Sports Drinks Causing Dental Erosion And Decay

Mon, 21 Mar 2011

A leading sports dentist in Australia has warned that sports drinks are increasingly damaging the teeth of professional and recreational athletes.

Dr Brett Dorney says he has witnessed an increasing link between dental problems and sports drinks since reviewing the cases of 25 elite athletes in his Sydney practice in 1995.

"We were absolutely shocked to find that elite athletes do not have elite mouths," he said. "They were suffering widespread erosion and a lot of them had decayed teeth, which is something that we did not expect from people that we look up to in the community."

"Normally two mechanisms are involved. One is called dental erosion, which is basically the tooth dissolving. The other one is dental decay [which] occurs because sports drinks are acid, and they allow acid resistant bacteria to build up on the tooth's surface."

However, he adds that erosion from sports drinks could be tackled by adding a calcium product called CPPACP to these beverages.

Dr Dorney says he is not encouraging athletes to stop consuming sports drinks, but insists there needs to be greater awareness of the dangers they pose.

"I think modern dentistry is about education – you must give people the information so that they can make choices [about] dental health and what dental risk they are going to be at", he continued.

"Tooth erosion is multi-factorial, it depends on whether the person is dehydrated, it also depends on the sport they are playing, the intensity of the sport, whether they have had sufficient fluid before they started playing."
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