What’s the best way to look after my teeth at Christmas?

I get it. It’s Christmas. There’s chocolate, sweets, puddings, sugary drinks, honey roasted cashews (a personal favourite) and just generally lots and lots of sugary food and drink, everywhere, all the time, and of course, ’tis the season and we want to enjoy ourselves.

We also have to remember that tooth decay doesn’t take a holiday for the Christmas (I know, I know, what an incredibly naff and boring thing to say).

So how can we best enjoy ourselves over Christmas, without causing irreversible damage to our teeth in the process?

Now, I’ll let you in on a dentist’s secret, I like chocolate. A lot, in fact. I have every intention of indulging just like everyone else at this time of year but I have a couple of tricks that will mean I can enjoy the food and drink I want whilst minimising the amount of damage I do to my gnashers in the process.

To understand how to avoid creating lots of cavities over the Christmas period, we need to first understand why our teeth decay in the first place.

Why do teeth our get holes in them?

Tooth decay happens when we have plaque on our teeth and then we eat sugar. It’s as simple as that. 

Plaque + Sugar = Decay

The bacteria that are in plaque consume some of the sugar and turn it into acid and it’s this acid that starts to dissolve the enamel on our teeth.

We do have a natural defence against this decay in the form of saliva, which not only washes away the acid, but also neutralises it, but it can only do so much. Every time you eat something containing sugar, the plaque in your mouth creates some acid which starts the decay process.

And here comes the big reveal: It doesn’t really matter how much sugar you have!

Every time you eat sugar, the same strength of acid is made and it’s the strength of the acid that causes the damage, not necessarily the quantity. So in theory, it doesn’t matter whether you have one tiny little Celebration, or you eat the whole family party tub to yourself in one go. Not that I’m in any way advocating such a binge, for general health reasons, of course, but from a dental perspective, the strength of the acid will be the same and so the amount of damage will be the same.

If the amount of sugar doesn’t matter, what does?

The most important thing to understand is that it’s how often you’re having sugar that makes the biggest difference, not how much. We dentists call each time you have some sugar a “sugar episode”, something which my family seem to find a hilariously nerdy term.

Our saliva can defend our teeth against decay, and they can even replace some of the calcium that is dissolved after we’ve had some sugar, but there’s a limit to how much it can do. The research tells us that it’s quite effective at protecting and repairing the enamel four or five times a day, but once you go above this, you’re probably starting to do irreparable damage to your teeth.

So the worst thing you can do, is graze throughout the day, on one or two bits of chocolate at a time, every hour or so. You can easily rack up 12-15 sugar episodes in a day doing this, well above the recommended limit of 5, and this is when the more permanent damage can be done.

I had a patient quite recently who was upset that he had so many cavities. He told me that he buys one 500ml bottle of coke per day, which he sips on throughout the day in his van. His mate, who has no cavities and never has any problems buys the same bottle of coke every morning, but drinks it all with his lunch. They’re both drinking exactly the same thing, but the one who’s having it with his lunch has no problems, the one who sips it through the day has a lot!

What about plaque?

Of course, the other part of our decay equation is plaque. In order for the plaque to make acid, there must be plaque in the first place. When we brush our teeth, we never remove 100% of the plaque in our mouths, so it always comes back, which is why we need to brush at least twice a day.

The more plaque you remove, the longer it takes to come back and if you’ve removed most of the plaque before you eat, the small amount that’s left is only going to make a small amount of acid.

So the cleaner you can keep your teeth, the less acid is being made and the less cavities are going to form.

So there are two things you can do to enjoy the food and drink you love, guilt free, over the holidays:

1. Keep the plaque off. No plaque = no decay. Keep those pearly whites clean free from plaque.

2. Don’t have sugar too often, ideally, keep sugar to meal times.

So there you go, enjoy the food you like over the holidays, but make sure you’re keeping your teeth super clean and eat chocolate the dentist’s way - scoff it all in one go! Though please do remember that enjoying everything in moderation is always the best way to stay healthy.