Morning
Your mouthwash doesn't choose which bacteria it clears
The healthy step at the sink takes away more than you'd think. Here is the few-minute swap I make.
Thirty-six healthy adults rinsed with the dentist's mouthwash twice a day for a week. By the end, the bacteria in their saliva were less varied than with a rinse that did nothing.
That rinse is the one most of us trust.
What the bottle actually does
The dentist's rinse is called chlorhexidine. It binds to a bacterial cell and punches a hole in it. It does that very well. What it doesn't do is choose.
A healthy mouth isn't empty. It keeps bacteria, and some of them are worth keeping. Chlorhexidine holds those back along with the rest.
The everyday bottles work along the same lines. Some use cetylpyridinium chloride, a broad-spectrum antiseptic, at about 0.05 to 0.07%. Others use alcohol with menthol, thymol, eucalyptol and methyl salicylate. A short hospital study found that the second kind lowered the variety of mouth bacteria too. It was less strong than the dentist's rinse, but it still lowered it.
The bacteria you'd want to keep
This is the part that surprised me. When you eat food with nitrate in it, some of the bacteria a healthy mouth keeps turn that nitrate into nitrite. Your body uses nitrite to make nitric oxide, which helps blood flow.
The dentist's rinse clears those bacteria too. It can't tell them apart from the ones you were trying to get rid of. So the step that feels healthiest is also taking away something your body uses.
What I use instead
Coconut oil is not that rinse, and that's the point. It doesn't punch holes in anything.
When you swish it, the fat mixes with your saliva and behaves like a soap. Think of washing-up liquid on a greasy pan: it lifts the film off rather than killing what's in it. The thickness of the oil also makes it harder for that film to stick. As you swish, the oil thins and can turn milky.
Does it work?
It does. Children who swished coconut oil for 2 to 3 minutes each morning for 30 days had the same drop in one of the main bacteria in the film as children given the dentist's rinse.
The result was the same, and it took a few minutes.
How I make the cubes
I make these a jar at a time.
- Heat coconut oil until it's liquid, then turn the heat off.
- Stir in 5 to 10 drops of peppermint, cinnamon or oregano.
- Pour it into a silicone mould.
- Put it in the fridge until solid.
- Pop the cubes out and keep them in a glass jar.
You make the jar once, and then it's just sitting there each morning.
How to use one
Chew half a cube so it melts. Swish it round your mouth for 2 to 3 minutes. Spit it into the bin.
That's about as long as the kettle takes.
Tomorrow morning
Put the kettle on. Take half a cube from the jar. By the time the water's boiled you're done, and the bottle can stay in the cupboard.
Callum
Nothing here is a treatment for any condition.
