Lots of us are trying to shed a few pounds and there is a wide choice of diets to choose from, many of which promise real results within a few weeks or months. Diets that aim to trim your waistline can have other less desirable side effects.
How Juicing Can Affect Your Teeth
Juice diets are particularly popular and can seem to be a great way to obtain a large amount of nutrients without all the effort of eating masses of fresh fruits and veggies. These types of diets are very low-calorie and rely on meals being exchanged for juices and smoothies. While initially this might seem quite healthy, fruit juice does contain a lot of sugar and even though the sugar is natural it can still cause insulin levels to spike before plummeting which can lead to long-term problems.
This is because it can affect the way collagen is structured in the body, leading to gum problems as collagen fibers help hold your teeth in their sockets. In addition, these types of juice diets tend to be highly acidic and acid erosion can be a problem, eating away your tooth enamel in a similar way to soda. It’s a different story if you eat the whole fruit or vegetables as in this case the acid contained is considered to be healthier as it’s only when consumed as a concentrated juice that it becomes more of a problem.
Ways You Can Reduce the Damage of Juice Diets
If you do want to follow a juice diet, try consuming the juice through a straw and rinse your mouth out with water once you have finished drinking it. Ideally, drink it fairly quickly rather than sipping at it over a long period of time. Wait at least half an hour before brushing your teeth.
Following a Low-Carb, High-Protein Diet or the 5:2 Diet
This diet is also gaining in popularity and is where people follow a relatively normal diet for five days of the week, before switching to a low-carb, high-protein diet for the remaining two days. This is supposed to help the body break down fat, prompting it to enter a state called ketosis. This type of diet can be an easy way to shift the pounds, but when your body enters into ketosis it does affect your breath, causing it to produce chemicals that cause bad breath. There’s nothing you can do to combat this and it can be better to concentrate on switching to healthy carbohydrates such as wholemeal bread or wholemeal pasta rather than trying to cut out carbs completely.
Meal Replacements
There are number of different diet plans that enable people to replace normal meals with ready-made calorie controlled meal replacements. These tend to remove the fat, replacing it with additional salt and sugar to help keep the flavor. While this can make them more palatable to consume, it’s not great for your teeth. Ideally, look into ways of cooking low-calorie meals at home where you will know exactly what has gone into each meal so you can monitor the amount of sugar and salt consumed.
Our dentists at the Cosmetic Dentistry Center are always more than willing to advise you on the best types of foods for healthy teeth and gums so you can construct your own sustainable diet plan to help shift the pounds.
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