A coffee side-effect that we are all aware of is teeth staining. Coffee will over time cause your enamel to stain because it is high in tannins. Best known as a key ingredient of red wine, tannins are a type of polyphenol - a naturally occurring product.
Unfortunately for your teeth, these tannins can build up on the enamel very easily, eventually leading to a yellow discoloration that red wine and even tea drinkers are also familiar with.
We may not think of coffee as acidic, but it has a pH of around 5 which is significantly lower than our mouth’s neutral pH of 7. Acidic foods and drinks help grow the bacteria that demineralise and erode our teeth’s enamel.
If left unchecked, this can further degrade our teeth as enamel can’t repair itself in the same way other parts of the body can. The consequences of this can be serious - for instance more fragile teeth and long-lasting sensitivity to hot and cold foods.
And then of course there’s “coffee breath”. There are several reasons drinking coffee gives us bad breath. The simplest of these is just that coffee has a very strong odour.
But coffee also has an extreme drying effect on our mouths (you can thank caffeine and even our friends the tannins for that). A lack of saliva opens the door for more bacteria to begin growing - especially on the tongue and in the throat - which is a common cause of halitosis.
For many of us, coffee is closely tied to our sense of routine, not to mention our social interactions. You’d certainly have a hard time trying to persuade us to give it up! With that said, there are definitely a number of ways you can continue to enjoy coffee with an eye on your oral health:
While cutting down on your intake or saying goodbye to sweeteners might be a no-go, we can still protect our mouths without making any compromises on coffee. Brushing twice daily, changing our brush every 3 months and flossing regularly are things we should all be doing to counter the damage coffee can do to our mouth - but most of us still aren’t.
And that’s where Floe’s oral care subscription box comes in. The subscription box is designed to break bad oral health habits and create strong ones by helping you form a better routine.
Routine is the foundation of any positive change. By providing the quality tools you need for a healthier mouth, Floe will make sure you see the benefits of small improvements to your oral health, that will go on to snowball into long-lasting and noticeable change.
Every 3 months , we’ll send you:
Coffee may be bad for our mouths, but we can all counteract this by boosting our oral care routine!