If you’re lucky, it will all be kisses and hugs around the Thanksgiving dinner table, with friends and family gathered about, and puppies at your feet waiting for table scraps. But peace won’t reign within the confines of the oral cavity; your meal will enable Streptococcus mutans to launch one of its biggest assaults of the year on your tooth enamel. But dinner also offers some leads on new ways to stop cavities.
Even brushing your teeth or waiting hours after eating may not prevent some partners of people with food and medicine allergies from triggering an allergic reaction through a kiss, according to allergists. Some patients react after their partner has brushed his or her teeth or several hours after eating. It turns out that their partners’ saliva is excreting the allergen hours after the food or medicine has been absorbed by their body, according to researchers.