eli5 why does sugar make my teeth hurt?
In: Biology
The dentin in your teeth (layer below the enamel) has tiny tubules filled with liquid and connected to nerves. When you eat sugar it goes in to your saliva and makes it have a different osmolarity than the tubules. Basically the sugar in your saliva wants to suck up water and it sucks it out of the tubules. This sudden change is interpreted by the nerves in the tooth as pain. It doesn’t happen on all teeth because if your enamel is in good shape it acts as a barrier to the dentin layer.
If you talk to your dentist about an area that’s really problematic they’ll usually have three options for you: 1. Use sensodyne or equivalent toothpaste 2. Flouride varnish in hopes of re-mineralizing the area 3. They can treat it as a cavity and fill it, but this means drilling out some of the technically healthy tooth to add a filling which is not a perfect or forever fix so they don’t always like doing it.
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