Baby Bottle Tooth Decay

As part of Southern Cross Dental’s mission to provide preventive care to patients of all ages, we’re educating families about Baby Bottle Tooth Decay. Too often, babies and toddlers suffer from tooth decay on the fronts of their very first teeth because parents are unaware of how they are contributing to poor oral hygiene.

Milk and formula contain sugar which gets stuck on the fronts of babies’ teeth. (Fruit juice and soda are much worse.) This wouldn’t be such a problem if babies regularly drank water which would wash the sugar away, but they’re usually given bottles of sugary liquid in place of water. It might also be less of a problem if they drank their whole bottle at once and their saliva could wash the sugar off their teeth afterward, but they’re often given bottles to suck on throughout the day. These patterns are believed to be responsible for their extremely high rate of cavities.

Parents should start brushing their child’s teeth as soon as the first one begins to erupt, but other means of preventing Baby Bottle Tooth Decay are to be mindful of how long a child has been drinking for and to supply them with water as well as nutrients. Children should learn to drink from cups before the age of two for nutritional reasons, but avoiding tooth decay is an additional reason to make the change as soon as possible.

Drs. Navid and Faranak Rahimpour operate Southern Cross Dental at 1855 S Nevada Ave, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80905-2516. To schedule an appointment, call 719-471-1717 or visit SouthernCrossFamilyDentistry.com and fill out a contact sheet.