(Newswire.net — August 20, 2015) — Dentists in Australia and New Zealand are seeing a dramatic increase in young children, some as young as just eighteen months old, needing to have multiple decayed and rotten teeth removed. Rosalie Dental is one of numerous Brisbane dentist practices who have attributed the dramatic increase to being fed sugary drinks through sipper bottles and eating sugary treats, such as chocolate biscuits as a bedtime treat.
Dentist’s Opinions
Rob Beaglehole, a New Zealand dentist and anti-sugar lobbyist says that recently he has pulled several teeth from an eighteen month old child, and has in the past given treatment for decayed teeth to a two year old who had been fed Coca Cola from a baby bottle. The child’s teeth were bleeding and had dissolved down to the gum line.
Beaglehole says that parents don’t often realise the consequences of feeding their child a high sugar diet after extracting eleven teeth from a three year old whose parents fed him sugary drinks in a sipper cup to ‘keep him happy’. In another case, he treated another three year old who was fed Milo overnight in a baby bottle and required four teeth pulled, four fillings, and crowns.
Each year, 35,000 children aged under twelve are admitted for dental treatment to extract decayed teeth, mainly due to excessive sugary diets, mainly junk food and sugary, fizzy drinks. Beaglehole and other dentists agree that the majority of these treatments don’t need to happen.
Diets
Andrea Palmer, a Wellington dietitian states that throughout the day, the best drink to give a child is water. She says that during meal times or as a special treat fruit juice is also acceptable, as long as it is not consumed constantly. Sugary drinks are not only detrimental to children’s dental health, they are also a major factor contributing to child obesity.
Other Effects
At around the age of six children begin to lose their baby teeth naturally, however having this process sped up by rotting and decay can have serious consequences on their schooling and also affect their prospects as adults.
Behaviour and developmental problems in a child can be caused by having to struggle through school with the pain of rotting and decayed teeth, and losing one’s baby teeth early on can also cause adult teeth to grow irregularly, causing the need for further orthodontic treatments such as braces in later life. However, the amount of children requiring treatment for rotting teeth is on the increase, with a Ministry of Health report stating that between 1990 and 2009 a fourfold increase has been found with the majority of these admissions being from children under the age of eight.
Plans
In order to combat this issue, NZ Health Minister Jonathan Coleman plans to recommend a set of actions that will address the sugar problem in the nation. He has ruled out the idea of a sugar tax, saying that exercise and healthier eating should be made a priority. Similar plans are set to be addressed in Australia.
Has your child had baby teeth removed because of rotting and decay? How did you improve your child’s diet to ensure it didn’t reoccur? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.