Prevention

In 1901 Dr. Fredrick McKay, a recent dental school graduate from the east coast arrived in Colorado Springs, CO and immediately noticed a molted brown permanent stain on the teeth of the residence in the area. He also noticed the individuals that were afflicted with this molting and stain did not have cavities. Through investigation, primarily done by himself, he discovered that:

1. Only the people in Colorado Springs and a few surrounding areas were affected.
2. 87.5% of school children were affected and all of them had lived in and around Colorado Springs and vicinity.
3. Students at Colorado College who had the stain where from the area. Those that did not were born elsewhere.

How do we know that proper diet is important cavity prevention strategy? There’s lot’s of evidence we can review but let’s first start with some basics on how cavities form to begin with.

There are microscopic bugs in your mouth called bacteria and some of these bacteria may eat the sugars that you eat. From those sugars they produce acid, the acid dissolves the first layer of the tooth called enamel. Once it has dissolved the tooth through the first layer and get’s to the second layer, a hole is created that’s technically called a cavitated lesion or commonly referred to as a cavity. Now, there is a whole going one here but let’s focus on the sugar part of it.

Sometimes I have a patient and when I tell them they have a cavity they point to their brother or sister sitting in the chair next to them and exclaim “He or She doesn’t ever brush their teeth but I get the cavities, Life is not fair.!”

Well, there are reasons for this. One of them is that plaque that is being brushed off partially consists of little microscopic bugs called bacteria. Some bacteria cause cavities, but many others do not. Interestingly enough there is at least one type of bacteria that may help prevent cavities . It gets tricky because we likely don’t know what all of the bacteria that cause cavities are. This is because there are at least hundreds of different bacteria and other micro-organisms that inhabit the oral cavity. Unfortunately, most of these are difficult to grow outside the mouth on, let’s say, a petri dish. This means that scientist can’t study them and figure out what they eat, what they produce or do.