Who would have thought something so delicious could be so beneficial to your oral health? Image via Shutterstock

Candy Makes Oral Health News

In oral health today, what's traditionally bad is now good, and for all the right reasons.

Our bodies are strange, wonderful machines – our mouths particularly so. Mouths must keep a delicate balance of good and bad bacteria – whether we're brushing our teeth to kick out cavity-causing bacteria, or eating lollies – wait, what?

Researchers have developed a sugar-free lolly that can potentially reduce cavities as it contains a dead bacteria that binds to bad bacteria in the mouth. The lolly was developed by a team from the Berlin-based firm Organobalance GmbH. The firm discovered the most common strain of “bad” mouth bacteria, Mutans streptococci, was more likely to be reduced in number by another bacteria called Lactobacillus and, in turn, decreasing the number of cavities in your mouth.

The researchers undertook a pilot trial which involved 60 subjects – one-third of the subjects ate lollies with 1mg of the dead Lactobacillus bacteria, one third ate lollies with 2mg of Lactobacillus, and the last group took placebo lollies.

The subjects ate five of their assigned candies over the 1.5 day study, and were instructed not to perform any oral hygiene activities during this time. It was found that nearly 75% of the participants who ate candies with the Lactobacillus has “significantly lower” levels of Mutans streptococci in their saliva than before, when compared with the control/placebo group.

The researchers have added that the act of eating the sugar-free lollies stimulates saliva flow, which is a great benefit to oral health. We're looking forward to this being available in Sydney so we can eat lollies in conjunction with our existing oral hygiene habits.

Good oral health isn't just good for your mouth; it's good for your entire body. Poor oral health has been linked to ailments as severe as pancreatic cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease.

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