How Do Phytic Acid Foods Affect Your Teeth?
Phytic acid is a nutrient that may help you prevent many diseases, but it also may lead to tooth decay. This “anti-nutrient” is contained in plant seeds, roots, and bran, which might have a huge impact on your dental health.
Phytic acid affects our body’s ability to absorb the nutrients your teeth need. Phytic acid foods are all plant-based, therefore you may be getting more of this compound than you think. Phytic acid can be harmful to your teeth as it worsens the absorption of calcium, magnesium(1), and phosphorus. These nutrients are all essential to your oral health.
Phytic acid occurs in plants and especially cereal grains that can form insoluble complexes with calcium, iron, zinc, and other nutrients and thus interfere with their absorption. Grains and seeds need this nutrient to store phosphorus in their cells.
On the other hand, phytic acid is a useful antioxidant. According to one scientific review, this compound can reduce diabetes symptoms, fight heavy metal toxicity, reduce kidney stones, improve heart disease, treat HIV-1, and even kill cancer cells. Don’t be scared to eat phytic acid foods.
Your body produces an enzyme called phytase helps to break these bonds and get more of the nutrients. Phytic acid interferes with magnesium, copper, calcium, zinc, iron, niacin, and phosphorus absorption.
However, we still need a phytate. When your body is healthy and you’re keeping a proper diet, your digestive system will excrete phytates to stay balanced. Phytic acid is both good and bad. You need a little of it, but too much phytate can lead to problems like cavities.
Table of Contents
Phytic Acid and Teeth Cavities
Your body requires calcium, phosphorus, copper, and vitamin D to build and restore teeth and bones. A lack of these minerals results in deterioration of the bones that protect teeth in humans.
If you’re lacking both vitamin D (which up to 90 percent of people are) and calcium, your teeth are not able to remineralize properly. The only way to avoid cavities is to remineralize your teeth more than you demineralize them.
