Toothless UK Knows the Cause but Talk Is Pointless Without a Plan to Cut Sugar

Summary: There is little hope for better health in society until parents own-up to their responsibility of rearing their children by restricting their ability to get sugary foods and drinks. If local government in the home won't enforce better guidelines, big government efforts will prove a poor alte
ative.

The leading cause of hospitalization for children, ages 5-9, in England where children and young people drink more sugary soft drinks than anywhere else in Europe, is for tooth extraction, a problem affecting tens of thousands of children. (Google News)

Richard Ruhling, MD, MPH offers insights from personal experience. The first word he learned to spell as a child was c-a-n-d-y, as his parents spelled it out to avoid his attention, but he got the idea and the taste for sweets early in life. As a result, he had a mouthful of dental fillings before high school.

In 1960, Ruhling spent a summer in Columbia and Venezuela where he learned to pull teeth in a dental clinic. He pulled as many as 100 in a morning because Coca Cola was so successful at marketing their product to those poor ignorant people.

At Loma Linda University, Ruhling learned of dental research by Ralph Steinman, DDS who showed a fluid movement in canaliculi of the tooth that maintains the defense against tooth decay. Eating sugar stops the fluid movement and allows decay to occur.

Healthy rats on a standard laboratory chow, if given the option of sugar, will soon become addicted to it and lose their health. We should be smarter than to allow our children that option, says Ruhling, but he also decries the aspartame, sucralose and other chemical sweeteners that can have harmful effects on the body.

An exception seems to be Stevia, an herb that grows wild in S. America. Known as sweet leaf. It was banned by the FDA which has a history of approving things like alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and prescription drugs that have become a leading cause of illness and death, but banning an herb used in Japan for decades, says Ruhling who sees big gov as sold out to big companies which have a primary purpose of making money and they don't care about our health.

If we like sweet things and consume a rich, exciting diet, we lose our discipline for eating our vegetables and the less appealing but protective foods that build our bodies. We may wonder why diabetes or other chronic degenerative diseases are afflicting us, but from the womb to the tomb, what we consume is what consumes us.

Winners at dog shows or horse races understand this while the masses seem ignorant of how health habits can affect our destiny. It is not as easy as having a simple extraction. Let's be true to our teeth, or they will be false to us, and so will be a lot of other things in life, says Ruhling.