The pH levels of Drinks and the Effect on Teeth Enamel According to Your Family Dentist

As a family dentist, we understand that whatever goes into your mouth will have an impact on the quality of oral health and will directly influence how healthy your teeth are. This is especially true when we are talking about the pH levels in drinks. The reality is, as a family dentist, we want to avoid situations where you have a family dentist emergency or have to have extensive restorative work done. The best way to do this is to educate you, the family, about what things affect your teeth and how you can work to neutralize some of the harmful effects, like the pH levels in your family beverages. This holistic approach to dentistry springs from the reality that the more you know, the better your teeth will be, and this means we will work with you on more mundane and less stressful things like regular cleaning and maintenance. It also creates a partnership where you are educated about things that damage your teeth, and in a perfect world, you then avoid those things. If you cannot avoid them since most people cannot, you should at least be aware of the damage drinking something with low pH levels can do and ensure that you clean your teeth properly after consuming that type of product.

Before we go into more detail about pH levels, it is important to state this one point. Whatever you put in your mouth will come in contact with your teeth and will have either a positive or an adverse effect on them. When you drink something, you are literally washing your teeth in a bath of whatever substance you are drinking, making it critical that you understand and take steps to protect your teeth from the harmful effects of drinks with a low pH level. Prevention is always the best cure, and information is power. To that end, we want you to understand how pH levels in drinks affect your teeth from the perspective of your family dentist.

Chemistry defines all substances as either alkaline or acidic. This is based on the substances' pH levels. For a family dentist, the baseline is pure water, which has a pH level of 7. Anything above this is considered an alkaline substance and will probably not work aggressively to decay your teeth. Anything below this – Coca-Cola, for example, which has a pH level of 2.5, or Starbucks's regular coffee, which has a pH level of 4.85 – is going to react substantially with your teeth. In our two examples, Coke is much closer to battery acid, which has a pH level of 0.00, than it is to pure water, and this has the effect of leaching minerals out of your teeth every time it comes in contact with your enamel. Eventually, the enamel will give way, become weak and thin, and ultimately, decay or cavities will set in.

The best way to avoid this is to avoid drinks that have low pH levels. If you cannot avoid them, you should definitely be brushing your teeth approximately 30 minutes after consuming these products, so you clean away the excessive bacterial acid created by these substances.