IMPACT OF FEEDING PATTERNS ON DENTAL HEALTH IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

Abstract

During the last thirty years there has been a major progress in the understanding of dental caries and nutrition. Yet the importance and true nature of the relationship between them has been misunderstood and frequently ignored. Although in the recent years, the impact of nutrition on the maintenance of general health has been increasingly evident. To oral tissues nutrition is of special relevance, not only because of their own specific requirements, but because these tissues come in contact with foods twice. Once directly, when they are masticated in the oral cavity and a second time when, after digestion and absorption, the nutrients return by the circulatory system to nourish these tissues. Much research is currently being conducted in an effort to determine the

cariogenicity of specific foodstuffs. These studies have looked at a number of variables, such as the amount of acid produced, the neutralization time, and the enamel demineralization. Generally milk or juice are not considered highly cariogenic foods since

they are nutritious, liquid in form, and cleared rapidly from the mouth under " normal" circumstances. However, in the young child several factors interact which may cause the same food items to be dentally dangerous. As the newly erupted teeth of a child less than two years of age are immature in their development and highly susceptible to destruction. Early tooth decay and secondarily abscess formation causes pain and discomfort with other future complications due to pre-mature tooth loss.

This work aims to study, and relate, the impact of different feeding practices, patterns, habits, fluoride supplementation and oral hygiene methods on the state of dental health in Alexandrian children between two and five years of age.