Switzerland and Your Mouth


Learn something from Switzerland. They are famous for their neutrality, and what most people don’t know about their mouths is that being neutral is one of the most important things one can be, to achieve oral health. It’s about something called pH.

The Short Story:

  1. Acid is the root cause of most problems in your mouth.
  2. pH testing is how we measure for acidity.
  3. Acidic conditions kill good oral bacteria.
  4. Bad bacteria love acid.
  5. That’s why we test your pH levels – to detect harmful acidic conditions that can cause disease.

The Rest of the Story: Microorganisms in your mouth are sensitive to levels of bodily acidity – which are measured by the metric called pH. Levels of pH (which stands for parts of hydrogen) control the environment in which both friendly and harmful bacteria either thrive or struggle. In general, pathogenic oral bacteria prefer more acidic environments. Friendly bacteria prefer a more alkaline, basic, or ‘neutral’ pH environment. They are killed off by prolonged exposure to acidic conditions. Said more plainly, bad bacteria like acid – good bacteria don’t.

Those acid or alkaline levels of pH are affected by the kinds of foods we eat. That means that staying healthy requires making sure that what you’re eating isn’t accidentally creating an internal pH environment that is inhospitable to the beneficial bacterial, while encouraging the overgrowth of the bad ones. And that’s why monitoring your pH levels is so important.