Transcript on 'Dry mouth and saliva in Sjogren's' by Dr. Henk Brand

 Water is not the solution. This is part of a transcript on 'Dry mouth and saliva in Sjogren's' from January 2022. It is a recording of Dr. Henk Brand who is a medical biologist and Associate Professor at the Academic Centre of Dentistry Amsterdam where he works at the Department of Oral Biochemistry. His research is mainly focused on investigating the protective effects of saliva, causes of oral dryness, and the and the use of dry-mouth interventions. 

My topic is 'Why it's so difficult to prepare a real good artificial saliva'. 

When we are born we almost all have sufficient saliva and saliva is essential for the maintenance of the oral health.  There are people that later in life will have a lack of saliva.

Saliva is, as you probably will know, mainly derived from three pairs of salivary glands. You have the parotid glands, located in front of the ear, then you have the submandibular glands, in the back of the jaw, and then more in front of the jaw you have the sublingual gland, under the tongue. And together with some minor salivary glands and lips and palate they produce saliva - a limited amount during the night and more during the day when you're eating, speaking and you have other activities that urge the need for saliva.
Saliva has many important functions and here you see just a handful of them. A major issue is that saliva protects the oral mucosa from drying out and by doing that it also reduces the risk of damage to your oral mucosa. But it does much more... 

Sjogren's syndrome is an autoimmune disease that destroys your salivary glands and replaces them also with connective tissue so also here you have a gradual but irreversible process which destroys salivary gland cells and leads to a reduction in saliva secretion rates.

I think this is an experience many of you will have that if you take a sip of water it will not really help. It gives only for a few seconds relief and then it's gone so you don't have a long lasting relief of the dry feeling and that's because there's something missing - water is not the perfect solution.

Saliva has many important functions and many components. You have the antifungal, antibacterial, antiviral functions of saliva, killing bacteria fungi viruses, it helps with coating and lubrication, it starts the food digestion, it helps to mineralize teeth, providing a buffer against acids and that come into it by drinking or eating acidic things. There are the dozens of ingredients that help saliva doing all these functions and if you're drinking a bit of water you will not have a fluid with all those remarkable stuffs. One of those ingredients is especially important for the maintenance of the oral, wet feeling that is this molecule mucins.
If you are drinking a bit of water you will not have all the remarkable stuff like mucins. They keep the water in your mouth and keep a moist feeling for a long time. 

Well, what can you do if you don't have enough saliva? Well, the first thing you can do is try to stimulate your own saliva using different techniques for that like chewing and taste. Taste is a very strong stimulus for saliva secretion rates and the most strong stimulus is acid. If you add some acids in from candy etc you will immediately usually feel the parotid gland trying to produce saliva. Even in your case (people with Sjogren's) most of you will still have some saliva secretion. 
I have to warn you that bringing acid into the oral cavity is at risk if you still have your own teeth because acid is detrimental to the enamel of your teeth. So acid it is a great stimulus if you have full prothesis but please be restrictive in the use of this stimulus, for saliva, if you still have your own teeth. Sweets can also enhance the secretion rate.  If you still have the capacity to stimulate your own saliva you can use a combination of taste and mechanical stimulation by using chewing gum. You can also use some vegetables for example pieces of carrots or cucumber and cucumber has the additional advantage that it has a high content of water in itself.

This is just the first part of the transcript and I will continue it soon. I felt that the information was invaluable so it was important to get this published even though it is not complete.  In the meantime you can listen the full one hour video on YouTube.