Our Modern Diet Is Rotting Our Teeth
Curated News:
By Timberlake Dental curated from Medical News Today
“The modern mouth exists in a permanent disease state…”
See full article on Medical News Today
Commentary:
Few of us have considered that our currentl level of oral health is actually worse than it used to be centuries ago. That opinion, however, is being espoused by a group of researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, England, the University of Adelaide’s Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, and the
University of Aberdeen (Dept of Archeology), Scotland. From evidence based on human tooth bacteria dating back as long as 7,5000 years ago, the researchers have noted degraded oral disease because of the less diverse range of oral bacteria types we carry today. This reduced diversity unfortunately has led to an proportional abundance of the types of bacteria that cause cavities – thus the apparent decline in our oral health today.
The reduced variation in bacteria today is due to two changes in diet: 1) the transitions in diet over the centuries from natural foods consumed by our hunter gatherer ancestors to farm-raised food sources; and 2) the infusion of processed foods in our diet over the past several decades.
Rodney D. Chowning, General Dentist, Denton, TX
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