![]() This schedule was chosen because it mirrors the consumption habits of many users who drink these beverages every few hours - a particularly common habit among those who consume sports drinks. After each 15-minute exposure, the enamel was then placed into an artificial saliva solution for two hours to mimic what would happen once consumption stopped. To determine the effect of these drinks on our teeth, the research team looked at 22 popular sports and energy drinks, and exposed artificial tooth enamel to the beverages for 15 minutes at a time, four times daily. The results, which surprised even the research team, showed considerable damage to tooth enamel after only five days of steady consumption. What all this means to your teeth is the real question, though, and precisely what researchers at Southern Illinois University set out to discover in 2012. So, in the example above, a lemon ends up being 10 times more acidic than a grapefruit, and 100 times more acidic than tomato juice - a sensation you can certainly taste if you bite into one! In contrast, milk and water have a pH of 7.0, so, it's easy to see the difference in the numbers - they're huge. The real distinction, though, is in knowing that with each increase in numerical value, the acid intensity increases 10-fold. Stomach acid (which we can imagine as being quite acidic, at least!) has a pH that fluctuates between 1.0 and 3.0. A lemon, in contrast, comes in at around 2.0, a grapefruit at 3.0, and tomato juice at 4.0. Now, pH can be a tricky thing to understand, so to help put that number in perspective a bit, consider this: battery acid has a pH of 0.0 (so, a lower number means a higher acid content). The crux of the problem is the double-whammy that comes from an exceedingly high sugar content and citric acid pH that can be as low as 2.9. Why Are Energy Drinks Such a Threat to Teeth? While it may keep you energized and awake for the next few hours, it's secretly eating away at your teeth - and fast. You might not realize, however, that the energy boost you just tossed back comes with a wallop of a price. You toss in a few bucks, and out comes your savior: hours of liquid energy in a shiny little can. So you wander down the corridor, yawning the whole way there. ![]() Thankfully, there's a vending machine down the hall stocked with all sorts of mid-afternoon pick-me-ups. You've got the 3pm slump, and what seems like a whole day of work ahead of you yet. And, the worst part is, it's 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and you're still at work! Yep. It's been a busy week, and after a few late nights in a row, you're really starting to feel it. ![]()
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