An exocrine solution with 99 percent water is saliva. Electrolytes and proteins comprise the other one percent. These elements, when combined, assume the role of various functions of saliva.
Saliva significantly helps maintain oral health by building and supporting hard and soft tissues. When your saliva is restricted, you might develop dental problems like tooth decay and other oral infections.
Ninety percent of the saliva formation is from the secretions of three paired essential salivary glands, with the submandibular gland contributing 65 percent, parotoid around 20 percent and sublingual approximately five to seven percent. Your autoimmune nervous system controls these glands allowing the labial, lingual, buccal, and palatine glands around the oral cavity to produce the remaining one percent of saliva.
In addition, for lack of exogenous or pharmacological stimulation at any constant salivary flow present like a film covers, moisturizes, and lubricates oral tissues. The resting salivary flow is approximately 0.4 to 0.5 millilitres per minute in healthy patients.
Crucial Functions of Saliva
The primary functions of saliva include protecting the oral and perioral tissues, lubrication, diluting sugars after food and beverage intake, antibacterial cleansing activity by degrading bacterial cell walls, neutralizing acid production, tissue repair, and re-mineralizing of tooth enamel with calcium and phosphates.
Saliva also helps facilitate eating and speaking besides enhancing chewing and clearing food residues to encourage swallowing, enhance taste and enable speech by lubricating the moving oral tissues.
Saliva and Tooth Decay
While moderating microbial factors to encourage preventive dentistry behaviours recommended by the dentist near you, saliva aims to prevent tooth decay by promoting natural protective mechanisms.
Dental plaque pH is crucial when balancing the teeth’ acid demineralization and the caries lesion’s re-mineralization. Plaque pH drops when acid accumulates in it because of bacterial acid production after consuming fermenting carbohydrates in foods and beverages. However, plaque pH rises when neutralized by saliva containing an essential buffer bicarbonate.
The loss of minerals is balanced by the therapeutic mechanisms of saliva in healthy teeth. Unfortunately, when the saliva and plaque pH drop below the critical value of 5.5, the unsaturation of the plaque and saliva starts dissolving the tooth enamel. Saliva’s calcium and phosphate ions start repairing the eroded mineral crystals in tooth enamel, beginning the re-mineralization process.
Acidic conditions bring the phosphate and hydroxyl ions below the saturation point, allowing solid hydroxyapatite crystals of the tooth minerals to dissolve. The stimulation of saliva increases the washing of the acids and sugars to increase the concentration of the bicarbonate buffer to re-mineralize ions.
Salivary Gland Infections
You only think about your salivary glands once they malfunction. The consequences of salivary gland infections are severe and can impact your quality of life. You may experience symptoms such as difficulties when speaking, tasting, and swallowing foods, constant thirst, and progress of tooth decay and oral infections. The typical salivary disorder is identified as xerostomia, causing dryness throughout the mouth.
The dentist in Vancouver, BC, suggests chewing sugar-free gum to stimulate salivary glands to produce more saliva. The stimulation helps increase the concentration of salivary bicarbonate to increase the pH level in the saliva to significantly increase the power of buffering, making the saliva more effective when neutralizing food and plaque acids from the fermented carbohydrates.
Xerostomia
Xerostomia affects 25 percent of Canadians, and salivary flow patterns demonstrate daily and seasonal variations peaking in mid-afternoon and increasing in winter. Salivary flow when sleeping is minimal. People complaining about dry mouth may not have a low salivary flow rate, and others dealing with the problem may not complain of dry mouth.
Inhibited salivary flow occurs because of hypofunction of salivary glands and might be reversible because of anxiety, stress, infection, dehydration and medications. Genetic abnormalities can also cause xerostomia, besides over 400 medications inducing salivary glands hypofunction.
Earlier, it was believed that xerostomia is a consequence of aging. Still, new research indicates it may also result from chronic illnesses and drug use by the aging population, which impact saliva production, states Vancouver Dentistry.
If affected by the lack of saliva in your mouth and confronting the problems described above, it helps if you pursue treatment for the condition to improve your quality of life. Your oral health becomes impacted by decreased salivary production, making you vulnerable to dental infections that are better prevented than treated. Therefore do not consider dry mouth and inconsequential issues. It may expose you to problems you never anticipated.
Enhance Dental Care recommends seeking treatment for dry mouth to prevent oral health issues that affect you if the condition is left untreated. In dealing with the problem, kindly consult them to understand to overcome the challenges confronting you to enhance your quality of life.
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