You can't out train a bad diet
It's a phrase I picked up on an exercise video on YouTube, but I imagine the idea has been there for a long time before the internet was with us.
A few weeks ago I bought some airport-sized Toblerone bars for the team at Swords Ortho (don't tell the dentistry police). The ladies of Swords Orthodontics are particularly fond of white Toblerone, but for a bit of variety I got a mild chocolate/coconut one as well. It's a practice rule that I am forbidden to tell anyone what the calorie count is for a single triangle of this Swiss marvel.
I can tell the blog readers that I would have to run 1 mile in 10 minutes to burn off the calories in a single triangle of the Toblerone. So if I want to have a bit of Theodor Tobler's magical confectionery, then I need to run a mile to balance it all out. A small bag of crisps is about the same. Chances are if I go anywhere near crisps, a small bag will not be enough.
So I'd have to do a lot of exercise to support a serious snack habit. Look what happened to poor Alan Partridge when he was addicted to Toblerone.
You can't out train a bad diet.
But here's the dental implication.
You can't out-brush a bad diet. If you eat a lot of sugary food - and even some food that looks savoury can contain a lot of sugar if it's ready made (hidden sugars) - you're at risk from dental caries. If you drink a lot of fizzy drinks - even "diet" drinks - you're at risk of acid erosion to the teeth. If you drink sugary fizzy drinks, you're at risk of both. Brushing the teeth doesn't do enough to avoid this - it's useful for gum health, but acid attack to the teeth happens in between brushing times, and brushing immediately after some acid exposure might even cause more damage than the acid alone. I'm not saying "don't brush your teeth" - it's very important that you do. I am saying that brushing alone won't compensate for a bad diet.
Particularly if you're taking sugary snacks between meals, for reasons of mouth chemistry I won't go into today.
Particularly if you're wearing braces, particularly if you're wearing aligners.
You can't out-train a bad diet, and you can't out-brush one either.
