Dental Health Sleeping with your mouth hurt your teeth

Dental Health: Sleeping with your mouth hurt like a soft drink
Important for the dental health is in addition to the regular brushing your teeth and the diet. It is well known to most of you that you should not consume a sugar-sweet soft drink before bedtime. To sleep with open mouth, but has just as bad effects on the teeth, as researchers have now found out.
As problematic as a soft drink at bedtime
If you want to avoid tooth decay and toothache, you should take no more sweet drinks such as soft drinks or fruit juices before going to bed. The acid in the fruit attacks the enamel, warn physicians. Researchers from New Zealand have now made an interesting discovery. According to this, people who sleep with their mouths open hurt their teeth just as much as if they were drinking a coke or an orange juice at bedtime.

Better sleep with your mouth closed. Picture: giorgiomtb - fotolia

An open mouth dries up
People who sleep with their mouths open do nothing good for their teeth. If left open for long, the result is a dry mouth that lacks the saliva that kills acid-producing bacteria. This makes erosion and tooth decay easy. This emerges from a study published in the journal "Journal of Oral Rehabilitation". As reported by the Swiss Internet portal "20min.ch", the pH drops from neutral 7.7 to slightly acid 6.6 when the sleeper breathes through the mouth.

PH value partly very sour
Researchers headed by Joanne Choi of the Sir John Walsh Research Institute at the University of Otago in New Zealand equipped ten healthy patients with specially-designed tooth sensors and nose clips for the study. It is said that the pH even dropped to 3.6 in one case, which is very acidic and leads to erosion of the enamel. According to the scientists, the value is comparable to that after drinking a soft drink or a fruit juice. Choi said, "Our findings support the assumption that mouth breathing is indeed a cause of dental diseases such as tooth enamel erosion and tooth decay."

More tooth decay due to sleep and breathing problems
According to the Internet portal, the New Zealand study confirms observations by dentists that patients with sleep or respiratory problems have more caries. Accordingly, the dental problems increase from the front to the back because the oral cavity dries out at the back first. Men are generally more affected, with one-third of them breathing through the mouth at night, while according to the portal, only five percent of women are. (Ad)