Mouth Breathing During Sleep May Increase Risk of Tooth Decay
Researchers from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand discovered by way of various sleep studies, that throughout a person’s stages of sleep, the ‘mouth breathers’ have a lower acidity level. In fact, results showed that mouth breathers fall well below the threshold of when a tooth's enamel may begin to break down and bacteria can readily take hold and cause problems. What does this mean? Breathing through your mouth can dry your saliva (which ironically is an important defense mechanism for preventing the mouth from becoming too acidic), studies show that dry-mouth individuals run a higher risk of erosion, than individuals with normal salivary secretion rates. Lower acidity leads to loss of tooth enamel through erosion (the direct...
