How Sugarcane Can Help Your Teeth!

No, not by eating it (sorry!), but rather because of how it can be used medicinally:

It’s about saliva

Your teeth are sitting all day every day in a liquid, and a lot of people don’t give much thought to the effect that liquid has on dental health.

But maybe we should, because saliva helps control bacteria, neutralize acids, and maintain mineral balance, so if things go wrong with our saliva (microbiota imbalance, wrong pH, not enough saliva, etc), then we start to have problems with our gums and teeth.

We’ve written about this before, here: Make Your Saliva Better For Your Teeth

So, what’s new? Researchers (Dr. Natara Dias Gomes Da Silva et al.) have created an artificial saliva using a sugarcane-derived protein (known as “CANECPI-5” to its friends), which not only mimics, but also improves, the vital protective role of natural saliva.

How it works: the protein binds directly to enamel and forms a thin protective layer that shields your teeth from acid attacks and bacterial damage. Of its various ways of helping, the most important mechanism is that it increases enamel resistance by reducing demineralization, which is the loss of calcium and phosphate that weakens your teeth and leads to cavities.

And on the microbiota side of things, the formulation didn’t just kill bacteria; it preserved overall microbial diversity while favouring healthier, non-harmful, often helpful, species.

As for how well it works: the treatment has already been tested as a mouthwash, gel, spray, and dissolvable oral film, all of which effectively deliver the protein to your teeth, and it got results comparable to or better than standard products like chlorhexidine.

That said, combining the protein with fluoride and xylitol produced the strongest effects of all.

If you have worries about those two things, then do check out:

• Fluoride Toothpaste vs Non-Fluoride Toothpaste – Which is Healthier?
• Xylitol: Cavity Fighter Or Gut Disruptor?

Other ingredients are also being considered, for example, as Dr. Da Silva herself put it:

❝Another aspect of the project is to associate CANECPI-5 with vitamin E because this vitamin acts as a carrier, bringing the protein into contact with the tooth❞

You can find the paper itself, here: A novel artificial saliva enriched with CaneCPI-5 for irradiated head and neck cancer (HNC) patients: in vitro antimicrobial and anticaries effect

Want to learn more?

For a much deeper-dive into the topic than we have room for here, you might like this book we reviewed a while back:

The Dental Diet: The Surprising Link Between Your Teeth, Real Food, and Life-Changing Natural Health – by Dr. Steven Lin ← this pertains to a lot more than just “avoided added sugar and acidic things”, and covers such topics as the fat-soluble vitamins that are essential to teeth health, and what’s good or bad for our oral microbiome (and thus our saliva, and thus our teeth and gums), and more.

See also:

• Why Healthy Teeth May Depend On Omega-3 & Exercise
• Fish Oil Can Backfire Without This Enzyme
• Morin: Your Mouth’s New Best Friend

Finally, you might also like to read this three-part series on dental health:

• Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
• Flossing Without Flossing?
• Less Common Oral Hygiene Options ← we recommend the miswak! Not only does it clean the teeth as well as or better than traditional brushing, but also it does similarly to the protein being discussed today, and changes the composition of saliva to improve the oral microbiome, effectively turning your saliva into a biological mouthwash that kills unwanted microbes and is comfortable for the ones that should be there.

Take care!