Are your favorite drinks turning your teeth yellow?
When you eat or drink certain foods or beverages, you’re opening yourself up to tooth discoloration, tooth loss, gum disease, and other problems. All of these potential issues are important, but today, we’d like to start with the more basic concern of getting yellow teeth.
Maintaining a good level of dental hygiene is instrumental in preventing your teeth from becoming discolored, but you should also be weary of what you’re drinking throughout the day. To give you an idea of what you should avoid or limit in your diet, here’s a quick list of seven beverages that can cause stains on your teeth:
Carbonated Drinks
Everyone knows by now that sodas are extremely bad for your teeth, not to mention your health in general. What you might not realize is that any carbonated drinks can be harmful because the carbonation is made up of carbon dioxide that turns into an acid as you drink it.
This can quickly cause yellow teeth because the enamel is weakened and may expose the yellow, inner layer underneath. You should limit the ingestion of all carbonated drinks, but especially the aforementioned sodas since they have a lot of sugar that heavily promotes bacteria growth.
Fruit Juices
When is a fruit at its most dangerous? Some would say the answer is when it’s in a juice form. After all, whereas eating a citrus fruit may subject you to a certain level of acids and sugars, you’re exposed a lot more when you’re drinking the juice straight because of how much you’re ingesting. The acids contained in fruit juices can break down the outer layer of your teeth, creating the perfect environment for bacteria growth.
Coffee
Another piece of common knowledge for most people out there is the fact that coffee is known for staining teeth. Unfortunately, we’re a nation of coffee drinkers – just look at the long line at any Starbucks in the morning.
The worst part about coffee is that it’s something people often drink first thing in the morning, which means that the acid will sit on your teeth for a very long period of time, possibly all day. You can tone it down a little by adding milk, but you may want to switch to an alternative.
Tea
Yes, teas are known for being much healthier than other beverages, but they’re definitely not 100% harmless. The biggest problem is that many teas have a variety of coloring effects on teeth when they’re consumed in large amounts.
Black teas will cause yellow teeth in the same way that coffee will whereas green teas will give your teeth more of a grayish appearance. If you’re going to drink lots of tea, you should opt for the higher-quality brands because they will leave less color on your teeth.
Sports & Energy Drinks
There’s been a big push for the past decade or two for people to switch to sports drinks as an alternative to sodas and other harmful beverages. We also can’t forget that there’s been an uptick in energy drinks over the years. Unfortunately, both of these are filled with acids and sugars that have the same damaging, yellowing effect of other beverages on this list.
Red Wine
There are definitely some health benefits to drinking red wine, but white teeth is not one of them. Just like coffee and tea, red wine can cause staining that sometimes appears yellow and may also present itself as a lackluster gray. If you do decide to indulge in a glass of red wine every once a while, we suggest that you do it with dinner or afterwards and then brush your teeth as soon as you can.
White Wine
Sadly, white wine isn’t a great alternative to those trying to avoid coloring caused by red wine. In fact, white wine is actually more acidic than red, which makes it more harmful to your tooth enamel.
Like coffee and other beverages, this will expose the yellowish inner layer of your teeth and can look like they’ve been stained. If you imbibe every once in a while, that’s okay. Just make sure that you follow it up with water so that the acids don’t adhere to your teeth.
Contact Dr. Ferullo to Improve Yellow Teeth
Dr. Ferullo is the most popular dentist in St. Pete and the surrounding areas. If you have any questions about our services or would like to learn how to avoid yellow teeth, contact our team at (727) 822-8101 today. And don’t forget to ask about our whitening treatments!
