"The Risks of Oil Pulling"
So far, we learned that oil pulling may be no more effective than
swishing with water for plaque and gingivitis,
doesn't whiten your teeth, and may even make dental erosion worse.
What about oil pulling as a treatment for tooth sensitivity?
About a quarter of people have sensitive teeth,
like experiencing aching sensations when drinking ice water.
So researchers split people up into three groups:
oil pulling versus a desensitizing toothpaste,
versus placebo (just rinsing with saltwater),
and then they blasted people's teeth with cold air.
The placebo didn't help much:
the before and after sensitivity scores were the same
for 9 out of the 10 in the placebo group,
but the desensitizing toothpaste seemed
to help most of the patients, and so did the oil pulling.
OK. So there is some benefit to oil pulling.
If you have sensitive teeth, why not give it a try?
Unless, of course, there's some downside, some risks associated with oil pulling.
Typically, the only concerns you see expressed
are for clogging your sink drain or something.
But the reason it's warned against in young children
is fear of aspiration, that you might accidentally choke on it,
and some oil may go down the wrong pipe into your lungs.
And this could potentially happen at any age.
But is that just a theoretical concern?
No, there are cases of lipoid pneumonia
attributed to oil pulling, which is when you get
an oily substance stuck down in your lungs.
First described in 1925, when it was customary
to use substances like mentholated Vaseline
in the nostrils of kids, until they died of pneumonia.
And on autopsy, areas of their lungs were clogged with oily fluid.
Glad we don't use methylated Vaseline any more---
but we do: that's what Vicks VapoRub is.
And if you stick it in your nostrils, you can
end up filling up part of your lung with it.
That's why you should never put Vaseline in your nose before bedtime;
it liquefies at body temperature and creeps down into your lungs as you sleep.
And so people need to be aware.
I did my part by posting a video about it ages ago,
but it's not just Vaseline—anything oily or greasy can do it.
You can give your kid pneumonia with intranasal butter application,
evidently a folk remedy for a stuffy nose, which can end you up with a stuffy lung.
Same thing with olive oil.
Or this poor woman who thought it was a good idea
to put baby oil in her nose because her nostrils were dry.
Not a good idea.
Less common causes include inhaling too much
vaporized candle wax, because you spend
most of your time in a shrine surrounded by burning candles.
Lipoid pneumonia isn't nicknamed fire-eater's lung
for nothing, as performers place themselves at risk
for aspirating that tiki torch oil in their act.
A thankfully really uncommon cause is self-injection with oil.
Why would anyone do that?
To increase the size of their genitals, of course,
until they accidentally hit a vein and squirt oil into their bloodstream.
But this is what concerns me more.
Cases like this poor woman: four admissions to the hospital
with pneumonia within just 6 months.
During her fourth admission, her doctors
"meticulously inquired about every possible cause
of her recurrent pneumonia, and she revealed that she had
started oil pulling 2 weeks before her first admission."
And then, when she was discharged from the hospital,
she did it even more to try to "detoxify" from all the drugs they had given her,
which led to three more hospital admissions.
They told her to stop the oil pulling,
and no more pneumonia.
That's one of the reasons the American Dental Association
recommends against the practice.
In fact, remember that
tooth whitening experiment?
There's a reason they used extracted teeth
instead of just having people do it.
They didn't think it would be ethical
to conduct a human trial of oil pulling
"with the knowledge that there was a chance
of inducing lipoid pneumonia in study volunteers."