Good digestive health
The whole point of digestion is to reduce bite-size chunks to absorbable molecules: via mechanical chewing in the mouth, via cleaving by acids and one enzyme in the stomach, via cleaving by huge numbers of enzymes in the small intestine and to a much lesser degree in the large intestine. |
The mouth
Microbiologists estimate that the ecosystem of the mouth, next to 50 identified species that include bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses, consists of hundreds of other organisms. From the mouth, these organisms can get further down the digestive tract via swallowing, or into the bloodstream via a little wound (gingival ulcer or a flossing cut).
The commonest, gram-positive oral bacterium is Streptococcus mutans. Given the right fuel (it thrives on simple carbohydrates) it metabolises sugars into acid which in turn demineralises teeth by stripping the outer enamel layer of its strengthening minerals. It is noteworthy that, in
the absence of simple carbohydrates, a high population of these bacteria in the mouth does not result in a high incidence of caries. This suggests that this commensal bacterium is not so much the problem as ‘evolutionary modern’ food is.
Normally carbohydrates are flushed away by and subsequent acid formation is offset by alkaline saliva. So this doesn’t happen well in people with a dry mouth (xerostomia can be a side-effect of prescription drugs, smoking, radiation or chemotherapy but can also be part of auto-immune diseases like Sjögren’s syndrome; in Traditional Chinese Medicine this can be part of ‘heat rising’ syndromes). Therefore people with a dry mouth are more likely to develop caries if they consume high amounts of simple carbohydrates. |
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