How Tea Helps Improve Your Oral Health Posted on 7/23/2017 by Sundberg Office It is great that research marches on. Due to research, we discovered that fluoride helps prevent cavities. Now we discover that tea can also help to prevent cavities. When we speak of tea it is not all teas that are helpful to your oral health. The only tea found to be helpful is green tea. What is so special about green tea, you may ask. Why is it helpful while other teas are not? The reason is that green tea has properties that the other types of tea do not have. Green tea is full of antioxidants. It also has compounds that reduce inflammation and can fight bacterial infections.
What Can Green Tea Do for My Teeth?
Green tea is good at controlling the bacteria and acid in your mouth. Both of these are components that cause cavities. Controlling bacteria and acid are crucial to controlling dental caries. It also controlled bleeding gums, which are an early warning sign of gum disease. Green tea also has anti-inflammatory properties. Controlling inflammation is important if you want to control periodontal disease, or gum disease. Inflammation in your mouth can also cause inflammation elsewhere in your body and cause rheumatoid arthritis to act up and can also affect your heart. In a Japanese study, men who regularly drank green tea had less gum disease and in a German study, subjects who snacked on green tea candy also had less periodontal disease. Recent studies at the University of Texas have shown that green tea can also help to slow the progression of pre-cancerous oral lesions to full blown oral cancer. Green tea can also help to prevent bad breath. It has been shown that drinking green tea can kill the microbes that cause bad breath. Green tea actually worked better than chewing gum, mints and parsley-seed oil. If you have any questions, or if you would like to learn more, please call us today at (503) 546-9079.