Masters Players: Medication, Dry Mouth and Aging Teeth in Table Tennis

One of the quiet glories of table tennis is that you can play it well into old age. The masters categories are full of players in their sixties, seventies and beyond, still competing, still improving, still travelling to tournaments. But the mouth of a seventy-year-old player faces a different set of dental pressures from a twenty-year-old’s, and the differences are not obvious until they bite. The headline is this: for older players, the dominant dental risk is dry mouth — and it usually comes not from the sport but from the medicine cabinet.

The medication-and-dry-mouth problem

As people age they tend to accumulate prescriptions, and an enormous proportion of common medications share a side effect that is barely mentioned: they reduce saliva flow. Drugs for high blood pressure, antidepressants and other mood medications, antihistamines for allergies, treatments for an overactive bladder, many painkillers, and dozens of others all tend to dry the mouth. Take several at once — “polypharmacy,” the normal situation for many older adults — and the drying effects stack. The result is chronic xerostomia, a persistently dry mouth.

This matters enormously for teeth because saliva is the mouth’s primary defence system: it buffers acid, washes away food and bacteria, and delivers the minerals that repair enamel. An older player with a medication-dried mouth has that defence permanently turned down — and then adds the acid and sugar of the sport on top. The dry mouth is the master risk factor of the older athlete’s mouth, and the crucial point is that it is often fixable or manageable once it is recognised, frequently by reviewing the medications with a doctor.

Receding gums and the rise of root decay

The second age-related shift is in the gums. Over decades, gums tend to recede, pulling back to expose the part of the tooth that is normally below the gumline — the root. And the root is a problem, because it is not covered in hard enamel. It is covered in cementum and dentine, which are far softer and decay far more readily. So a kind of decay that barely troubles younger people — root caries, cavities on the exposed root surface — becomes a leading dental problem in older adults.

Now combine the two. An older player with receding gums has soft, exposed root surfaces. A medication-dried mouth means little saliva to protect them. Add the acidic, sugary sports drink sipped through a long session, and you have acid and sugar bathing the most vulnerable surfaces in the mouth with the defences switched off. The same drink habit that slowly erodes a young player’s enamel can rot an older player’s exposed roots much faster. It is the single most important interaction for masters players to understand.

The sports-drink habit is riskier with age, not safer

It is tempting to think the dental risks of sport are a young person’s concern. The reverse is closer to the truth. A young player has full saliva flow and intact enamel defending against the acid; an older player may have neither. The harm-reduction advice that applies to everyone — water as the default, sports drinks only when genuinely needed and taken as a discrete dose, rinsing after, fluoride — is not optional housekeeping for the masters player but a real protection for a vulnerable mouth. For most older players in most sessions, plain water is simply the right choice, and the carbohydrate drink is reserved for the rare session that truly demands it.

What masters players should do

1. Review your medications for dry mouth. If your mouth is persistently dry, raise it with your doctor and dentist together. Sometimes a medication can be changed or timed differently; where it cannot, the dryness can be managed directly. Do not accept a dry mouth as just part of getting older — it is a treatable risk to your teeth.
2. Treat dry mouth actively. Sip water frequently, use sugar-free gum or lozenges to stimulate what saliva flow remains, and consider the saliva-substitute products and dry-mouth toothpastes made for exactly this. Keeping the mouth moist restores some of the protection that the medication removed.
3. Default to water in training. Given exposed roots and reduced saliva, the acidic sports drink is a genuine threat. Make water your standard, reserve carbohydrate drinks for the sessions that truly need them, and rinse after any acidic drink.
4. Use high-fluoride protection. Older players, especially with exposed roots and dry mouth, benefit from stronger fluoride than a standard toothpaste — dentists can prescribe a high-fluoride toothpaste that substantially protects vulnerable root surfaces. Ask whether it is right for you.
5. Go to the dentist more often, not less. Root decay can advance quietly, and a dry, vulnerable mouth needs closer monitoring. More frequent check-ups and cleans catch problems on the exposed roots early, while they are still small and simple to fix.

The bottom line

That table tennis can be played for a lifetime is one of its best features — and it means a player’s dental care has to age with them. The risks of an older mouth are not the same as a young one’s. The dominant threat is dry mouth, usually driven by the ordinary medications of later life rather than by the sport, and it strips away the saliva that defends the teeth. Receding gums expose soft tooth roots that decay easily, and the familiar sports-drink habit becomes more dangerous on those surfaces, not less.

None of it should keep anyone away from the table. It simply asks for a shift in care: treat dry mouth as the real and manageable risk it is, default to water, lean on stronger fluoride, and see the dentist more often. Do that, and the mouth keeps up with the rest of a body that is still, impressively, playing the sport it loves.

Part of our series on how the demands of competitive table tennis show up in players' long-term health off the table.