Saliva Research Paper

Saliva is a complex fluid that is of utmost importance to an individual’s oral health. It serves many functions that are crucial to maintaining healthy soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity. These include lubrication, regulation of pH, providing minerals that prevent tooth dissolution, helping to clear debris, as well as considerable antibacterial and antiviral activity. (Kidd, 2005) Saliva is made up of over 99% water, along with additional inorganic and organic compounds such as proteins, glycoproteins and enzymes that allow it to perform its many important functions. (Berkovitz, 2009)

While the formation of plaque is unavoidable, the disease process can be controlled so that a clinically visible carious lesion will never be formed.

As previously mentioned, it is stimulated by mastication and taste. Thus it is no surprise that chewing sugar-free gum can stimulate saliva, and as such can help to protect teeth in a number of ways. Chewing sugar-free gum can help to reduce plaque, neutralise acids, remineralise enamel, clear the mouth of food debris and relieve dry mouth discomfort. Dawes and Macpherson found that the initial flow rate after chewing flavoured chewing gum is about 10-12 times greater than the unstimulated rate. After 20 minutes of chewing it is still about three times the unstimulated rate. They also found that when chewing gum, the pH of saliva rises immediately on stimulation and then falls slightly, but to level still significantly higher than the pH of unstimulated saliva. As well as these short term beneficial effects of chewing gum, it has been suggested that increased mastication, through chewing gum can also increase the levels of unstimulated saliva, especially in those with low salivary function. (Jenkins and Edgar, 1989) These benefits can be put to use by chewing gum following eating a meal, in order to help reduce plaque acids and aid food clearance. Sugar-containing food and drink can cause the pH levels to drop to a level low enough to cause demineralization of enamel. (Kidd, 2005) Plaque pH levels have been shown to be significantly higher when gum is chewed after eating. (Frohlich et al). Plaque levels are also decreased when gum is chewed after meals, especially with xylitol-sweetened chewing gum (Soderling E, et. Al., 1989). Thus an after-meal chewing gum regime has been shown to reduce caries levels by up to