For those chewing-gum lovers out there, here’s an interesting piece of good news. Chewing sugar-free gum can actually play an important role in improving your oral health. Surprisingly, sugar-free gum can contribute toward reduction in plaque formation in addition to having a positive impact on a person’s oral hygiene as well as dental care. Did you know that chewing sugar-free gum can play an important role in remineralizing the tooth surface while preventing dental caries?
Typically, saliva is secreted at a constant rate at around 500ml per day. However, this saliva can be stimulated. If you chew a sugar free gum, the salivary flow rate can be increased by a factor of ten. Apart from clearing your mouth from plaque-forming carbohydrates, this saliva has increased amounts of remineralizing ions as well as bicarbonate for buffering the harmful acids developed from plaque. Using sugar free gum after eating foods can be very helpful in promoting enamel lesions’ remineralization along with reducing the development of caries by around forty percent. Furthermore, this stimulated saliva actually has an increased remineralizing effect on the demineralised enamel.