10 years younger returned on tv last night. During the programme we saw the amazing transformation of a mother of 5. She had plastic surgery, advise on make up, clothes and hair. She also had a smile makeover. She ended up having 7 filling and 4 veneers and crowns.

 The dentist on the programme discussed the strong link between a high sugar diet and tooth decay. The mother of 5 admitted she has over 20 cups of tea a day with 2 teaspoons of sugar. The amount of sugar she was ingesting was huge and that explained why she required so many fillings.

Both Kal and myself have patients asking us why they get decay when they brush their teeth twice daily, floss and use mouthwash daily. The reason for their decay is their diet, ie the amount of sugar in the food. The obvious foods are chocolates and sweets, more hidden sugars are the ones in fizzy drinks and foods like baked beans and ketchup. It is very important to carry out a diet analysis to find which are the foods causing the decay so that these foods can be avoided. I recently had a child patient from West Bridgeford who had a lot of decay and had to go through diet analysis and oral hygiene instruction with the parents to insure we can prevent more decay on the rest of the teeth.

Raha