Dry January? Try Dry 2020!

January is now well and truly behind us, and if you’re one of the millions of people who successfully completed Dry January, congratulations! Cutting out alcohol for a month will do wonders for both your general and oral health, but have you ever considered reducing your alcohol intake year-round? There are so many advantages to reducing or cutting out alcohol from your day-to-day lives, but in order to explain why drinking less booze will help your oral ecosystems, we must first outline how alcohol negatively affects your mouth.

Drinking an excess of alcohol can contribute to a plethora of oral health issues, from tooth decay to mouth cancer, so it’s useful to know exactly how alcohol disturbs the balance of the oral ecosystem, and why reducing alcohol consumption throughout the year might be something to consider. The most significant way in which alcohol affects your teeth is through enamel erosion- many alcoholic drinks are highly acidic, making it easy for your enamel to be stripped away, leading to sensitivity, tooth decay and potential gum disease.

Furthermore, one of the most common ways in which your oral health can go downhill is simply through neglect of a regular oral hygiene routine. It can be easy to forget to brush your teeth after a night on the town, or whilst feeling a little worse for wear the morning after, yet maintaining a regular brushing schedule is essential if you value your oral health.

Finally, as we all know, alcohol can leave you very dehydrated, and this has ramifications for our oral health too! Saliva flow is heavily reduced when dehydrated, which is a problem as saliva protects our teeth from decay through the neutralisation of acids- without saliva, our teeth are defenceless against decay. In addition to this, studies have shown that drinking an excess of alcohol greatly increases the risk of contracting mouth cancer- and if you tend to smoke when you drink, the chances of developing the disease become 30 times more likely! As mouth cancer is one of the few cancers that are on the rise, understanding the link between alcohol consumption and oral cancer is more important than ever.

These are just some of the oral health issues that you can avoid by reducing your alcohol intake throughout the year- your mouth as well as your liver will no doubt thank you for cutting down on alcohol over the course of 2020. If you are experiencing any issues with your dental health, alcohol related or otherwise, don’t hesitate to give us at Strand on the Green Dental Practice a call on 020 8995 0298 and we’ll book you in for an appointment as soon as possible.