What is the best way to prevent cavities in my teenager or adolescent?

My biggest piece of advice is this: Do not allow or at least minimize the amount of soda, diet soda, sports-energy drinks and fruit juices you allow your children to have. This is particularly so with teenagers. With all of soda “hype” and advertising geared toward kids these days, there’s been a significant increase in the number and frequency of cavities in kids of all ages. Advertisers have been successful in their marketing and the results have been devastating. Kids are getting so many more cavities, and much, much earlier. This has had a huge ripple-effect in many areas of health, not just teeth, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and more.

Dental work is not an exact science, Things wear out, break down, stop working and need to be replaced eventually. At some point, teeth can no longer be filled and fixed. After multiple fillings or other procedures, there sometimes just isn’t enough tooth left to work with. With so much soda exposure (diet and regular), teeth are being filled much earlier in our children.

This increases the rate at which this “dental fatigue” occurs, leading to earlier and more abundant tooth loss. Because of the way in which sodas and all of these new sugary drinks work, they almost always cause cavities in multiples. Rather than a single cavity in few years, kids now come in with 10 or more at one time before they are even 18 years old. This can be very traumatic to the child, very expensive for the parents and result in continual dental problems throughout the child’s life.

So I hope that my message was loud and clear and that you will take it very seriously. Even if your child is not a soda-drinker or a sweets-lover, they may still be prone to getting cavities for other reasons such as poor hygiene or even a family history. There are other things you can do to help prevent tooth decay which are discussed in the “General Information” category.

Tags: Cavities, Cavity, Dental Problems, Dental Work, Diet Soda, Drinker, Energy Drinks, Exact Science, fillings, Fruit Juices, High Blood Pressure, Kids These Days, Piece Of Advice, Poor Hygiene, Ripple Effect, Sodas, Sports Energy, Sugary Drinks, Tooth Decay, Tooth Loss