Life

Ask the Dentist: Your smoking can affect kids' teeth

Dentist Lucy Stock of Gentle Dental Care in Belfast asks, is your second-hand smoke affecting your child’s teeth?

It’s thought that second-hand smoke can accelerate tooth decay in different ways
It’s thought that second-hand smoke can accelerate tooth decay in different ways It’s thought that second-hand smoke can accelerate tooth decay in different ways

WE ARE used to hearing about how cutting back on sweets and upping the tooth brushing helps make a child’s teeth stronger. Well, now it appears that we also have to look at the impact that a smoking habit has on those in the same household too.

According to a new study, babies who are exposed to second-hand smoke at four months of age seem more likely to develop tooth decay by as young as three years.

A staggering third of children have tooth decay by the time they are just five and this increases to 50 per cent of children by the time they are eight. This directly affects their lives in significant and serious ways, such as recurrent severe pain, not wanting to smile or problems eating food. This is a completely preventable problem.

So how can passive smoking cause decay? It’s thought that second-hand smoke may accelerate tooth decay in a number of different ways.

Bacteria that live in our mouths feed on the sugar in our diet and then they produce acids that rot the teeth. Children exposed to passive smoking have lower levels of certain antibodies which causes the decay-making bacteria to build up in greater numbers.

Cigarette smoke can also damage the delicate salivary glands. This leads to less saliva being produced and a drier mouth. Teeth decay faster in a dry mouth. What’s more, it has been found that not only does smoke reduce vitamin C levels, it also causes inflammation in the soft tissues of the mouth.

Low levels of vitamin C have been shown to make the gums more open to the invasion of bacterial toxins and at the same time reduce the ability of your immune response to fight off decay.

The results of this Japanese study would suggest that reducing smoking around children could help reduce dental decay, although this has not definitely been proven. Factors such as economic and other disparities among the families studied were not included in the research.

Logically we all know that smoking is not good for our health, while at the same time smokers know how difficult it is to quit. However, if you do manage to stop then the people around you will benefit in ways you maybe hadn't thought of before.