Dr. Victoria Sampson

cause problems for the oral microbiome.

So the saliva is super important in your mouth.

It provides all of the food, the proteins, everything for the bacteria in your mouth.

So it's kind of like this delivery service, your delivery is traveling around, providing all of the food and bacteria, sorry, food to the bacteria, and that's what keeps the good bacteria alive and happy.

So when you have a dry mouth, let's say you're drinking lots of coffee or you're very nervous or you are on antidepressants, for example,

which are a big one, then you just don't have as much saliva.

So those bacteria don't have as much food, and those bacteria die, and then you get bad bacteria growing in replacement.

Similar, so it also does dry your mouth not as bad as coffee, but otherwise no problems other than staining.

Okay, yeah, no, no, no.

So actually, sugar in your tea is even worse than you having a biscuit, for example.

So because the sugar dissolves in your hot tea, and the tea is hot, when you drink it, it can actually cause more problems.

Another thing with sugar is... I have a sweet tooth, I love sugar, but it's about how you eat your sugar.

So let's say if you have your hot tea with...

five lumps of sugar in there, and you're sipping it over an hour or two, that's where you start to see a lot of problems.

So actually, you need to be having a sugar attack, so just all the sugar in one go.

And that way, your mouth has all the sugar in one go, and it's able to neutralize the saliva and get back to a good state as quickly as possible.

Every time you sip your tea with sugar, what happens is that the saliva has to go from acidic back to neutral acidic back to neutral acidic, and then it starts to just not work properly, and the saliva just stays acidic, and that's where you start to see decay.

Down the tea, or I don't know if you're a M&M guy, have all your M&M's in one go.

Don't snack on M&M's every ten minutes.

So they're not as bad as your natural sugars, but for example, something like your Coke or Fanta or whatever, it's also very acidic and it can actually cause erosion as well.