Erosion Effect Of Red Pepper And Alcoholic Beverages On Human Tooth Enamel

As the life quality continues to improve, our structure of diet has changed a lot. There’s a variety of new food and drinks and therefore, more and more dental diseases have appeared with it. The habit of eating and drinking has become the main cause of the dental caries. Thus the study of dental erosion under different diet habit is practically necessary not only for the improvement of the structure of diet but also for the theoretical guidance of clinical dental erosion prevention.The erosion behavior of human tooth enamel in different mediums, including the mixture of red pepper and liquid mediums, beers and Chinese liquor, was investigated using a nano-indentation tester and various microscopic examinations. Results are as followed,1) Red pepper could separate out different chemical components in different solutions, and then resulted in different erosion behavior on the surface of enamel.A honeycomb-like structure appeared on the enamel surface as a result of dissolution of the enamel rods after 1 hour immersion in the mixture of red pepper and water. Both the nano-indentation hardness and elastic modulus of enamel have decreased obviously. However, no obvious erosion traces appeared on the surface of enamel after 1 hour immersion in the mixture of red pepper and Chinese liquor or in the mixture of red pepper and edible oil. There’s also no obvious decrease in the nano-mechanical properties of enamel.2) The anti-wear properties of the enamel have decreased after 10 minutes immersion in Boluo beer but there’s no evident decrease after immersion in Qingdao beer or Ha’erbin beer. From the SEM pictures, Ha’erbin beer showed stronger erosion capacity than Qingdao beer. Therefore from the three beers investigated, Boluo beer is the most erosive one and then is Ha’erbin beer. Qingdao beer has the least erosive capacity.3) The erosive capacity of Chinese liquor is weaker than beer. After heating, Chinese liquor showed stronger erosive capacity, which indicates that the existence of ethanol restrains the erosion process of human enamel.