Does diet affect dental health? Sure it does. Why shouldn't it? Doesn't diet affect your physical health generally? It's funny, though, that people don't often think of "diet" and "dental health" as being related. They think of diet and heart health, diet and muscle health, diet and bone health, diet and skin health, diet and hair health, diet and fingernail health, etc. and so on and so forth, but diet and dental health floats through their minds, if it does so at all, much more infrequently.
    I guess it's because our teeth seem independent of us in a way. Our teeth don't seem embedded in us the same way our bones and organs do. Our teeth occupy the unusual position of being both out and in as it were. Our hair, our skin, these things are visible-flowing and shining or not, they're there, every time we look in a mirror, glance down at our arms and hands, scratch our heads. Our organs, our bones, these things are invisible-they're down there in the dark, where everything's mysterious and kind of gross and it takes twenty years of school to begin to make sense of it. Maybe it's this either out or either in quality that allows us to think of diet and hair health and diet and heart health more readily than diet and dental health. Teeth are both out and in. They're weird, all right, be we see them often enough that they also seem old hat. And there's nothing quite like them, they're these things, you grind up food with them and hopefully dazzle people with them when you smile.
    Whatever the reason, we all need to start thinking of diet and dental health more often. Our teeth are as crucial to us as our bones and organs, and certainly as our hair. Baldness you get used to, but having to disgustingly gum your bread and milk takes a little more time.
    Let's first consider the obvious. What are the things we eat that damage our teeth? What part of our diet is dangerous to our dental health? Too much caffeine, for example, can harm the heart; what do we eat and drink "too much of" regarding our teeth?
    Sugar comes to mind. Candy and sweets, ice cream and cake, these are obvious villains. What about sugary gum? Certainly. What about-soda pop? Most definitely. Soda pop, aside from the sugar, is carbonated, and carbonation wears away at your teeth relentlessly. We've been told from the beginning that too many sweets would result in cavities, gum disease, tooth decay, rot. What, then, are we doing to act on these warnings? Some dentists advise that you sit down and make a list of your diet during a typical day. Be brutally honest: detail your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner, your snacks in-between. You don't have to show anyone else your list, so be sure to include your most sugary secrets, that is, those things you enjoy purely in private and that no one else is aware of. Put a little red mark beside those things that are especially constructed to harm your teeth. Now comes the hard part-try, on a weekly basis, to get rid of a significant amount of those red marks. Do that, and you'll also get rid of a significant amount of risk to your teeth.
    Finally, consider your calcium intake. Your body has enormous amounts of calcium, and needs enormous amounts of calcium, but ironically calcium is the one mineral that one people are the most lax about consuming. Your teeth and bones need calcium to remain strong and muscular and effective. If keep it from them, though, they don't cling all the more stubbornly to what they have; no, they start farming it out to the other parts of your body that are shouting for it. The more calcium they unselfishly share, the more trouble you're in, tooth-wise and bone-wise. You need strong teeth, you need strong jaws, you need strong bones, and that means you need calcium.
    There are quite a few good vitamin and mineral pills on the market these days, and that's one very easy and affordable way to get the calcium you need. Cut your sugar intake and increase your calcium intake and you'll have taken two big steps down the road to dental health.