A recent article in Science Daily reported that More U.S. Teeth Susceptible To Silent Enamel-Eating Syndrome
Otherwise known as: “dental erosion”.
One of the culprits: herbal teas.
Did he say herbal tea? Well, he did but…let’s look a little closer.
An earlier study in the UK did a similar study and found:
However…what teas did they test?
- Blackcurrant, ginseng and vanilla
- Raspberry, cranberry and elderflower
- Raspberry, strawberry and loganberry
- Traditional blackcurrant
- Peach and passionfruit
- Lipton Ice Tea (lemon)
Notice the suspicious incidence of fruit infused teas on this list? Dental erosion is caused by an overabundance of acid flowing over the teeth. This can be caused by any drink with a high ph level….in other words acidic. (If you were a chemistry major and want to get into the details you can here.)
So, any fruit based drink, juice, herbal tea, natural fruit sodas, etc consumed to excess can damage teeth, which is why water should still be your liquid of choice. But, a cup of herbal tea now and then is fine. Drink more? You might want to stick with chamomile. That was found to have an alkaline (non damaging) base.
AS with anything and everything … a little is good, a lot is not better.
Momzilla
You have it backwards. The LOWER the pH, the HIGHER the acidity. An herbal tea with a pH of 3 would have ten times the acidity of one with a pH of 4, and so on. But you’re right that if the people conducting that study included mainly herbal teas with fruit infusions then those teas would have a higher level of acidity than non-fruit infused teaa.
yeah, i read that herbal tea was bad for teeth, but i am glad it’s not true. they tested teas with fruit in them so obviously they would have high acidity. regular herbal tea probably isn’t bad for teeth, although i hear that black or white teas are better and really help your teeth, but herbal tea shouldn’t hurt your teeth.