Sports drinks even worse for your teeth than pop, study finds

Sports drinks even worse for your teeth than pop, study finds

By ANDRÉ PICARD
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 Page A19
PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTER

Sports and energy drinks such as Gatorade and Red Bull are popular with the health conscious.

But dental researchers are warning that they can be extremely bad for your teeth, much worse than soft drinks, which are often described as cavity-causing.

Dr. Anthony von Fraunhofer, professor of biomaterials Science at the University of Maryland Dental School in Baltimore, said the acids in sports drinks cause tooth enamel to break down, making it more likely that cavities will develop. "The enamel damage caused by non-cola and sports beverages was three to 11 times greater than cola-based drinks, with energy drinks and bottled lemonades causing the most harm to dental enamel," he said.

Dr. von Fraunhofer said that, contrary to popular belief, carbonation per se does not cause cavities.

Rather, it is the acidity of drinks that matters because acids alter the pH (potential of hydrogen) level in the mouth. The pH level is a standard way to measure the acidity of a substance. Human saliva, for example, has a pH level of 6.5 to 7.5, a neutral level. When the pH level falls below 5.5, an acidic level, the bacteria that cause cavities proliferate.

Dr. von Frauhofer said most soft drinks, from Snapple through to Coca-Cola, contain food additives such as phosphoric acid, citric acid , malic acid and tartaric acid. All of these lower the pH level and cause tooth enamel to break down, he said.

To conduct the study, which is published in the current edition of the medical journal General Dentistry, researchers soaked teeth in various popular drinks for a period of 14 hours -- an exposure period equivalent to about 13 years' worth of normal beverage consumption.

Dr. von Frauhofer and his team found that the drinks that caused the most enamel to dissolve included KMX sports drink, Snapple lemonade, Red Bull, Gatorade lemon-lime, Powerade Arctic Shatter, Arizona Iced Tea, Fanta Orange, and finally Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

All the soft drinks caused substantially more erosion than black tea. But the difference between KMX and Coke, for example, was striking. KMX caused tooth-enamel dissolution that measured as 30 milligrams per centimetres squared, compared with 3 mg/cm{+2} for Coke.

Dr. von Frauhofer said the way people consume sports and energy drinks also increases the likelihood of cavities.

"The major problem with any of these drinks is not chugging it down, it's sipping continuously over a long period," he said. "Sitting and sipping on these drinks throughout the day can do terrible things to your teeth."

But there are ways to mitigate the damage caused by acidic drinks, including chewing sugar-free gum to stimulate saliva flow, rinsing the mouth with water for 30 seconds and brushing regularly with fluoridated toothpaste.

Canadians spend approximately $6-billion annually on soft drinks, including pop, sports drinks and energy drinks. That is the equivalent of about one billion cases of 24-pack canned soft drinks.

In addition to promoting tooth decay, excessive consumption of soft drinks has been linked to higher rates of obesity and diabetes, as well as sleep disruptions (because many drinks contain caffeine). There is also some evidence that, in the long term, heavy soft-drink consumption can increase the risk of osteoporosis (pop depletes calcium) and kidney stones.

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