How Else Do Probiotics Benefit Dental Health?

Bad Breath

More than 90 percent of all cases of bad breath or halitosis are caused by the action of volatile sulfur compound producing micro-organisms. These organisms are present in everybody's mouth, however only flourish under conditions that favor them — such as those found in cases of poor oral hygiene, niches of food lodgment and decaying teeth. Studies have found that probiotic species such as streptococcus salivarius bring down the level of these volatile sulfur compounds producing micro-organisms and thus help in fighting bad breath.

Oral Thrush: Candidiasis

This is a condition seen primarily in people with compromised immunity. It is a fungal disease that causes the development of loosely attached white patches in the mouth. The basic mechanism behind its occurrence is that the body is unable to produce normal levels of antibodies that suppress this fungal growth and so it thrives unchecked. 

Questions That Remain Unanswered   

After going through the various areas in which probiotics have shown promise, along with their inherrant advantage of not causing antibiotic resistance and being completely natural, a natural question is why we aren't all using probiotics for everything all the time.

This is because some important questions remain unanswered. There is no clarity as to how long one must take probiotics for their effects to become permanent or stabilize, there is no consensus on what number of micro-organisms are necessary to see the optimum response, long-term studies on the subject are lacking although that can be attributed to the rapid growth of this field in a short time frame, and most importantly, the number of species that can be cultured and grown for use in probiotics remains abysmally small.

Things To Look For In The Future

Scientists who are proponents of the field belive probiotics may hold the key in a future where antibiotic resistance is a major problem. 

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After all, antibiotics kill harmful micro-organisms, while probiotics make the neighborhood uncomfortable enough for them that they have move away themselves. The end objective achieved is much the same. Current research in genetically modifying organisms to produce the metabolic products desired or to make them more persistent and more effective against pathogenic species could hold the key to the success of this field.

The unanswered questions will also have to be dealt with sooner rather than later for the medical community as a whole to get behind the idea of using probiotics as standard therapeutic option in the future.