.
- Dr. Hall