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Sports drinks and your teeth: what the research actually shows

A recent review of the evidence on sports drinks and tooth damage — what held up, what didn't, and who's most at risk.

Sports and energy drinks are a routine part of summer training, from five-a-side leagues to long runs to swimming club sessions. They're also acidic enough to soften tooth enamel — and a research review published this year looked at exactly how much of a problem that really is.

What the review found

The review, published in Current Oral Health Reports in 2025, pulled together five studies on sports drinks and dental erosion — the gradual, irreversible loss of enamel caused by acid rather than bacteria. The results were mixed. Three studies found no clear link between sports drinks and erosion. One found a dose-response relationship: the more often someone drank them, the more erosion showed up. And one found that swimmers who drank energy or sports drinks had more than double the risk of dental erosion compared with swimmers who didn't.

Why the acidity matters

Most sports drinks sit at a pH of around 3.2 to 3.7. Tooth enamel starts to soften once pH drops below about 5.5, so sports drinks are well into the range that can cause damage on contact. Saliva is normally your best defence — it neutralises acid and helps redeposit minerals back into enamel — but exercise itself reduces saliva flow, and swimmers spend long stretches in a pool where rinsing and swallowing patterns differ from dry land. That combination is likely why swimmers showed up as the highest-risk group.

How to protect your teeth if you use them

  • Drink it in one sitting rather than sipping it over an hour or more — frequency of acid contact matters more than total volume.
  • Use a straw where practical, to keep the drink off your front teeth.
  • Rinse with water afterwards, but hold off brushing for 30 to 60 minutes — enamel is temporarily softened by the acid, and brushing straight away can wear it down faster.
  • Chilled drinks appear to be somewhat less erosive than room-temperature ones, based on lab studies of enamel contact.
  • For sessions under an hour, plain water is usually all you need — sports drinks are designed for sustained, high-intensity or long-duration exercise, not a quick gym visit.

None of this means sports drinks are off the table if you play sport or train regularly. It just means they're worth using deliberately rather than as an all-day sipping habit. If you're a regular user and you've noticed new sensitivity, or your teeth look thinner or more translucent at the edges, mention it at your next check-up — early erosion is much easier to manage than advanced wear.