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Green Tea & Dental Health
Asians have long
been in the habit of drinking green tea after eating meals or sweets,
insisting that it “makes the mouth clean.” Now science has shown that
this idea makes sense, as green tea can play an important part in
fighting bacteria in the mouth, freshening the breath, warding off
cavities and even protecting against the need for that dreaded procedure
known as the root canal.
Dental trouble
usually begins with Streptococcus mutans, the strain of bacteria
primarily responsible for causing cavities. It clings to your teeth and
uses the sugars in your mouth to produce a sticky, water-insoluble
substance called plaque that coats your teeth. S. mutans and
other bacteria then hang on to the plaque and convert sugars in your
mouth to lactic acid, which eats away at your tooth enamel. It’s the
combination of plaque and acid that causes tooth decay.
Luckily, green tea catechins can help fight the cavity-producing effects
of S. mutans by:
· destroying
a good percentage of the S.mutans bacteria themselves
· making
the tooth surface more slippery, so the bacteria have a harder time
clinging to the teeth
· inhibiting
the production of plaque
· reducing
the ability of bacteria to produce the enamel-eating acid
Surprisingly, it
doesn’t take quarts of tea to produce these benefits. Green tea
catechins have destroyed S. mutans bacteria even when the
catechins were at lower concentrations than the amount found in one cup
of tea. Tea is also naturally rich in fluoride, the mineral
that interacts with tooth enamel, hardening it and making it much less
susceptible to decay. No wonder one study found that Japanese children
who drank a cup of green tea immediately after lunch had significantly
fewer cavities than those who didn’t drink the tea!1
But perhaps the
most amazing effects of green tea involve the bacteria responsible for
the dreaded root canal. In a “test-tube” study, 24 different bacterial
strains were taken from the infected root canals of intact teeth.2
The bacteria were then mixed with extracts taken from 4 different types
of Japanese green tea (refined, ordinary, coarse and roasted).
Amazingly, 21 of the 24 bacterial strains were either inhibited or
completely destroyed by the green tea extracts.
So how about
topping off your next meal or snack with a cup of green tea? Your teeth
will thank you for it!
Click
here for a simplified look at the studies of green tea's effects
on dental health.
Footnotes:
1Kada
T, Kaneko K, Matsuzaki S, et al. Detection and chemical identification
of natural bio-antimutagens. A case of the green tea factor. Mutation
Research 1985:150:127-132.
2Horiba
N, Maekawa Y, Ito M, et al. A pilot study of Japanese green tea as a
medicament: antibacterial and bactericidal effects. Journal of
Endodontics 1991;17(3):122-24.
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Nadine Taylor, M.S., R.D. presents
GreenTeaLibrary.com,
the most comprehensive collection of scientific information
describing the health benefits of green tea.
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