10:00:00 Close
up on drinks
Athletes
picking up and drinking drinks
Guide Voice: Sports drinks - all athletes
consume considerable amounts of them, with elite performers
consuming up to 10 litres a day.
They’re an important means of re-hydrating the body and
enabling athletes to train and compete at higher levels – but
new research suggests they may also lead to alarming levels of
tooth erosion; actually eating away dental enamel at a rate of 30
times the erosive level of water.
10:00:23:12 SOT:
Professor Tony Smith, Director of Research, School of Dentistry,
University of Birmingham - “It can become
a very significant problem in that not only do you dissolve away
all the enamel but you can also dissolve away the hard dentine
underneath it as well and actually expose the pulp. Even when you
dissolve away the enamel the tooth will become a lot more
sensitive. If you actually dissolve away the dentine as well then
the pulp will become infected and you will have very serious
problems requiring treatment.”
10:00:49:23 Athletes
running in gym
Scientist/
lab technician on computer
Close
up on gum shield
Dr
Jeukendrup walking into School of Sport and Exercise Sciences
building
Guide Voice: Athletes, at all levels, are at
particularly high risk. They often have very dry mouths and this
means they don’t produce the saliva to dilute the acidity of
their sports drinks, which often contain higher levels of acidity
for taste and to increase product shelf life.
Scientists from the UK’s University of Birmingham have
been conducting extensive research into the corrosive effects of
sports drinks and believe their findings could pave the way for
future products with low corrosive potential that will allow all of
us, and not just the athletes, to plan our diets more
effectively.
The research has involved an unusual collaboration between the
University’s school of Sport and Exercise Sciences and the
Dental school.
10:01:29 SOT: Dr
Asker Jeukendrup, Director of the Human Performance Laboratory,
University of Birmingham – “The research
projects ran over a bit longer than nine weeks where subjects,
basically volunteers would come in here for nine weeks, and for
three weeks they would be using one drink for their exercise test
and for the next three weeks they would use a different drink, and
for the next three weeks they would use a different drink again.
And they would come in every morning five days a week and they
would do some sort of shuttle run test which is running up and down
the gym kind of a bleep test where the times between bleeps are
faster and slower so they would run faster and slower really in an
attempt to simulate a game situation.”
10:02:17 SOT:
Professor Tony Smith (explains the process with close ups on gum
shield): “The approach that we used was to make
a small gum shield that fitted exactly over the teeth and on that
we stuck two small pieces of enamel which had come from extracted
teeth and across each strip we covered over part of the enamel with
nail varnish to protect it and left one area exposed so that after
contact with the drink we could measure across the length of enamel
and compare before with after.”
Athletes
on bench with drinks
c.u.
Athletes drinking
Guide Voice: The researchers point out that
sports drinks are beneficial, improving hydration and providing a
useful energy boost. But it’s important to change habits and
avoid holding the liquid in the mouth for long periods.
10:03:10 SOT: Dr Asker
Jeukendrup – “I would certainly advise
athletes to keep consuming sports drinks but maybe to reduce
contact time with the drink so swallow the drink a little bit
quicker or to rinse your mouth afterwards with water if that is a
possibility.”
10:03:29 Scientist/
lab technician on computer
Close
up on gum shield
Guide Voice: It’s important to realise
that it’s not just athletes that are at risk. Many modern
soft drinks have the potential to cause erosion and it’s
hoped that the research at the University of Birmingham will go a
long way towards addressing this problem.
SOT: Professor Tony Smith –
“I’m hoping that this research will allow us to
advise the public as to how to plan their diets effectively but
also for it to underpin the development of new commercial products
that actually have low erosive potential and therefore minimise
these problems in the teeth.”
10:04:06
END
