Can eating less sugar prevent tooth decay? We know that children's diet is mostly soft food, such as milk powder, cake, biscuits and some puffed foods. Their common characteristics are strong viscosity, high sugar content, easy to stay on the tooth surface for fermentation and acid production, which has become one of the important factors in the occurrence of dental caries. Therefore, parents should pay attention to prevent the retention of all kinds of sugar in their children's mouth.
● for artificially fed infants, parents should feed their children some water after each feeding to clean their mouth. Because the child is small and cannot brush his teeth, parents can clean and protect the child's newly grown teeth with gauze or cotton swabs.
● never let children form the bad habit of sleeping with pacifiers. When infants and young children have a pacifier, the pacifier is attached to their maxillary deciduous anterior teeth (commonly known as front teeth), and the milk bottle is mostly milk, granulated sugar, fruit juice and other foods that are easy to produce acid and fermentation. The front teeth will soon be caried and develop into large-area caries or residual roots. Clinically, most of the children with rotten front teeth are such 'bottle babies'.
● when children can eat rice, parents should pay attention not to let children develop the habit of holding rice in their mouth and playing while eating. Because rice also contains sugar, staying in the mouth for a long time will also produce acid fermentation and produce tooth decay.
Is limiting children's sugar a necessary measure to prevent dental caries?
During clinical visits, parents often ask me to tell my children not to eat sugar as a doctor. I think these parents' usual 'sugar restriction order' has been resisted by their children. I said: which child doesn't like sugar?
It is the child's nature to love sugar. Parents don't need to strangle it. The key is to let children eat less and talk about 'skills' when eating sugar:
● eat less greasy sweets and biscuits, which are easy to stay on the tooth surface and increase the chance of sugar erosion.
● the study found that eating sugar between meals is more likely to cause tooth decay than eating sugar during meals, so eat less sweet snacks between meals.
● rinse your mouth and brush your teeth after eating sugar or sweets.
● teach children to eat more vegetables and fruits. Because the fiber components in vegetables and fruits can help clean the tooth surface and reduce tooth decay. At the same time, they can enhance the child's chewing function, which is conducive to the development of the child's jaw.
After reading the above, do you think eating less sugar can prevent tooth decay? We should know more about this problem. The topic of how to prevent children's tooth decay will be introduced in the next article. Welcome to check it. Wish you a happy life!