• Dental Health
  • Patient Education

Drinking Green Tea Can Strengthen Your Teeth

Even though green tea has been around for a while, researchers have been fascinated with its many health benefits that are now being discovered and re-discovered. We at 123Dentist.com just came across a great study about the health benefits of green tea and wanted to share it with you!

We all know that drinking green tea is good for your health, but did you know that drinking green tea can also strengthen your teeth and help cleanse your gum line?

A new research study published in Preventive Medicine presented the many health benefits green tea can provide for your teeth and gums. According to the results of this study, people who drank green tea were found to have superior oral health compared to those who did not drink green tea. Coffee seemed to have no effect on the amount of teeth lost.

The study found that people aged 40-64 who drank one cup of green tea a day were less likely to lose teeth compared to those who drank coffee. The green tea and coffee drunk during the study had no sweetener added. Sweetener or sugar has the potential to reverse the health benefits that tea or coffee could provide for your teeth.

Researchers had a theory that the antimicrobial molecules called catechins that are found in green tea and oolong tea were the reason for improvement in the participant’s oral health. Catechins have the potential to kill bacteria associated with tooth decay and gum disease, which can prevent tooth loss and other oral health problems.

Yasushi Koyama and colleagues from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine studied over 25,000 Japanese men and women between the ages of 40-64 years of age. The researchers found that men who drank at least one cup of green tea a day were 19% more likely to still have over 20 teeth compared to those who did not drink green tea. Women who drank at least one cup of green tea a day were 13% more likely to still have over 20 teeth compared to those who did not drink green tea.

To read more about this study, click here: http://news.discovery.com/human/health/green-tea-teeth-dental.htm