Managing That Halloween Sweet Tooth

Halloween is our favorite spooky time of year, but when it comes to sugar’s effects on teeth, all that candy can be downright scary.

The reason sugar is bad for our teeth is that it feeds harmful oral bacteria that excrete acid, and the acid erodes enamel and leads to tooth decay. So how can we keep our costumed Halloween adventures clear of tooth decay?

Ranking Candy On Dental Health

Very few houses give away treats like sugar-free xylitol gum to trick-or-treaters, so the chances are slim that the candy will actually be healthy. However, some types of sugary candy are worse than others, or present different kinds of problems.

• Hard candy is a problem because there’s a risk of breaking our teeth if we chew it, but sucking on it isn’t safe either because that means holding a source of sugar in our mouths for an extended period.
• Sour candies are like a double attack against dental health, because not only do they contain a lot of sugar to feed the bacteria, but they are also highly acidic, so they can harm our enamel directly!
• Sticky or gummy candy is especially bad for teeth because it remains stuck there, feeding the bacteria for a long time and giving them a larger opportunity to attack the enamel.
• The good news is that the least harmful sugary candy is chocolate! It doesn’t stick to teeth like most other candies, and the cocoa in it has many beneficial properties. The darker the chocolate, the less sugar will be in it, so aim for dark chocolate.

Reducing The Candy Quantity

Being picky about which types of candy we eat is one way to reduce the risk of tooth decay, but an even better way to do that is by simply eating less candy. As parents, we can help our children out with this by coming up with a plan before trick-or-treating time. We could let them trade the bulk of their candy haul for some kind of non-candy prize or limit the number of houses they visit. We just have to make sure to discuss the plan with them in advance.

More Tooth-Healthy Strategies

There are a few other simple things you can do to reduce the dental effects of all that Halloween candy. You can drink more water to rinse out the sugar, limit the frequency of candy consumption more than the quantity, and wait thirty minutes after eating candy to brush your teeth. The reason for that last one is that it takes your saliva about half an hour to stabilize the pH of your mouth after eating sugar.

Video Transcript

well by by this time tomorrow night your ghouls and goblins will be hitting the streets for Halloween the candy that they collect is a real treat for the kids but not so much for the dentists and other Health Care Professionals ctv’s Pauline Chan has some tips now on dealing with all of those sweets

It’s not that the staff at Dental X don’t like Halloween

happy Halloween but they don’t want to see scary things happen to children’s teeth even though Kayla Andrea sha and Alanta all have their favorite candies

SES Mo gummy wor and what’s your favorite candy uh

you got to think about it

bubblegum

I have two little baskets here the green is a go and the red is a not go candies that should be avoided are things like gummy treats which stick to the teeth and lollipops which also keep sugar in the mouth for a long time better candies are small hard candy that dissolve quickly or even chocolate and only give a couple of candies at a time parents can also offer healthy alternatives like fruit usually give them after meals that’s usually the best thing because when we eat it’s the saliva gets produced a lot more so that’s why it helps wash all the bad stuff away from the teeth nuts are also good and even veggies with dip like hummus

especially during Halloween time minimize whatever you can every other food and drink things that have sugar

and milk products like yogurt and cheese are good to neutralize sugars and restore some calcium to the kids’s teeth

and maybe a week or two after Halloween you might even want to book the kids a dental appointment just to make sure everything’s good with their teeth Pauline Chan CTV News

Keeping Teeth Healthy Year-Round

The Halloween season will come to an end, but the job of keeping our teeth healthy is never done! Make sure you’re always brushing your teeth twice a day, flossing, keeping those sugary treats to a minimum, and scheduling regular dental visits!

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