Soft drinks can wreak teeth of teenagers

The next time you buy a soft drink for your kid, think again!

Researchers have found that soft drinks, fruit juice, sports drinks and other drinks high in acidity form part of a "triple-threat" of permanent damage to young people's teeth.

Drinks high in acidity combined with night-time tooth grinding and reflux can cause major, irreversible damage to young people's teeth, the findings showed.

"Often, children and adolescents grind their teeth at night, and they can have undiagnosed regurgitation or reflux, which brings with it acidity from the stomach," said Sarbin Ranjitkar from University of Adelaide in Australia.

"Combined with drinks high in acidity, this creates a triple threat to young people's teeth which can cause long-term damage," Ranjitkar explained.

It is the first study to demonstrate that lifelong damage is caused by acidity to the teeth within the first 30 seconds of acid attack.

"Our research has shown that permanent damage to the tooth enamel will occur within the first 30 seconds of high acidity coming into contact with the teeth," Ranjitkar noted.

This is an important finding and it suggests that such drinks are best avoided, he explained.

"If high acidity drinks are consumed, it is not simply a matter of having a child clean their teeth an hour or 30 minutes later and hoping they will be okay - the damage is already done," he warned.

The study appeared in the Journal of Dentistry.