DIET SOFT DRINKS MAY WASH AWAY PEARLY WHITE SMILE
The Health Adviser
By Lisa Messinger
Sandi Banks, a personnel specialist from Lake View Terrace, Calif., often drinks four to six cans of diet soda a day. She reports that an office mate is a six pack a day man.
Like many diet soda drinkers, Banks and her friend think the word "sugarless" on the can's label means there is probably no danger to the teeth.
Dentists, however, are seeing a steady increase of patients with enamel problems ranging from cracking to total tooth erosion. The only explanation they can find is consumption of excessive amounts of diet soda.
"Many dentists have observed in their own practices patients where they could find no other cause but the possibility of a diet drink being the actual reason for the teeth dissolving," said Mark Friedman, a University of Southern California dental professor who lectures to other dentists on the subject.
Although there has been virtually nothing on the topic in the media or in dental literature, Friedman says dentists are aware of the problem. Each of his lectures, he said, elicits comments from dentists who say they have seen patients with enamel erosion most likely caused by drinking too many diet sodas.
Soda consumption in this country is booming. We drank an average of 466 cans per person in 1985, up from only 289 cans in 1975, according to the National Soft Drink Association. Diet sodas accounted for more than 21 percent of all 1985 sales.
We are drinking more. But are we reading the small print on the back of our favorite diet soft drinks? And, if we are, do we realize that the phosphoric and citric acids listed pose potential danger to the enamel of our teeth?
Citric and phosphoric acids are routinely added to most sodas as flavor enhancers.
"I'm a label reader, but that's one I haven't happened to have read," Banks said. The low pH levels in sugared sodas and more so in most juices - like orange, grapefruit, apple and grape - make them acidic as well. This includes the new juice-type sodas.
"If you take a soft drink that is already acidic and add very acidic juice, the product you end up with will tend to be highly acidic, in many cases, even more so than vinegar," said Larry Wolinsky, a biochemist and periodontist at the UCLA Dental School.
The lower the pH of a product, the more acidic it will be. Vinegar has a pH of about 5.5. Most sodas with phosphoric acid have a pH level of 2.3 to 2.6. Dentists fear that pH levels of lower than 5.5 can be harmful to the teeth.
Most people might talk of drinking a soda here or a glass of juice there, and not the three, four, five or even more cans a diet soda drinker can swallow in just one day.
"I thought it was harmless, so I just drank it like water," said Karen Wehmeister, 29, a Los Angeles computer programmer.
Wehmeister averaged six to seven cans of diet cola a day all through college and until recently. She is currently having more than $6,000 worth of dental work done to correct her eroded teeth.
"In Karen's case, we could find no other explanation for the erosion than the fact that she was an excessive diet soda drinker," Friedman said.
Six of Wehmeister's top teeth and eight of her bottom teeth require expensive porcelain veneer work. The teeth had turned brown and the rim of the top teeth had gradually dissolved.
Experts stress that teeth may be dissolving all over at once and that changes may not be easily visible to either dentist or patient until extensive damage is done.
Alternatives to highly acidic drinks might be diluting juice with water, or drinking low-acidity juices such as cranberry.
Recent studies can't pinpoint how much might be too much, but added lemon or lime in soda makes it even more acidic. In his instance, gulping is better than sipping slowly all day. Straws are the best prevention - as long as they are placed far enough into the mouth so that liquid misses the front teeth.
Question: Is diet soda contributing to a steady increase of patients with enamel problems, ranging from cracking to total tooth erosion?
photo Chicago Sun Times/ Jim Frost
(Sunday, July 26, 1987)
