A dentist’s Iceland endurance account highlights oral-care planning, limited sports-drink evidence and practical questions for athletes over 35.
Dentistry.co.uk reports that Dr Ben Atkins completed the Rat Race Iceland Coast to Coast challenge after extensive preparation. Yet the Manchester-based general dentist said he had underestimated oral-health risks. His account brings dental care into a conversation usually centered on training, fuelling and equipment.
The challenge involved roughly 110 km per day of off-road mountain biking over five to six days. The report also describes about two hours of kayaking and a 44 km ultramarathon-style finish. Against that demanding backdrop, Atkins’s experience offers a useful prompt to consider where oral care fits in endurance preparation.
According to Dentistry.co.uk, Atkins’s preparation covered training, nutrition, hydration and equipment. He also packed a toothbrush, toothpaste and interdental cleaning aids. The notable point is that he still felt he had underestimated the oral-health side of the challenge.
This was an athlete who had already invested substantial effort in reaching the start. Atkins said he had spent about two and a half years rebuilding fitness after serious back problems. His account places oral care within the broader work of returning to ambitious endurance goals.
The practical issue is therefore not simply whether a toothbrush makes it into a bag. It is whether dental care receives deliberate attention alongside the rest of an event plan. Packing supplies and considering individual dental concerns are related tasks, but they are not the same task.
For an athlete preparing for a long event, that is a useful distinction. An equipment list answers what to bring. A conversation with a dental professional can address personal questions about oral health and the demands of the planned event.
Atkins’s experience is an individual account rather than a controlled study. The available report supplies neither event-specific dental outcomes nor a comparison group. It does not establish that sports drinks or gels caused dental problems for him.
The broader sports-drink evidence also needs careful handling. A secondary summary of a 2025 systematic review reports that four athlete studies involving 567 participants were eligible. It says the evidence was insufficient to conclude that sports drinks alone explain dental erosion and notes methodological limitations.
That finding is not proof that sports drinks are harmless. It means the available athlete evidence does not justify a simple claim that a particular drink explains dental erosion. The figures here come from secondary reporting of the review rather than direct examination of the review itself.
The approved reporting also does not establish how common oral-health problems are among endurance athletes aged 35 to 65. Nor does it provide a tested oral-care protocol or a complete set of independently verified recommendations from Atkins. The planning suggestions below are editorial applications of the account, not interventions shown to work during his challenge.
The defensible conclusion is narrower than a warning against race nutrition: oral health belongs in preparation. These sources do not justify abandoning necessary fuelling or reducing fluid intake.
For the veteran endurance athlete, the useful translation is organizational. Oral care can have a defined place in preparation without becoming another performance project. It can sit beside the decisions already being made about training, travel and equipment.
Reendure’s focus is performance today and a long athletic future. In this case, that means giving ordinary health maintenance a place alongside ambitious goals. The aim is not to turn a dentist’s adventure into a new set of race rules.
Including routine dental care in the broader preparation checklist is a reasonable starting point. Individual concerns about teeth or oral health belong with a qualified dental professional. Event plans can provide context for that discussion without becoming a basis for self-diagnosis.
Useful topics include the length and format of the event, planned fuelling and questions about mouth hydration. These are discussion points rather than a universal prescription. Personal decisions should come from the professional who can assess the athlete’s circumstances.
That approach fits naturally with making training sustainable around everyday life. Dental care does not need to compete with athletic ambition. It needs a place in the same calendar that holds the rest of an athlete’s preparation.
The supplies documented in Atkins’s account are straightforward: a toothbrush, toothpaste and interdental cleaning aids. Those are the items the report says he packed. There is no need to turn that short list into a specialized endurance product system.
For someone planning a multi-day event, the practical suggestion is to consider oral-care supplies alongside other personal essentials. Packing them is a concrete preparation task. Questions about which products or routines suit an individual are better handled through dental advice than through a generic race checklist.
Long events can also involve travel planning. Oral-care supplies can be included when organizing the wider demands of an endurance trip. That keeps the topic within ordinary preparation rather than treating it as an unrelated concern.
The useful question is how to account for oral health while meeting the demands of the event. Framing the issue as teeth versus fuel creates an unnecessary choice. The research supplied here supports discussing the two together rather than treating one as a reason to abandon the other.
An athlete can describe planned sports-drink or gel use to a dental professional and ask how it fits with individual dental needs. Questions about frequent use and mouth hydration can be part of that conversation. This keeps the discussion specific without assuming that one product is responsible for a problem.
There is no need to arrive with a self-written treatment plan. The athlete brings the event context and the questions. The dental professional provides the individual assessment and advice.
A proportionate response does not require rebuilding an entire training plan. It means making room for routine dental care, including oral-care supplies and raising personal concerns with the appropriate professional. Those are manageable additions to the preparation process described in the report.
This is also a useful distinction between performance optimization and health maintenance. A race plan can become highly detailed while ordinary care remains a separate consideration. Bringing the two into the same planning process is the practical opportunity highlighted by Atkins’s account.
The objective is a complete preparation process, not a longer list for its own sake. Oral care deserves deliberate attention because it is part of caring for the athlete, rather than because this report establishes a new performance advantage.
Atkins’s Iceland account offers a modest reminder: extensive preparation can still leave a health consideration underexamined. For athletes over 35, the useful response is to include routine dental care and oral-care supplies in the broader plan. Individual questions about fuelling and mouth hydration belong in a dental conversation.
Keep the ambition and keep necessary fuelling and hydration in view. Give oral care a place alongside them. That is a practical takeaway from the available reporting without turning one athlete’s experience into a universal warning.
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