In my opinion, that philosophy moves the focus from sugars that must be
wiped off immediately: glucose, fructose, and sucrose; to a less preferred
sugar wrapped up with antibodies. This thought process encourages women to
brush their babies teeth first thing in the morning and last thing at night
to remove the "decay-causing breastmilk". Since 2 times per day is what is
recommended for brushing, the babies normal food is left on the babies teeth
for 12 hours. Foods with a high glycemic index are broken down by saliva in
the mouth into glucose - the bacteria's favorite sugar! So most breakfast
cereals break down into glucose in the mouth and then the glucose sits there
all day fermenting and feeding the strep mutans. In addition, the research
is showing that breastmilk is protective. This researcher went so far as to
claim that if a mom stopped nursing her cavity-ridden 2 year old at night
her decay would get worse! This is the opposite of what your dentist is
suggesting!

Rachael Barlow

...
> solution is
> simple.  If the mom would only clean the baby's teeth before
> sleep time,
> this would prevent this problem. Gauze on her finger is
> enough.  He can feed
> on and off all night if he wants, but first wipe those excess
> bacteria from
> his teeth so that when milk does pool in the baby's mouth (
> he says that he
> watches his baby and it definitely does pool in her mouth) it
> will not have
> all the bacteria from the day to feed on.  This sounds
> reasonable enough.
>
> Esther Grunis, IBCLC
> Lis Maternity Hospital
> Tel Aviv, Israel
>

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