| SUBSCRIBE | Login | Why we charge |
|
|
|
 E-mail Story Print FriendlySend E-mailTo Rick Nathanson BY Recent stories by Rick Nathanson $$ NewsLibrary Archives search for Rick Nathanson '95-now  Reprint story |
Monday, February 08, 2010
Drink the water
By Rick Nathanson
Journal Staff Writer
Following a national trend, ever more children in Albuquerque are showing up at dental offices with cavities — something to think about during February, which is National Children's Dental Health Month.
Dental experts link the problem to a number of culprits.
First among them is increased consumption of bottled water, which generally doesn't contain fluoride.
Then there is parents' increased reliance on baby bottles or sippy cups to pacify younger children for hours at a time, and which are frequently filled with fruit juice or milk.
Finally, the same poor diet that leads to child obesity also can lead to tooth decay.
According to a recently released survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28 percent of children ages 2 to 5 were found to have cavities during routine dental appointments, a number that has been steadily rising since the mid-1990s following a 40-year decline in that age group. The number of cavities jumped to 50 percent among kids ages 12 to 15, and 75 percent among teens ages 16 to 19, the CDC says.
"What I'm seeing is two out of three children have some decay by age 4, and it's been trending up since I began practicing in 1982," says Albuquerque pediatric dentist Rachelle Shaw.
Sugary drinks
Lifestyle may be more of a factor than genetics. It's an unfortunate reality that most families need two working parents to financially survive. "They come home from work and they're tired and have a tendency to give anxious younger kids a bottle or a sippy cup to calm them down," Shaw says.
"These children are often allowed to fall asleep with the bottle or sippy cup filled with milk or fruit juice, which only serves to bathe their teeth in sugar for prolonged periods of time."
Older kids and teenagers are unwittingly promoting dental decay by drinking excessive amounts of sugar-filled sports drinks and energy drinks.
"They need to drink more water," Shaw says. "Preferably water containing fluoride."
When Bill Berlocher was a kid in Houston, the only kind of water readily available was tap water. Berlocher, 60, president of the Chicago-based American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, says "everyone drank tap water that was fluoridated at the recommended level, and they were happy with it."
While fluoride is a naturally occurring compound in water, 60 years ago communities began supplementing and adjusting the fluoride levels to optimize prevention of tooth decay and promote good oral health, according to the CDC.
Fluoride combats tooth decay by inhibiting the bacteria in plaque from dissolving tooth enamel and by helping remineralize tooth surfaces.
The fluoridation of public water supplies "was and is the single most effective public oral health program," says Berlocher, who practices pediatric dentistry in Corpus Christi, Texas.
The rub is that the dental benefits from fluoridated water are useful for only a specific window of time, says Albuquerque dentist Valerie Wroblewski. Fluoride is systemically absorbed for use by the teeth only when "the teeth are in their formative stages and still growing."
That means drinking fluoridated water is most important for children before their first set of "baby" teeth makes an appearance until after the last of their "adult" teeth replace the baby teeth.
While adults don't get any dental benefits from systemic fluoride intake, they do benefit from topical fluoride that is in toothpaste and mouth rinses, Wroblewski says.
Berlocher says reducing cavities in children can be achieved, in part, by encouraging parents to replace bottled water with tap water or with fluoridated bottle water.
Earlier dental visits
The AAPD also recommends that children begin regular dental visits at age 1, before they have a full complement of baby teeth, rather than between ages 3 and 5, which had been standard practice.
"The earlier dental visit is for the benefit of the parents," who need to be aware of the importance of having their children drink fluoridated water, and the dangers of a bad diet that includes soft drinks laden with sugar, he says.
Babies who are overweight because of their diet often turn into overweight children, and those children not only have more overall health risks, but also run a higher risk for complications from anesthesia during dental procedures, Berlocher warns.
In addition, he recommends that as younger children become older and insist on brushing their own teeth, parents should monitor the brushing and take the toothbrush in their own hands to re-brush those areas not cleaned adequately. Children, he says, generally have neither the motor skills nor digital dexterity to thoroughly brush their own teeth until age 8 or 9.
You also can send comments via our comment form
