Fruit Juices and How They Affect Your Teeth
While fruit juices can play a part in a healthy and nutritious diet, these juices can have a harmful effect on teeth due to their high acid content. Natural sugars and any additional sugars that are added to these drinks can also harm the teeth.
Parents will often allow their children to drink several glasses of juice a day. While this may seem like a good way to add necessary nutrients to the diet, the practice is actually corrosive to teeth. Acids and sugars in juice are as harmful to teeth as drinking soda.
However, fruit juices can play an important role in a nutritious diet and should not be completely sacrificed for good oral health. Limit fruit juices to once or twice a day. Choose those juices without added sugar. Drink juice at meal time and follow with a glass of water to help remove excess sugars and acids. Wait at least a half an hour after drinking juice to brush teeth to allow the harmful acids time to neutralize. These acids weaken the tooth enamel for a period of time and brushing too soon will remove this enamel.
Visit our North Hollywood dentist for an examination to see if nutritional food and drink choices are negatively impacting the oral health of you or your children.