Can xylitol prevent dental caries? What kind of sugar is xylitol? With xylitol, chewing gum has become a good medicine to clean the mouth, prevent dental caries and lose weight. But what does the truth look like?
When it comes to chewing gum, few people don't know it. In the 1940s, gum was introduced into China from the West. Since then, chewing gum and xylitol have become Siamese babies, and xylitol is even more famous than chewing gum, although many people still don't know what xylitol is. People have gradually become accustomed to taking a box of xylitol gum in the supermarket. It seems that with it, gum has changed from the original 'useless' to the current' good medicine 'for cleaning the oral cavity, preventing dental caries and losing weight at the same time.
In view of the advantages of xylitol, it has the tendency to replace sucrose as the first sweetener. It has derived many other foods from the earliest chewing gum, and even has a special 'sugar free food store', in which there are a wide range of commodities, including not only snack food, but also rice, flour and other commodities. It seems that adding xylitol to food has become a fashion. Why can xylitol enjoy this honor? Is it really so magical?
Is it sugar that looks and tastes like sugar?
A few years ago, when xylitol chewing gum appeared in the supermarket, although the price was five times more expensive than ordinary chewing gum, curious customers would buy a box by the way to taste what it was. Chew on one or two pieces, you will find that the taste is sweet, and ordinary chewing gum sweet almost. It is said that the gum containing xylitol can also prevent tooth decay. As a result, more and more young people have become loyal supporters of xylitol chewing gum after the merchants spare no effort in publicity.
Xylitol is not sugar, but it's like sugar
Xylitol, originated in Finland, is a natural plant sweetener extracted from birch, oak, corncob, bagasse and other plants. In nature, it is widely distributed in a variety of fruits, vegetables, Cereals, mushrooms and other foods.
For our body, xylitol is not an 'imported product', it is the intermediate of our body's normal carbohydrate metabolism. Even if a healthy adult does not eat any food containing xylitol, there is 0.03-0.06 mg / 100 mg xylitol in his blood.
Xylitol scientific name is 1,2,3,4,5-pentanol, from a chemical point of view, belongs to a polyol, and is the sweetest polyol. Pure xylitol is white crystal or white powdery crystal. If it is not specially stated, it is difficult to distinguish it from sucrose whether it looks or tastes. If the effect of low temperature taste is better, its sweetness can reach 1.2 times of sucrose. Xylitol is often accompanied by a slight cool feeling after the entrance, which makes people feel comfortable. This is because it is easily soluble in water and absorbs a certain amount of heat when dissolved.
Xylitol became the successor of saccharin
In the sweet and sour, spicy and salty, people like to taste sweetness most. But people hate and love sugar. The reason for love is very simple, because almost everyone is born to love sweets. Hate the reason is very simple, first of all, after eating too much sugar will produce a headache of tooth decay.
A key to the formation of dental caries is that sucrose meets cariogenic microorganisms in the oral cavity. It ferments to produce acid, which corrodes the teeth and finally forms a carious cavity. All along, scientists have been looking for a substance that can replace sugar. This substance is comparable to sugar in nutritional value and taste, but it does not ferment to produce acid in the mouth. In this way, because of the sweet and lead to the risk of dental caries will be greatly reduced.
In 1870's, Russian chemist Farid bierg, who lived in the United States, made a breakthrough in this field. He extracted toluene from the black, sticky and smelly coal tar. After sulphuric acid sulfonation, phosphorus pentachloride and ammonia treatment, it was oxidized by potassium permanganate, and finally crystallized and dehydrated to obtain a sweet white crystal. He called it saccharin and measured that it was 500 times sweeter than sugar.
Farid Berger immediately announced his invention and obtained a patent in the United States. Later, the chemist moved to Germany, where he established the world's first plant to extract saccharin from coal tar. Saccharin began to enter people's lives, and led the century scenery.
Since the 1970s, people began to doubt the safety of saccharin. In 1977, a multi generation feeding experiment in Canada found that a large amount of saccharin can cause bladder cancer in male rats. Since then, in the international community, the use of saccharin has been affected to a certain extent, and the use of saccharin in European and American countries has been decreasing.
For a long time, scientists are still looking for alternatives to sucrose. In 1931, German scientists Fischer and behren synthesized the first kind of xylitol in the world. Since then, xylitol has gradually entered people's vision.
Can xylitol prevent and cure dental caries?
One definite advantage of xylitol is that oral bacteria metabolize it much more slowly than other sugars. Because xylitol is not easy to be used by oral microorganisms to produce acid substances, it can reduce the generation of dental scaling and caries. As a result, xylitol gum is becoming more and more popular.
Since xylitol is known by people because of chewing gum, there is a relationship between xylitol and chewing gum, and the right and wrong of xylitol have never stopped. The biggest controversy is whether xylitol gum can cure dental caries. In fact, there have been two misunderstandings about chewing gum: one is that xylitol can repair tooth decay. Xylitol can prevent tooth decay, but it is impossible to repair it. The principle of xylitol chewing gum is that when people chew xylitol chewing gum, they will stimulate saliva secretion. If they have more saliva, they can wash the bacteria in the oral cavity and reduce the acid substances that harm the teeth, so as to prevent dental caries. The principle of tooth decay is that the tooth structure is destroyed, and the tooth is decalcified and decayed.
Another misconception is that eating more xylitol can prevent dental caries. The amount of xylitol in chewing gum does not affect the effect of preventing dental caries. Clinical trials showed that there was no difference in caries prevention effect between sugar free gum with 15% xylitol and 65% xylitol. Therefore, the content of xylitol should not be the main factor in the choice of chewing gum.
So how to eat xylitol gum in order to achieve the best effect? Experts tell us that when using xylitol gum, we should also master the chewing times and chewing time. If you chew more than 50% xylitol gum, you can usually chew one piece of xylitol gum after each meal, after eating snacks and before going to bed, so as to achieve the effect of anti caries. Even if you eat foods containing granulated sugar (chocolate, etc.), if you chew xylitol gum immediately after eating, it can quickly improve the oral environment, make the acidic oral environment return to neutral, and weaken the corrosive effect of acid on teeth.