"Oil Pulling for Teeth Whitening and Bad BreathTested"
A review of the effects of oil pulling concluded that the ancient practice
may indeed have beneficial effects on oral and dental health.
I have talked about the benefits for dental health, but oral health, too?
Oil pulling was also tested against "oral malodor,"
also known as halitosis, or simply, bad breath.
It's believed a quarter of the world's population suffers from it.
So they decided to put oil pulling versus chlorhexidine to the test.
How do you test for bad breath, though?
There's all sorts of really fancy methods—gas chromatography,
electronic noses, diamond probes, and dark field microscopy—
but these are really expensive, or not very reliable.
So they decided to go with the "gold standard."
Study subjects were just told to breath in the researcher's face.
And then they wanted to know what the study subjects thought
about their own breath, so they asked them to lick their own wrist
and sniff it, then give it a score from zero to extremely foul.
And though the subjects themselves thought their licked wrists
smelled better after two weeks of oil puling,
the researchers disagreed that their breath smelled any better.
But after three weeks there was a significant and comparable
improvement in breath odor in the oil pulling and chlorhexidine groups.
I was excited about this study because they used an actual placebo,
colored water, to presumably match the look of the chlorhexidine,
and swishing for the same duration.
Aha! So we can finally answer that nagging question
about whether oil pulling cuts down on plaque and gingivitis
because of the oil, or just because
you're swishing anything in your mouth that long.
And the water worked just as well—the same drop
swishing with oil or just swishing with water—
suggesting that the plaque is just disrupted
by the extended rinsing action.
Yes, oil may be 5 or 6 times cheaper than chlorhexidine and safer,
but cheaper and safer than just plain water?
Yeah, but can water whiten teeth?
Numerous websites offer testimonials
of oil pulling whitening teeth, but there were no studies published
in the medical literature, and so most doctors would just give up there.
But these two dental professors in Detroit decided to put it to the test.
Teeth were selected from their stored collection
of human extracted teeth (sounds a little horror movie-ish).
Then they put them in tubes with coconut oil, sesame oil,
sunflower oil, along with some fake saliva and vigorously shake
them every day for two weeks and found... no evidence
to suggest that oil pulling has any effect on teeth whitening.
That's like when another internet darling was put to the test,
strawberries and baking soda, which was evidently featured on Dr. Oz.
Over-the-counter whitening strips worked; a home whitening system works,
where the dentist sends you home with custom trays;
and in-office tooth whitening works,
but the DIY strawberry baking soda mixture failed,
as bad as just plain water used as a control.
What about dental erosion?
In my video on plant-based diets and dental health,
I talked about how those eating healthier may have healthier gums,
but because they tend to eat more acidic foods
like citrus and tomatoes, fruity teas,
they may be at more risk for eroding off some of their enamel,
which is why we should rinse our mouth with water
after eating or drinking anything acidic, anything sour,
but what about rinsing with oil every morning?
The way our body protects our teeth from erosion
is by forming a "pellicle" over our teeth, a protective layer
of mostly proteins from our saliva, but some fat, too.
So, hey, might oil pulling help prevent erosive damage
to our tooth surfaces by kind of buttressing this protective layer?
You don't know until you put it to the test.
Now they wanted to put the teeth under a microscope afterwards,
and that's hard to do when they're still in people's heads.
So they put slabs of cattle teeth in their mouth,
let them sit there until that protective layer developed,
and then oil pulled around the teeth—or not in the control group—
and then took them out and exposed them to acid.
If you expose the teeth to acid without putting them in your mouth,
within 2 minutes, 120 seconds, significant demineralization takes place.
Calcium is dissolved out of the teeth by the acid.
But just let those same teeth roll around in your mouth for a few minutes
and then expose them to acid, there's less erosion.
OK, but then what happens if you put them in your mouth and do some oil pulling?
Is there even less erosion? No, there's more.
It's as if the oil pulling undermined the protective layer.
And that's exactly what they saw under the microscope.
Here's what that protective layer looks like
before the oil pulling and then after.
They suspect the oil may actually
be depleting the protective layer of some of its protection.