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Home › Articles › Nutrition and Health › "Soft" Teeth

"Soft" Teeth

Cavities Waiting to Happen

By Felicia Hodges

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Rose McGrath never noticed anything unusual about her children's teeth. The mother of four from upstate New York was just simply trying to do the right thing when she took her oldest son, Michael, for his first dental checkup when he was about 4 1/2.

"He asked if he could go in with the dentist by himself and I let him," McGrath says. "So there I was, sitting in the waiting room flipping through a magazine when the dentist came out and said he had nine cavities. I almost fell off the chair."

Over the course of the next six months, Michael had six of his cavities filled. But right before he was scheduled to have work done onNo. 7, his 4-year-old sister, Kasey, woke up in the middle of the night complaining of a toothache. When the dentist examined her teeth the next day, he found eight cavities.

Seventeen cavities between two children who still have a mouth full of primary teeth is a bit unusual, especially if the children brush and floss regularly, which the McGrath children do. And, like the dentist did at first, you might think that McGrath is the kind of mom who lets her children down sweets like air, but she doesn't. That and Kasey's cavities led her dentist to believe that what the McGrath children actually suffer from is a condition known as "soft" teeth, a genetic pre-disposition to getting more cavities.

What's Going On?
"There isn't really one generic term for such a condition, but several, although it is actually referred to as enamel hyperplasia," says Dr. Jim Lacedo, a family dentist who occasionally sees children with this disorder. "Basically, the enamel is a bit weaker than it should be." He also says that it is quite common in families whose primary water source is from a well, which means it is not usually fluoridated. "There are certainly genetic disorders and tendencies that cause a predisposition to cavities, and there are all different degrees of resistance to cavities," he says.

Although there isn't a definitive test that can be done to confirm the condition one way or another, McGrath says Kasey's diagnosis seemed to immediately point towardgenetics. "My husband has very bad teeth he's even had two of his teeth pulled," she says. "Everyone in his family has bad teeth, too. He also has a nephew who had multiple cavities on his first visit."

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