I’m always asked about the sugar bugs and so let me tell you the sugar bug story. There’s a group of bacteria, they have really long names, scientific names, so I just call them sugar bugs for short. And they make an acid every time they eat.
They eat everything you eat, they break it down to a simple sugar, gobble it up and poop out the acid because they like an acidic environment. That acid pulls the mineral out of your tooth. Mineral is what makes a rock hard, it’s what makes your tooth hard.
You pull the mineral out, now you’ve got soft tooth, that’s what we call decay or cavities when it caves in and then it’s a big hole. All of us have one or two sugar bugs, it’s not a big deal. Our saliva can dilute that amount of acid, it’s nothing to worry about.
But if you feed your sugar bugs when you eat too much sugar or you’re not brushing and flossing after every meal or you miss at night, if you don’t brush at night those sugar bugs are having an acid party all night long in your mouth. They’ve got nothing to disturb them, you’re not drinking any water, you’re not talking to anybody, they’re just eight hours of pure acid. So the most important time is to brush at night before you go to bed, forever, for the rest of your life.
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