This story broke back in May, and indicates that caffeine’s seemingly benign little cousin, found in chocolate, coffee, and tea, as well as the guarana berry and yerba matte, may be keeping us out of the dentist’s chair. Woohoo!
In his new work, Sadeghpour [a University of Tulane researcher] evaluated how theobromine treatment affects the integrity of teeth. In one set of experiments, he took leftover human molars from 13 individuals and cut each into pieces. Then he treated some pieces with fluoride at varying doses and exposed other pieces to varying doses of theobromine.
He then put all molar slices into a machine fitted with a diamond bit. For 5 seconds, the bit pressed into each piece of tooth, creating an indentation. The depth of that depression offers a gauge of the tooth enamel's hardness. In these tests, theobromine outperformed fluoride.
Sadeghpour and his team hope to move ahead with human trials, using a prototypical version of the theobromine-fortified toothpaste. Keep your ears to the ground, folks.
