The soft drink industry is a billion dollar a year industry, with many Americans consuming multiple soft drinks in a single day. In some areas of the country, this rate is higher.
Some researchers estimate that around 98 percent of people living in the Appalachian Region experience tooth decay by age 44, and about half are diagnosed with periodontal disease.
One simple way to avoid Mountain Dew Mouth is to reduce or stop drinking Mountain Dew and other soft drinks. Drink water. Experts say that sipping on these beverages throughout the day compounds the danger. It bathes your teeth in a steady stream of the damaging acids and sugars. Drinking pure water afterward, and using it like a mouthwash, may help reduce the acidity.
Visit the dentist. Proper dental care is also important. Regular visits to the dentist can spot cavities and damage before it progresses to visible tooth decay. Wait before you brush. One study suggests brushing immediately after drinking soda can cause even greater damage, as the enamel is vulnerable in the moments just after you expose it to acids.
Kids who need help right now -- not just with education, but with the practicalities of getting their teeth fixed. Several days a week, Smith criss-crosses the curvy roads of 16 eastern Kentucky counties to offer free dental screenings and services to hundreds of students. Most children dread the dentist, but those who line up outside Smith's van are often giddy with anticipation. For many, it's the first and only dental check-up they'll have for years.
I really believe we have to do a better job educating. Smith says he's seen firsthand the results of neglect among these children. Teenagers have pulled their own teeth with pliers because of tooth pain, and he's treated 2-year-olds with up to 12 cavities in their baby teeth. It's a stereotype rooted in a terrible fact.
Central Appalachia is No. Yet throughout the United States, from remote areas of Alaska and across the contiguous 48, poor people struggle to get access to regular dental care, relying on charity clinics and hospital emergency rooms. According to the federal government, more than 50 million Americans live in areas officially designated as Dental Health Professional Shortage Areas , and must travel hundreds of miles to get help. A suburb of Washington, D. The distinction between dental care and health care extends to insurance.
Medicaid, the joint federal-state health care program that provides health coverage for 72 million people, reckons dental benefits as optional for adults, leaving it up to states to decide. It was not until the Affordable Care Act passed under President Obama in when Medicaid gave dental care to children under Medicare, the federal health care program that covers 55 million seniors and disabled people, has never included insurance for routine dental services.
While Medicaid, as the medical safety net for the poor, should provide help for those with dental needs who cannot afford to pay, only 15 states offer full dental benefits and five states offer nothing at all, as reported in a study by Pew. However, even in the states that do offer dental benefits, poor patients have difficulty getting appointments. As an isolated industry, dentistry has remained private and unencumbered by the brunt of market forces.
In order to cover high overhead costs, pay back dental school bills and earn an income, many dentists refuse to treat people on Medicaid. In , only 34 percent of general dentists accepted Medicaid patients, according to Pew.
With limited benefits through Medicaid and no benefits through Medicare, in order to receive insurance, people must purchase private plans or employer-provided plans. So millions of Americans go without dental insurance. More than a third of Americans do not have dental coverage, according to a Washington Post article.
Appalling already, the state of dental care in America faces even greater challenges with the threat of the Trump-backed American Health Care Act currently being debated in the Senate after passing in the House at the beginning of May. Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, Mountain Dew Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, Mountain Dew and its diet counterpart, my beverage of choice was an omnipresent force, its signature emerald-tinged, translucent ounce bottles filling up coolers at backyard barbecues and littering the weed-lined backroads.
My teachers drank it, my doctor drank it and prisoners would drink it while picking up the littered roadside bottles. It was not a novelty, not an ironic goof—just simply a way of life.
When I moved away from home, it became very clear that I should be ashamed of drinking Diet Mountain Dew my parents and I still lovingly abbreviate it as "DMD" in text messages.
Even today when I discuss drinking it in public, people look at me incredulously as if waiting for a punchline. For a time, I thought I could head the scolding off at the pass by making fun of myself first or displaying some arcane knowledge. That approach never really worked.
Would people feel as open to chiding me or ribbing me about the drink if I were a man? Probably not. Nothing great will ever come from consuming yellow dye 5. It has no nutritional value. It is "not good" in a decidedly unsexy way, the way other corporate Frankenstein creations like Ho-Hos and Combos are easily tossed into the furnace of public scorn.
I would probably get fewer dirty looks if I snorted a couple of lines of cocaine every day. It is, however, a drink that—for better or worse—ties me to my home. Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams , elegantly summed up my decades-long tug of war with how Mountain Dew relates to my identity in a recent interview.
For me, that argument continues to manifest itself on both a personal and interpersonal level. As if I was living in some sort of divinely staged cosmic play, my theoretical interest in shame came home to roost shortly after my exploration began one Sunday afternoon at home in New Orleans.
0コメント